anthropology final exam
Radiocarbon 14 using in absolute dating has a half life of about
5,700 years
The first definite hominid was ________.
Australopithecus
What was the major hominin group that lived from about 4 to 1 m.y.a.?
Australopithecus
What archaic genus Homo group had a pronounced brow ridge, stocky build, and massive nasal cavities: characteristics that resulted as adaptation to cold weather?
Classic Neandertals
Which of the following is NOT true about culture?
Culture is passed on genetically to future generations
Which of the following statements about ethnicity is true?
Ethnicity is one's identification with a group that shares a common set of beliefs, values, customs, and norms
Acculturation and diffusion help cultures remain stable in the face of change
F
T or F Gene flow between population works tao increase speciation.
F
T or F Allen's rule states that returning body parts get shorter as temperature increase. T
F
T or F Archaeologists study only prehistoric communities
F
T or F Cultural generalities are features that are unique to certain cultural traditions.
F
T or F Host countries that emphasize assimilation tend to encourage minority ethnic groups to retain their identities
F
T or F In Japan, the burakumin represent an isolated breeding population that is genetically distinct form the rest of the country.
F
T or F Intelligent design explains some biological facts that evolution cannot explain.
F
T or F Mitosis is the special process by which sex cells are produced.
F
T or F The diversity of life on earth today and in the past is best explained scientifically by scientific creationism or intelligent design.
F
The first hominid species to be widely distributed in the Old World (Europe, Asia, Africa) was
Homo erectus.
In theory, a biological race is a geographically isolated subdivision of a species. Humanity lacks such races because
Human populations have not been isolated enough from one another to develop such discrete groups
What does the principle of superposition or stratigraphy state?
In an undisturbed sequence of strata, the oldest layer icon the bottom.
When do the first hominoid fossils appear?
Miocene
Generations of scientists have debated whether the Neandertals were ancestral to modern Europeans. The current prevailing view, which denies the ancestry, proposes that:
Modern humans evolved in Africa and eventually colonized Europe, displacing the Neandertals there.
The primate pictured here is a/an:
Old World monkey
What are the geologic eras most associated with fish, dinosaurs, and mammals, respectively?
Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic
Which of the following is the most likely reason for the dark skin color shared by tropical Africans and Asian Indians?
Prevention of hypervitaminosis D
What do proponents of the hydraulic theory for the origin of the state argue?
States were the by-products of the organizational requirements of large irrigation systems.
T or F Darwin presented the theory of natural selection, but the actual mechanism of evolutionary change wad discovered by Mendel.
T
T or F A applied anthropologists can be found in all the sub disciplines anthropology
T
T or F Archaeology reconstructs, describes and interprets past human behavior and culture patterns through material remains.
T
T or F Continental drift works to increase speciation.
T
T or F Convergent evolution explains the similar appearance of sharks and dolphins or birds and bats.
T
T or F Directional selection works to reduce genetic variation by removing maladaptive traits from the gene pool
T
T or F Homologies are similarities between two species that have been jointly inherited from a common ancestor.
T
T or F Humanity lacks distinct races because human populations have not been isolated enough from one another to develop into discreet groups.
T
T or F Humans can adapt to changes in their environment through biology and culture.
T
T or F Hypo descent in the United States automatically determines the race of a child whose parents belong to different racial groups
T
T or F Most Americans are not very precise in the distinguishing between the terms race and ethnicity .
T
T or F Non-Western medicine does not maintain a sharp distinction between biological and psychological illnesses.
T
T or F Plan Pollen or animal bones found at an archeological site are examples of ecofacts
T
T or F The seriation dating technique assumes that objects that look similar are closer in time.
T
T or F Although culture is the principal means humans adapt to their environment, some cultural traits can be harmful to a group's survival.
T
T or F Ascribed statuses are based on an individual's talent, abilities, and actions.
T
What does the term "gene flow" refers to?
The transmission of genes between populations.
Which of the following is not a characteristic of states?
They lack hereditary inequality.
