1. The cultural artifacts of early humans include all of the following except:
A. Rock drawings
B. Jewelry
C. Irrigation canals.
D. Geometrical figures cut into stone.
2. Hominins were forerunners of humans after genetically splitting from ……………………
7-5 million years ago.
A. Gorillas
B. Chimpanzees
C. Orangutans
D. Squirrel monkeys
3. Australopiths were hominin species that existed before those classed under the
………………… Homo.
A. Phylum
B. Taxon
C. Species
D. Genus
4. ………………… became a key evolutionary advantage to hominins, since walking on two
feet freed the arms to do something else.
A. Bipedalism
B. Bifurcation
C. Ambidextrousness
D. Bimetallism
5. Walking on two feet, humans were able to venture out of the African rain forest and
into the …………………, i.e. grassland with more or less extensive stands of trees.
A. Tundra
B. Jungle
C. Savanna
D. Mesa
6. Acheulian stone technology was found in ………………….
A. South Africa
B. France
C. Georgia
D. Spain
7. The oldest specimen of H. sapiens discovered so far is a fossil discovered in Morocco
and dated to ………………….
A. 12,000 years ago
B. 1.8 million years ago
C. 135,000 years ago
D. 312,000 years ago
8. Effective spears were created by H. sapiens utilizing the ………………… stone working
technique.
A. Levallois
B. Oldowan
C. Acheulian
D. Clovis
9. A dozen or so dispersed families of H. sapiens would come together around a
campfire, forming a clan, ………………….
A. Among which trade in Acheulian tools was established
B. Which courted sexual partners from outside the group
C. Among which sexual partners were chosen
D. Which elected a priest to represent them to the gods
10. The oldest H. sapiens fossil found outside of Africa was found in ………………….
A. Malaysia
B. France
C. Saudi Arabia
D. Greece
11. The most esteemed elders among the Australian Aboriginals possessed a deep
knowledge of the tribe’s past in the ………………….
A. Temple dedicated to the principal god
B. Form of a holy book
C. Dreamtime
D. Pastime
12. Aboriginal elders were never able to obtain any political power because ………………….
A. They lacked the resources necessary to have armed forces
B. The youth of the clan exerted equal authority with them
C. They lacked the ability to make weapons
D. There was a taboo on fighting with neighboring clans
13. Scholars assume that modern humans migrated to …………………… before migrating to
Europe around 42,000 years ago.
A. India
B. North America
C. East Asia
D. Central Asia
14. Tundra is a landscape in which the top soil unfreezes during the summer and
supports ………………….
A. The rapid development of rain forests
B. The replenishment of nitrogen, which aided the work of early farmers
C. The re-emergence of ponds and swamps
D. The growth of small shrubs, mosses, and lichens
15. Denisovans found in Siberia, China, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea are relatives
of the ………………….
A. Neanderthals
B. Aboriginals
C. Australopiths
D. Kennewick Man
16. The discovery of cave paintings in Indonesia are important because ………………….
A. It showed that Neanderthals were as creative as modern humans
B. They show animals that no longer exist in Asia
C. It showed that the cultural outburst of modern humans was not limited to
Western Europe
D. They are the earliest example of symbolic thinking
17. The mitochondrial DNA of a young girl’s teeth, found in the Yucatán peninsula and
dating to 13,000 – 12,000 years ago, is ………………….
A. Completely unique in the genetic record and cannot be connected, at this point,
to any other ethnic group
B. Closely related to that of the groups of Siberian Homo sapiens who migrated to
Beringia during the Ice Age
C. Impossible to reconstruct, given the limitations of modern genetic science
D. Compelling evidence of a mixed Neanderthal and Homo sapiens heritage
18. A recent discovery of fossils indicate that Neanderthals died out in Europe around
………………….
A. 33,000 years ago
B. 40,000 years ago
C. 100,000 years ago
D. 24,000 years ago
19. DNA analysis of Naia and Anzick-1 fossils indicate that migrants to North America
originally came from ………………….
A. China
B. Central Asia
C. Siberia
D. Western Europe
20. During the Last Glacial Maximum, global sea levels ………………….
A. Remained the same as they froze
B. Dropped by 250 feet
C. Rose by 100 feet
D. Fell by some 450 feet
21. According to this map, a majority of hominin finds in Africa were located in …………….
A. South Africa
B. East Africa
C. North Africa
D. West Africa
22. The two characteristics that distinguished modern H. sapiens from their forerunners
were ………………….
A. Tool making and cave painting
B. Foraging and symbolic thinking
C. Bipedalism and meat eating
D. Technical skills and cultural creativity
23. Historians who insist on a rigid separation between prehistory and history may be
forgetting that ………………….
A. Scientific instruments used by anthropologists have a high failure rate in the field
B. Archaeologists developed the parameters of field surveys long before history
existed as a literary form
C. Historians routinely consider the findings of scholars in other disciplines
D. Written records have survived from 2 million years ago, but the languages in
which they were composed are, at least today, untranslatable
24. The straight legs of the hominins called Ardi (4.5 – 4.3 million years ago) enabled
them to ………………….
A. Steady themselves with one hand on a branch and reach for fruit with the other
B. Kick away predators from the base of the trees in which they lived
C. Walk upright into the savanna
D. Use their feet while carving Acheulian tools
25. Finds in South African caves in 2004 indicate that hominins discovered ………………….
A. How to control fire
B. How to use stone tools
C. How to paint abstract figures
D. How to bury their dead
26. A recent analysis of five Homo erectus remains found in a cave in Georgia (in the
Caucasus) in 2013 suggests that this line of humans ……………….
