Anthropology 101 Exam 2
Which of the following is NOT true about the peopling of the Americas?
The first migration of people into the Americas reached the continent's southwestern coasts from the Pacific islands.
What group was found to have a pronounced brow ridge, stocky build, and massive nasal cavities, characteristics that were adaptations to cold weather?
Neandertals
Which of the following primates is arboreal, active during the day, and has a prehensile tail?
New World monkey
Findings of finely shaped bones dating from more than 100,000 years ago in South Africa's Blombos Cave suggest that
anatomically modern humans had the ability, as early as 100,000 years ago, of symbolic thought.
Which of the following is NOT one of the general primate adaptations discussed in the textbook?
aquatic lifestyle
Oldowan pebble tools
are obviously manufactured stone tools that consist of flakes and cores.
The spread of H. 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 associated with H. erectus?
cave painting
Which of the following is NOT an adaptive trend in anthropoids?
decreased sociality
Who were the Denisovans?
distant hominin cousins of the Neandertals
According to mtDNA analyses, when did the first modern humans leave Africa?
no more than 135,000 years ago
Bipedalism, considered a key defining characteristic that differentiated early hominins from other apes,
perhaps developed in the woodlands but became even more adaptive in a savanna habitat.
Biological and cultural changes enabled H. erectus to exploit a new adaptive strategy—gathering and hunting. This in turn was crucial for H. erectus to
push the hominin range beyond Africa, into Asia and Europe.
Which of the following primate traits are believed to have been selected for life in trees?
stereoscopic vision and an opposable thumb
Although the debate over the origin of behavioral modernity continues, archaeological work in many world areas
suggests strongly that neither anatomical modernity nor behavioral modernity was a European invention.
Although the debate over the origin of behavioral modernity continues, archaeological work in many would areas
suggests strongly that neither anatomical modernity nor behavioral modernity was an European invention.
There is much debate among scientists about when, where, and how anatomically modern humans achieved behavioral modernity. Some researchers suggest that about 50,000 years ago a genetic mutation acted to rewire the human brain, allowing for an advance in language and other related modern behaviors. Others propose
that instead of a sudden event in Europe due to a mutation, behavioral modernity resulted from a slow process of cultural accumulation within Africa, where Homo sapiens became fully human long before 40,000 years ago.
Climate changes had a profound impact on the hominin way of life. In southwestern Europe, for example,
the melting of the ice sheets with the end of the Würm glacial period gradually pushed big game farther north, pressuring hominins to use a greater variety of foods.
Which of the following is/are evidence of robust australopiths' adaptation to eating hard-shelled seeds and grasses?
the presence of very large molars and a sagittal crest on the top of the skull
What is the most likely explanation of why early Homo left Africa and spread into Eurasia?
the pursuit of meat
Which of the following cold-weather adaptations predates the appearance of Neandertals?
the use of fire
What is the term for the bony protuberance found on top of the skulls of robust australopiths?
sagittal crest
H. erectus is generally associated with which of the following technologies?
Acheulean
What is the name of the stone-tool tradition associated with Neandertals?
Mousterian
Opposable thumbs evolved as early primates adapted to terrestrial life.
False
Recent research has pushed back the probable date of the first arrival of anatomically modern humans in the Americas to
18,000 years ago.
In 1997, ancient DNA was extracted from one of the Neandertal bones originally found in Germany's Neandertal Valley in 1856. This was the first time the DNA of a premodern human had been recovered. When comparing this DNA with that of modern humans, the researchers found
27 differences between the two, many more than would be expected in closely-related humans, suggesting that their common ancestor probably lived 600,000 years ago.
Which of the following statements describes a key difference between Oldowan and Acheulean tools?
Acheulean tools, such as the hand ax, represent a predetermined shape based on a template in the mind of the toolmaker, suggesting a cognitive leap between earlier hominins and H. erectus.
Which of the following sites is NOT included in the probable range of H. erectus?
Alaska
The earliest widely accepted hominin genus is
Ardipithecus.
What is the most important difference between Australopithecus afarensis and the modern apes?
Au. afarensis was bipedal.
The hominins known collectively as the australopiths had at least eight species,
Au. sediba. Au. garhi, Au. africanus, Au. afarensis, Au. anamensis, Paranthropus robustus, Paranthropus boisei, and Paranthropus aethiopicus
What major hominin group, for which we have an extensive fossil record, lived from approximately 4 to 1 m.y.a.?
Australopithecus
What is the name of the land bridge that linked the eastern tip of Siberia to Alaska?
Beringia
How did modern humans take advantage of global climate change to expand their range?
During major glacials, with so much water frozen in ice, land bridges formed, aiding human colonization of new areas such as Australia by 46,000 B.P. and the Americas perhaps by 18,000 B.P.
Because primates are highly social animals, they provide less care to offspring over a shorter period of time.
False
Because they are predominantly terrestrial, gorillas exhibit only minor sexual dimorphism.
False
Most researchers today no longer believe that the Upper Paleolithic cave paintings were ritualistic; rather, they argue that these paintings were used to decorate domestic residences.
False
One of the most surprising aspects of the recent discovery of H. floresiensis, a species of tiny people who lived, gathered, and hunted on the Indonesian island of Flores from about 95,000 B.P. until at least 13,000 B.P., is the specimens' very large skulls; yet they lacked behaviors associated with anatomically modern humans.
False
Recent genetic research comparing Neandertal DNA and modern human DNA supports the theory that Neandertals evolved into the European populations of anatomically modern humans.
False
The dry land that connected Australia and Tasmania is known as Beringia.
False
Anatomically modern humans spread out of Africa and eventually replaced what nonmodern human type in the Far East?
H. erectus
Why was the broad-spectrum revolution a significant event in human evolution?
It provided new environmental circumstances that made important sociocultural adaptations like the development of plant cultivation more likely.
Which of the following statements about H. erectus fossils is NOT true?
They have hyperrobust chewing muscles and broad, flat molars.
A characteristic trend in hominin evolution has been an increase in brain size, especially with the advent of the genus Homo.
True
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 Neandertals, whose robust traits eventually disappeared.
True
Arboreal primates tend to be smaller and more agile.
True
Bipedalism has traditionally been viewed as an adaptation to open grassland or savanna country, although Ardipithecus lived in a humid woodland habitat. Perhaps bipedalism developed in the woodlands but became even more adaptive in a savanna habitat.
True
Chimpanzees' social networks involve complex systems of dominance relationships.
True
Compared to anatomically modern humans, Neandertals exhibited a greater degree of sexual dimorphism.
True
Given evidence of cooperative hunting and the manufacture of complicated tools, it is plausible to assume that H. erectus had rudimentary speech.
True
In addition to their stocky bodies, adapted to conserve heat, Neandertals made clothes, developed elaborate tools, and hunted reindeer, mammoths, and woolly rhinos in order to adapt to the cold climate in Europe during the Würm glaciation.
True
Postcranial material from Ardipithecus, the earliest widely accepted hominin genus (5.8-4.4 m.y.a.), indicates a capacity—albeit an imperfect one—for upright bipedal locomotion.
True
Sexual dimorphism is less pronounced in modern Homo sapiens than in the australopiths.
True
Sexual dimorphism tends to be more pronounced in terrestrial primate species.
True
Some authors attribute the rise of modern human behavior more to increasing social competition than to population increase or a mutation that led to reconfigurations of the brain.
True
Some researchers have proposed that early humans with a biological penchant for music may have been able to live more effectively in social groups, thus conferring an adaptive advantage to this penchant.
True
The Acheulean hand ax, shaped like a teardrop, represents a predetermined shape based on a template in the mind of the toolmaker. Evidence for such a mental template in the archaeological record suggests a cognitive leap between earlier hominins and H. erectus.
True
The stone-tool tradition associated with Neandertals is called the Mousterian.
True
With the movement of H. erectus out of Africa, H. erectus eventually colonized Europe and Asia.
True
Through the use of new, refined dating techniques, fossil teeth found in England and Italy indicate that modern humans reached Europe by 45,000 years ago. Currently, these fossils are the oldest dated modern human specimens in Europe. The new dates
allow more time for anatomically modern humans to have been in contact with Neandertals.
Which of the following aided the expansion of human populations throughout North America?
abundant big-game animals
The tribe hominini consists of
all the human species that ever existed (including extinct ones), excluding chimps and gorillas
What species is associated with the broad-spectrum revolution?
anatomically modern humans
In 1987, a group of molecular geneticists at the University of California at Berkeley offered support for the idea that anatomically modern humans arose fairly recently in Africa, then spread out and colonized the world. The geneticists analyzed genetic samples of 147 women whose ancestors came from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, New Guinea, and Australia. By estimating the number of mutations that had taken place in the mithochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of each of these samples, the researchers concluded that
everyone alive today has mtDNA that descends from a woman (dubbed "Mitochondrial Eve") who lived in sub-Saharan Africa around 200,000 years ago and that her descendants left Africa no more than 135,000 years ago.
Although there is now evidence that several human groups colonized the Americas, possibly using different routes, those that crossed over through Beringia to reach the Americas did so
following herds of big-game animals (woolly mammoths, especially).
New World monkeys are the only anthropoids that
have prehensile tails.
What is the term for a trait that organisms have jointly inherited from a common ancestor?
homology
Based on scientific theories of evolution, humans are not descended from gorillas or chimps. Rather,
humans and African apes share a common ancestor.
Although the Neandertals are remembered more for their physiques than for their manufacturing abilities, their tool kits were sophisticated. In fact, the Mousterian technology with which Neandertals are associated
included a variety of categories of tools designed for different jobs.