Which of the following aided the rapid expansion of human populations throughout North America?
abundant big-game animals
What is the term for the kind of cultural change that result when two or more cultures have consistent firsthand contact?
acculturation
Robust australopithecines include all of the following except:
africanus.
The taxonomic tribe hominini (or 'homins') describes
all the human species that ever existed (including extinct ones) and excludes chimps and gorillas.
An anthropologist who lives among a foreign culture and describes it in a case study is
an ethnographer
What species is associated with the cave paintings in western Europe?
anatomically modern humans
The subjects of European Upper Paleolithic cave paintings are mostly
animals
Which of the following is NOT usually considered one of the four main subfields of anthropology?
applied anthropology
Which of the following suggests that primates became primates by adapting to life in the trees?
arboreal theory
Dendrochronology not only permits absolute dating for samples up to 11,000 years. It is also useful
because it provides information about climatic patterns in specific regions.
Which of the following hominid characteristics came first?
bipedalism
Which of the following characterizes the Upper Paleolithic?
blade tools
The spread of Homo erectus from tropical and subtropical climates into temperate zones was facilitated by all of the following except:
blade-toolmaking traditions.
Which of the following is NOT a prosimian?
bonobo
Which of the following is not associated with H. erectus?
cave painting
The genes of higher organisms are located on roselike bodies called
chromosomes
The term "broad spectrum subsistence" during the Mesolithic period, after the retreat of glaciation, refers to:
collection of a wide variety of wild plant and animal foods
common ancestry isn't the only reason for similarities between species. Similar traits also can arise if species experience similar select forces and adapt to them in similar ways. This process is known as
convergent evolution
During the 18th century, many scholars became interested in biological diversity, human origins, and our position within the classification of plants and animals. At that time, the most commonly accepted explanation of the origin of species was:
creationism, the belief that biological similarities and differences originated at Creation, and that these characteristics, once set, could not change.
Which of these types of adaptation would most likely be employed by humans to survive a collision of Earth with a huge comet?
cultural (i.e., technology)
Julian Steward & Leslie White
cultural ecology; general evolution (energy capture)
Marvin Harris
cultural materialism
What is the incest taboo an example of?
cultural universal
Claude Levi-Straus
deep, universal mental structure in all humans
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution suggests that
different species gradually develop from another
E.B. Tylor and L.H. Morgan
early anthropologists, unilineal evolution, "progress"
applied anthropology
encompasses any use of the knowledge and/or techniques of its four subfields to identify, assess, and solve practical problems.
What is the process by which children learn their own cultural tradition
encultration
Robert Carneiro (1970) put forth an influential theory that incorporates three factors working together instead of a single cause for state formation. These three factors are
environmental circumscription or resource concentration, increasing population, and warfare.
A person who forms judgments about other cultures in terms of his/her own culture is said to practice
ethnocentrism
The tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to use one's own standards and values in judging others is called
ethnocentrism
What term refers to the destruction of the culture of an ethnic group?
ethnocide
Classic Neandertal lived mainly in Olduvai Gorge in Africa.
f
Early states lack social classes.
f
Oldowan tools are associated with the Upper Paleolithic in Europe.
f
Recent genetic research comparing Neandertal DNA and modern human DNA supports the theory that Neandertals evolved into the European populations of anatomically modern humans.
f
Sedentary life began in the Middle East before herding and farming.
f
Teotihuacán and Çatal Hüyük are two of the earliest towns in the Middle East.
f
The arboreal hypothesis is based on DNA, not fossil, evidence.
f
The genus Homo did not appear until after all of the australopithecines had died off.
f
Writing never developed among early states in Mesoamerica, so there is no reliable archaeological evidence that records these states' histories.
f
Franz Boas
father of four field approach; historical particularism; sound fieldwork
Ethnography is the
fieldwork component of cultural anthropology
In the state, many people are relieved of the need for
food production
The exploitation of resources in this habitat was probably the key adaptation in the emergence of the primates.
forest
A.R. Radcliffe Brown
functionalism: behavior that preserve social structure
Bronislaw Malinowski
functionalism: behavior that serves individual needs
The genetic makeup of an organisms is called its
genotype
"Knuckle walking" would be associated with which of these primates?
gorilla
H. antecessor, a 780,000-year-old hominin found in Spain's Atapuerca mountains,
is the possible common ancestor of the Neandertals and anatomically modern humans.
