1. "If the land is poor the people will tend to be poor." Which of the
following is not a factor that will make it hard for the people
of a culture scratch out a subsistence?
2. Which of the following is true about corn or maize.
3. True or False: The people of a band have little more control over whether they live independent, self-sufficient lives than the people of an industrial state.
4. It is sometimes said that "the communications medium is the message."
In other words, the nature or the medium largely determines how that medium
will be used, that is, its message. For example, the characteristics of
cuneiform contributed to its function as a medium of a sedentary bureaucracy.
Which of the following is not correct in that regard?
5. Which of the following is not true?
6. Which of the following North American resources was most successfully
domesticated?
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apples |
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sunflowers |
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ovifera or egg gourds |
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bison |
7. Which of the following statements is correct about the invention
of the wheel?
8. Semi-nomadic communities of hundred of people in which everyone may
know the name of everyone else but not be personally acquainted with them
are:
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tribes |
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bands |
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chieftainships |
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states |
13. Which of the following is incorrect?
10. Which of the following is usually taken as a fairly persuasive evidence
of human activity.
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disarticulated or pulled apart skeletons of animals |
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bones with cut marks on them |
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beer cans |
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flakes of flint |
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None of the above. |
11. Which sequence outlines the categories of population density from
the least dense populations to the most dense populations.
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bands-tribes-chieftainships-states |
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tribes-bands-chieftainships-states |
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bands-chieftainships-tribes-states |
12. Which is true about the Cahokia Mounds in Southern Illinois
and the Serpent Mounds in Ohio?
14. Which of the following is not true about Leif Ericson and
Columbus
15. If the landscape of a particular area does not have nuggets
of gold or copper lying on the surface, what can we expect about the people
on that landscape?
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They will probably never develop elaborate funerary practices. |
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They will not develop ideas of wealth or land tenure. |
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They will never develop metallurgy. |
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None of the above. |
16. Which of the following is not true of infrastructure?
17. Which of the following is not true of progress?
18.
19.
20.
19.
1. Right. All the points listed are valid statements about how the land determines the nature of the culture that lives on it.
5. You got it.
The domestication of animals does not really have much to do with the development of infrastructure. Think of ancient Egypt with its pyramids and Pharoahs. That empire was not based to any great extent on the domestication of animals. Think on the other hand of a pastoral culture in which flocks of sheep are an important part of the livelihood. The people tending those flocks may be pretty far removed from any cultural infrastructure.
2. Right.
Corn was not one of the first plants cultivated in North America. It was a very late cultigen.
The cultivation of corn or maize did not come up the Mississippi River from Central and South America. It took a roundabout route through the western part of North America and its cultivation was more or less rediscovered or reinvented at each step along the way.
It did become an important part of the diets of people from the Great Plains east to the coast. Early Euro explorers found huge, well tended corn fields.
And the correct answer: It became such a dominant part of the diets of some cultures that the health of the people suffered from such an unbalanced diet.
3. That statement is true. The people of a band have little choice. They are part of a population that is so small they must live independent, self-sufficient lives. If they do not they will perish.
The people of a state, or industrial state, also have very little choice. They are part of such a dense population that they really have no choice. They must conform to the requirements of the state. In other words, they must go to work every day, buy their food at the grocery store or restaurant and live in a fairly densely populated neighborhood. Except for the very rich tiny minority, living an independent, self-sufficient life living off the land is not an option for them.
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4. Right. The clay tablets serve very well as permanent records.
It is hard to appreciate the sheer volume of cuneiform records that were created. Even today construction project excavations sometimes uncover huge archives of thousands of small clay tablets recording the minutiae of Sumerian life -- the equivalent of today's memos and post-it notes. They may be several thousand years old, but they are still perfectly preserved records.
No. The apples we enjoy today owe their good domesticating characteristics to imported Old World apples. Otherwise, no one has ever been very successful domesticating American apples.
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6. Right. The sunflower domesticated and dramatically improved in North America in antiquity was very successful. It became the basis of the sunflowers grown today.
On the other hand, no one has had much luck domesticating American apples. Ovifera or egg gourds were cultivated, but never "improved" very dramatically through domestication. They are certainly not an important crop today. And bison have never really proved to be as successful a domesticate as Old World cows imported from Europe.
