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A103, Human Origins and Prehistory
Milestone Quiz 1 February 6, 2007
Please answer the following questions based on materials in class readings, lectures, videos, and web material. Circle the correct answer. Each is worth one point for a total of 20. Bonus points are worth 1 point. Bonus points are added to the earned total on the quiz, with a “perfect” score being 23. Essentially bonus points are like extra credit.
1. Science seeks truth. True False
2. Hypotheses attempt to explain the relationships between the known and the unknown, but should be testable. Myths and religion do so too, but aren’t testable.
True False
3. Culture imposes itself on individuals and outlasts them.
True False
4. Courts in the US have consistently ruled that creation science, intelligent design theory, and other forms of pseudoscience cannot be taught in schools.
True False
5. Biological anthropology, sometimes also called physical anthropology, would study which of the following:
a. the territorial behavior of baboons to understand human territoriality.
b. whether or not a particular genetic structure influences homicide or rape.
c. the tools uses by various pre-human fossils and how they changed along with anatomy.
d. all of the above
e. only a and c above.
6. The culture concept is the primary idea that ties together all the branches of anthropology. True False
7. A theory is:
a. an assertion of opinion or belief formally handed down by an authority as
indisputable and true.
b. an observation verified by several observers skilled in the necessary techniques
of observation.
c. a tentative explanation of the relation between certain phenomena.
d. an explanation of natural phenomena, supported by a reliable body of data.
e. Either c or d above.
8. A theological model that placed humans under God and the angels, but above all animals and planets:
a. was a Malthusian explanation of species change.
b. was called La Scala Naturae or Great Chain of Being.
c. was an idea challenged by Natural Selection.
d. was all of the above
e. only b and c above
9. The ultimate source of evolutionary change is mutation and is random, which essentially makes the whole process of evolution random. True False
10. Which of the following is not an especially important human trait in using and making tools:
a. Opposable thumb
b. Algebraic mentality
c. Precision grip
d. imitative learning
e. all of the above are equally important
11. Language is mostly arbitrary, based on shared human perceptive mechanisms and shared positions in the environment and culture is based on language. This means that culture is also arbitrary and “artificial.” Therefore, value judgments between cultures may be inappropriate and even ethnocentric. True False
12. Although most archaeologists study remains of the past, some study how material culture is used in contemporary settings. True False
13. Humans are the only animals to communicate symbolically.
True False
14. Anthropology has been called the most humane of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities, a comment that most anthropologists think trivializes their discipline.
True False
15. Modern taxonomy, the science of classification, uses the attributes of form (size, shape, function etc.) as developed by Linnaeus, but also uses genetic information.
True False
16. The idea of the “survival of the fittest” was important not only for biology, but also for the social sciences, used as a good explanation for why some cultures or societies were better than others. True False
17. One important idea in “A Private Universe” was that students bring all sorts of preconceived ideas with them to their learning, many of these ideas standing in the way of real understanding. True False
18. Trying to understand evolutionary change is difficult for many people because the amounts of time involved are so vast. Which of the following statements regarding time is/are false?
a. Human understanding of time is variable and complex.
b. Time and the way archaeology understands it affect interpretation of the objects from the past.
c. The more distant in time something is, the less we understand it.
d. None of the statements above is false.
e. Both a and b are false
19. Although culture is a key to human existence, it actually plays very little role in human biological evolution. True False
20. Darwin’s ideas about natural selection were extremely radical for the time. They had few precedents in the history of science and were built on a nearly complete rejection of the work of others in the 18th and 19th Centuries due to the influence of the church and theological epistemologies. True False
Bonus
1. Which of the following is a correct statement?
1. Ideas about evolution are being rejected by a growing number of scientists.
2. Evolution is just a theory, that is, it is only an educated guess about how life on earth has changed over time.
3. Evolution has been scientifically proven.
4. Evolution is scientifically more valid than creationism or intelligent design.
5. All of the above are incorrect.
2. The scientific reasons for studying anthropology are a bit of a double-edged sword. Knowing how cultures work may allow you to solve cultural problems, but it also raises questions of ethics and questions about who gets to make the decisions to make change in a culture. True False
3. Who really should have won the Super Bowl? Colts Bears