A. Had crossed into Beringia and interacted with other hominins already living there
B. Was a polymorphous species
C. Were sewing together fiber clothes as early as 1.8 million years ago
D. Became extinct as the result of a sudden Ice Age
27. Foraging, sometimes called hunting and gathering, was the dominant lifestyle of
humans lasting several hundred thousand years, but it is also ………………….
A. Thought to have accelerated soil erosion and led to the extinction of animals who
relied on pasturage land
B. The least documented, forcing a reliance on comparative evidence provided by
anthropology and archeology
C. The period during which hominins made the greatest strides toward perfecting
the design and efficacy of their tools
D. The period during which women began to emerge as the dominant figures in clan
society, due to their power of giving birth
28. The discovery of obsidian at a prehistoric settlement probably indicates ………………….
A. A recent volcanic eruption at the site
B. A bout of sudden and violent lighting strikes in the vicinity
C. Experimentation by early humans in the art of channeling fire
D. The existence of trade networks, providing material mined as far as 200 miles
away
29. The development of jewelry was a critical step in societal development, as it
indicated the existence of ……………….
A. Abstract, symbolic thinking
B. High status females within the group
C. Rising sea levels, which transported seashells from far distances
D. An early attempt to record the number of items a person owned
30. A 73,000-year-old ochre-painted stone flake found in Blombos Cave, may suggest
………………….
A. The worship of animals of this sort across wide portions of southwestern Africa
B. An imaginative leap among prehistoric artists, who could create an animal that
had not yet appeared, at least in its present form
C. The influence of cross-continental trade, since an identical image appears in the
Bradshaw paintings found in Australia
D. Early humans’ ability to create symbols that signify something other than the
materials from which they were made
31. Foraging remained the dominant mode of subsistence among Australia’s Aboriginal
people, largely because ………………….
A. Large marsupials continued to propagate and diversify their ranks, especially
after 16,000 years ago
B. Raiding parties from other parts of Southeast Asia continuously destroyed the
crops the Aboriginals had planted in undefended fields
C. Australia possessed far fewer grasses suitable for grain cultivation than in Eurasia,
where there were around 40 types
D. It permitted a division of labor by gender that satisfied the goals of both the men
and the women in the group
32. Aboriginal society is well understood because ………………….
A. Of the abundance of cave paintings found in southern Australia
B. Anthropologists have been able to collect considerable data on it
C. Their foraging techniques spread around the globe
D. It was the first society to develop written records
33. A painted red square found in the cave of La Pasiega, Spain is ………………….
A. Hominins developed symbolic thinking long before modern man
B. Evidence that Neanderthals were active in hunting large game in Europe
C. The earliest example of modern man in Europe
D. The oldest example of Neanderthals using symbolic thinking
34. Papers published in 2016 point to ………………….
A. The impossibility of their being related to East Asians who crossed the Beringia
land bridge around 25,000 years ago
B. The incompleteness of the human genome, at least at present
C. Settlers in North America from Beringia were a genetically uniform population
originating in Siberia
D. The imprint of a bacterial infection that was acquired when one individual sailed
across the Pacific to the vicinity of modern-day Seattle
35. Why was the analysis of Neanderthal DNA by Svante Paabo so intriguing?
A. It indicated that there was inbreeding between modern humans and
Neanderthals
B. It proved that Homo sapiens had murdered at least one Neanderthal person,
apparently by stabbing him with a spear
C. It proved that the brain of a Neanderthal was, indeed, smaller than that of
contemporary Homo sapiens
D. The Neanderthal skeleton was taller and better proportioned than that of any
contemporaneous Homo sapiens
36. Radiocarbon data from Cooper’s Ferry in Idaho indicates ………………….
A. That early humans used boomerangs to hunt large animals in North America
B. That it is the site with the earliest human traces in North America
C. That Neanderthal man migrated to North America before modern humans
D. That non-Siberian migrants were the first to arrive in North America
37. New discoveries of human settlements from across the Americas are creating a
scholarly consensus that ………………….
A. The Beringia ice bridge was a vibrant exchange of people and materials, and
many people crossed it multiple times
B. The DNA evidence indicates multiple points of origins for Amerindians, from
Africa to Asia to the Middle East
C. Humans arrived in Americas more than 13,500 years ago
D. Human migrants were unable to travel from Central America to South America
because the isthmus of Panama had not yet been formed
38. According to study published in 2014, the skeletal remains of Naia, found in an
underwater cave in the Yucatan Peninsula, give strong evidence for the notion that:
A. Water once covered the entirety of modern Mexico and humans had adapted to
these conditions
B. Early Amerindian cultures practiced human sacrifice
C. Cro-Magnon peoples had emigrated to the Americas carried by favorable winds
across the Atlantic Ocean
D. Members from one single, genetically uniform population populated the
Americas from at least 16,500 years ago
39. The question of when the Hobbits of Flores Island died out was settled when
………………….
A. Ethnologists recorded stories about small creatures stealing food during the 16th
century
B. Scholars found additional hominins on neighboring islands
C. The remains of more than one individual were discovered
D. Radiocarbon dating showed that they lived between 100,000 and 60,000 years
ago
40. The detailed arrangement of broken stalagmites found in a cave in France is new
evidence in support of the theory that ………………….
A. Neanderthals did create art
B. Neanderthals could control fire
C. Neanderthals hunted
D. None of the above
41. Neanderthals differed from modern humans in that ………………….
A. They did not develop symbolic drawing
B. They were more heavily boned
C. They were much taller
D. They did not talk
42. According to the map, when did the first Homo sapiens arrive in Australia?
A. 40,000 years ago
B. 10,000 years ago
C. 80,000 years ago
D. They didn’t migrate to Australia
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