7. Right. The important factor is the use of draft animals. Prehistoric people of North America made circular astronomical markers like the Woodhenge of Cahokia and large circular arrangements of stones known as medicine wheels on the Great Plains. And the prehistoric people were very adept at long distance trade and communications. But until the Euros brought horses to North America they had virtually no experience with draft animals, or with wheels as we think of them.
8. Right.
Your mind seems to be wandering a little bit from archaeology. And besides, it could probably be argued that beer cans are evidence of human inactivity more than human activity.
11. Excellent. If you were not thrown off track by the order of the answers listed in a previous question (tribes-bands-chieftainships-states) take a bow. The correct order is bands-tribes-chieftainships-states.
13. Outstanding.
We are currently living in the Holocene period, or what is called in some other languages the equivalent of "The Age of Human Culture." It is true that there is some scattered but fairly persuasive evidence that humans were in North America before the Holocene. But there is virtually no evidence of what we think of as human culture or the development of the use of tools. All the cultural artifacts collected by collectors and exhibited in museums -- pots, stone artifacts, leather crafts, and so forth -- are from the Holocene.
10. Yes. Of course there are exceptions. There are going to be flakes of flint around an outcropping of flint or perhaps downstream from an outcropping of flint. These flakes are almost certainly the product of natural forces of freezing, flooding, wear, erosion and so forth. But any time a few isolated flakes of flint are found in a field or by a stream with no apparent explanation of how they got there, the most likely explanation is that they are a product of humans working or reworking stone tools.
As for the dismemberment of animal skeletons, that is a very common result of animals hunting and scavanging. And it is usually very hard to be very certain that any marks or cuts on the bones of animals are caused by humans. They may be also caused by animals.
No, one of the above is not true. Take a look at those statements again.
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12. Right.
No need to concoct theories about a now vanished super race or about extra-terrestrials. Those impressive achievements were done by prehistoric Holocene Era ancestors to the Indians of today.
17. Right.
Progress is very subjective, based on very subjective social, political or religious assumptions.
We are reminded that in the Royal Decree of 1501 Ferdinand and Isabella sought to bring progress to the heathen Native Americans: "The Indians are to be persuaded to abandon their ancient evil ways, and they are not to bathe as frequently as before, as we are informed that it does them much harm." (more examples)
History is largely the story of rise and decline of cultures, and empires that were engines of progress in their day--ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, the Mayan Empire of South America, the Mongol Empire of Asia, Cahokia, and the British Empire to name a few-- empires that inevitably declined or died out altogether..
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In Queen Elizabeth's time the theater that produced Shakespeare's plays was shut down one day a week so it would not compete with the bear baiting exhibitions, which were seen as a much more highly cultured entertainment.
In the 1960's, progress was embodied in polyester leisure suits, freeze dried orange juice, and federal mandates regarding education that, among other things, outlawed home schooling. Today polyester leisure suits and freeze dried orange juice are a thing of the past. And home schooling, especially of minorities, is viewed in many circles as a very popular, effective and progressive alternative to public schooling.
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16. Correct.
Cultural infrastructure of government, education, religion, national defense and so forth is a dominant feature of states but it is also found to some extent in chieftainships. The mounds and palisades at Cahokia, for example, could not have been built without some kind of cultural infrastructure.
15. Right.
Many elaborate funerary practices in antiquity have little or nothing to do with gold or copper. And wealth and land tenure are more a function of population density than anything else. As land and resources become scarce with respect to the population that depends on them for subsistence the ideas of land tenure and wealth become important.
But if the people of a particular area are not able to find nuggets of gold or copper that they can experiment with, those people are probably never going to develop metallurgy.
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14. Right.
Neither Columbus nor Ericson had any intention of establishing a substantial permanent trading post or any other kind of outpost. By far the most enormous impact they had on the continent was the diseases they brought with them and left behind.
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9. Right.
It is true that the family tree of Native Americans is overwhelmingly made up of Asians coming from Northern Asia, either across the Bering Straits land bridge or in boats that they took down the coast to South America.
But it is hard to deny there are were other occasional visitors to North America in antiquity. Early explorers described red haired, blue eyed Native Americans. They encountered Olmec statues in Mexico with what most people would say are decidely Negroid (or at least non-Asian) features:
