Introduction to Anthropology Test Questions
Course Introduction
Introduction to Anthropology offers students a comprehensive overview of the field by examining the origins, development, and diversity of human beings across time and cultures. The course explores the four major subfields of anthropology cultural, biological, linguistic, and archaeological highlighting how anthropologists study human societies, languages, evolutionary history, and material remains. Through an interdisciplinary lens, students will engage with core concepts such as culture, kinship, social structures, and human adaptation, gaining critical insights into what it means to be human and how different human societies interact with each other and their environments.
Recommended Textbook
The Essence of Anthropology 3rd Edition by William A. Haviland
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16 Chapters
1823 Verified Questions
1823 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: The Essence of Anthropology
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117 Verified Questions
117 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) An ethnographer may work among stock brokers in New York City.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) Any object fashioned by humans is known as a(n) _______________.
Answer: artifact
Q3) The term "prehistory" refers to a period in which:
A) people had no means of recording their thoughts
B) there was no written record
C) people had no history
D) humans had not yet diverged from the primate line
Answer: B
Q4) Individuals within all four subfields of Anthropology practice:
A) ethnological anthropology
B) applied anthropology
C) development anthropology
D) molecular anthropology
Answer: B
Q5) A midden is a _______________.
Answer: prehistoric refuse mound
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Chapter 2: Biology and Evolution
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138 Verified Questions
138 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Most of the advances in heredity at the molecular level have occurred during what time period?
A) latter part of the 20th century
B) early part of the 20th century
C) latter part of the 19th century
D) early part of the 19th century
Answer: A
Q2) The laws of chance tell us that two random sequences from species that have no ancestry in common will match at about one in every four sites.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) What kind of theory is "catastrophism"?
A) 17th-century scientific hypothesis
B) 18th-century scientific theory
C) 19th-century humanistic idea
D) 20th-century scientific concept
Answer: C
Q4) _______________ is responsible for the creation of new species over time.
Answer: Evolution
Page 4
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Chapter 3: Living Primates
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119 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) What kinds of noninvasive methods can primatologists use to study living primate biology?
Answer: They can collect samples such as shed hair, feces, or other bodily secretions for information on diet or genetic relatedness among a group of individuals.
Q2) Jane Goodall was the first to scientifically document what kind of behavior among chimpanzees?
A) male dominance hierarchies
B) mother-infant bonding
C) hunting behavior
D) social cooperation
Answer: C
Q3) What is unique about bonobo sexual activity among non-human primates?
A) they are promiscuous within their social groups
B) they do not limit their sexual behavior to times of female fertility
C) they restrict themselves to male-female sexual activity
D) they do not form pair bonds among sexual partners
Answer: B
Q4) _______________ mammals live in trees.
Answer: Arboreal
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Chapter 4: Human Evolution
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106 Verified Questions
106 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The _____________________ is an opening in the base of the skull found in vertebrates.
Q2) Which hypothesis argues that humans originated in Africa some 2 million years ago and that ancient populations throughout the globe are all ancestors of modern humans with unity of a single species maintained through gene flow?
A) multiregional hypothesis
B) Eve hypothesis
C) recent African origins hypothesis
D) out of Africa hypothesis
Q3) Around 30,000 years ago in Europe:
A) features associated with the African ape lineage of humans disappeared
B) anatomically modern humans had the last biological transition
C) features associated with Neandertal begin disappearing from the fossil record
D) archaic Homo sapiens sapiens first emerged
Q4) When did Old and New World anthropoid species first diverge?
A) more than 200 million years ago
B) approximately 65 million years ago
C) less than 23 million years ago
D) about 40 million years ago
Q5) _______________ change depends upon heritable traits.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: The Neolithic Revolution: The Domestication of
Plants and Animals
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137 Verified Questions
137 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The microlith became common throughout the "Old World" during the:
A) Paleolithic
B) Mesolithic
C) Neolithic
D) Eolithic
Q2) The domestication of plants and _______________ generally differ from their wild ancestors.
Q3) How did the use of sickles contribute to plant domestication?
Q4) The New Stone Age is also called the _______________.
Q5) ______________ is planting of crops with the use of the plow, irrigation, and fertilizers.
Q6) Even though farming results in an abundant amount of food, crops are unstable and more susceptible to some diseases, virus, bacterium, or fungus that could wipe out entire fields because of their genetic uniformity.
A)True
B)False
Q7) Following the Neolithic Revolution, human mortality rates soared and health declined.