The widening of the female pelvis is related to
larger brained babies.
Anthropologists, as well as other social scientists, feel that culture is
learned and shared
Gregor Mendel's work with hereditary traits of pea plants
led to the formulation of the law of independent assortment.
What is sedentism?
life in permanent villages
The Natufians' ability to exploit their rich local environment with broad-spectrum foraging made it possible for them to
live in year-round villages prior to the emergence of domestication.
An ethnologist would
make many cross-cultural comparisons
With domestication, the husk that encloses the edible portion of wild cereals became
more brittle.
A holistic and comparative perspective
most characterizes anthropology, compared to other disciplines that study humans
Although Darwin became the best-known evolutionist, the idea of evolution had been around well before him. Darwin's key contribution was to propose a mechanism that drives evolution, which is known as
natural selection
Natural selection has as its primary unit of study of the
population
What kind of absolute dating technique applies to volcanic rock and is useful in early hominid research?
potassium-argon
Excavation has two goals: to find all evidence (or a representative sample) that a given site holds and to
record the horizontal and vertical location of that evidence with precision.
What is the term for the bony ridge found on top of the skulls of robust australopithecines?
sagittal crest
Natufians were
sedentary
Absolute dating uses ______ to establish a time frame.
stratigraphy
Ruth Benedict & Margaret Mead
students of Boas; configurationalism; cultural stereotypes
orldwide, what were the Middle and Upper Pleistocene characterized by?
successive glacial advances and retreats
In the debate of how speciation occurs, advocates of punctuated equilibrium in the modern synthesis
suggest that long periods of stability are interrupted by evolutionary leaps
The "modern synthesis," the currently accepted view of evolution
suggests that speciation occurs after the genetic isolation of two populations, which allows their gene pools to diverge
What are the two major parts of archaeological fieldwork
surveying sites and excavation
"Brachiation" is associated with arm to arm swinging motion.
t
A characteristic trend in hominin evolution has been the increase in brain size, especially with the advent of the genus Homo.
t
A state is a centrally organized political unit.
t
An archaeological marker of chiefdoms is the presence of infant or juvenile burials with elite goods.
t
Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) evolved from an archaic Homo sapiens African ancestor. Eventually, AMHs spread to other areas, including western Europe, where they replaced, or interbred with, the Neanderthals, whose robust traits eventually disappeared.
t
Environmental degradation often contributes to the collapse of states.
t
Food production is more labor intensive than foraging.
t
Most prosimians tend to be nocturnal.
t
Navigation skills played an important role in the peopling of the Pacific.
t
The Cenozoic Era is known as the "Age of Mammals."
t
The Paleolithic tool tradition associated with H. erectus is the Acheulean.
t
The first evidence of writing in Sumer is found about 3500 B.C.
t
The oldest known stone tools date between 2.5 and 2 m.y.a.
t
The stone-tool tradition associated with Neandertals is called the Mousterian.
t
The teeth and skulls of australopithecines suggest that they had a vegetarian diet.
t
Unlike the centers of domestication in the Old World, very few animals were ever domesticated in the New World.
t
An examination of racial taxonomies from around the world would indicate that
the classification of racial types is an arbitrary and culturally specific process.
Which of the following is a cultural generality?
the nuclear family
For natural selection to work on a particular population
there must be diversity, competition, and differential reproductive success within that population
Fossils of Australopithecus afarensis are particularly significant because
they comprise the first fossil evidence to confirm that bipedalism preceded the evolution of a humanlike brain.
What is the term for the geological principle that explanation for past events should be sought in the natural forces that are at work on the Earth today, that is, "the present is the key to the past"?
uniformitarianism
molecular anthropology
uses genetic analysis of a DNA sequence to assess evolutionary links
Tools found at Natufian sites suggest they harvested _________ intensively.
wild grain