A)True
B)False Page 7
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Page 8
Chapter 6: The Emergence of Cities and States
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112 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) Çatalhöyük demonstrates which of the following?
A) it is an urban area in the Fertile Crescent where agriculture first developed
B) it is an urban center that developed from a very small farming community
C) it is the first urban center ever developed, and it subsisted solely on trade
D) it is a highly populated town which never developed characteristics of urban centers
Q2) Great Zimbabwe was once a part of the Bantu state.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Describe the hydraulic theory.
Q4) _______________ is a glass formed by volcanic activity.
Q5) How can interdependence create vulnerability?
Q6) The major early civilizations sprang from _______________ villages.
A) Mesolithic
B) Paleolithic
C) Neolithic
D) Endolithic
Q7) Hammurabi was a Babylonian king who lived in _______________ between 3,700 and 3,950 years ago.
Q8) Describe the Code of Hammurabi.
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Chapter 7: Modern Human Diversity: Race and Racism
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124 Verified Questions
124 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Approximately what percentage of unique inborn characteristics can be attributed to any group of people based on biology alone?
A) 75%
B) 50%
C) 10%
D) 0%
Q2) In which book do we find the argument that the various American "races" have differing degrees of intelligence based on immutable genetic factors?
A) Man's Most Dangerous Myth
B) The Bell Curve
C) On the Origin of Species
D) Race and Progress
Q3) Over the past 2.5 million years, humans have primarily adapted through ________________.
Q4) Ota Benga was 15 when he was first brought to the United States.
A)True
B)False
Q5) _______________ is a program of extermination of one group by another.
Q6) _______________ blocks the sun's radiation into the human body.
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Chapter 8: The Characteristics of Culture
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118 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) Suspending judgment on a culture can be difficult at times and the ability to understand the "whys" of another culture may at times seem impossible. Present and discuss an example from your own experience of a time when you encountered someone from another culture. How did you experience ethnocentrism? What challenges did you face in this experience?
Q2) The "Anthropology Applied" story about building houses for Apache Indians reveals what?
A) the Apache have no sense of etiquette or table manners because their cooking and living areas are not separated
B) the United States should try to make its subcultures more like mainstream culture
C) participant observation has no practical purposes
D) cultural and social patterns of behavior can be unconscious, but they have an impact on how we live and use space
Q3) How did Sir Edward Tylor first define the concept of "culture"?
Q4) Because of globalization, cultures change more quickly today than in the past.
A)True
B)False
Q5) _______________ has the highest population of prisoners in the world.
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Chapter 9: Language and Communication
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111 Verified Questions
111 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The identification and description of the distinctive sounds of a language is called:
A) phonetology
B) phones
C) phonology
D) phonetics
Q2) Which of the following is not a main branch of linguistics?
A) descriptive linguistics
B) historical linguistics
C) sociolinguistics/ethnolinguistics
D) gestural linguistics
Q3) Although non-human primates can use language, the distinction is that they do not cognize symbols.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The preservation of native languages is essential to the preservation of native cultures.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Define "language."
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Chapter 10: Social Identity, Personality, and Gender
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102 Verified Questions
102 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is a major conclusion that we can make from the Ju/'hoansi data regarding traditional versus settled lifestyles?
A) economy structures child-rearing and affects the adult personality
B) social structures are overbearing for children
C) religious beliefs can affect the way a child develops over time
D) traditional people have gender difficulties
Q2) Culture helps explain the perceived environment to the developing individual.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Unlike personality, gender attributes are more biologically than socially determined. A)True
B)False
Q4) Define personality.
Q5) Mead found that the Arapesh:
A) have similar male-female roles
B) exhibit primarily aggressive tendencies
C) raise their children to have gender-neutral traits
D) do not exhibit any specific gender traits
Q6) What is "windigo behavior"?
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Chapter 11: Subsistence and Exchange
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104 Verified Questions
104 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) A dual sex configuration pattern is most often found in:
A) certain American Indian societies and West African kingdoms
B) foraging societies such as the Ju/'hoansi
C) Maya peasant societies
D) nomadic and pastoral societies
Q2) About _______________ years ago in Europe, Asia and Africa, commercial use of coins began.
Q3) Something used to make payments for other goods and services as well as to measure their value is called _______________.
Q4) Why are anthropologists cautious about using contemporary foragers as ethnographic analogies for our earliest ancestors?
A) they currently subsist in the most marginal geographic regions
B) they all use technology that our earliest ancestors would not have had
C) they did not exist at the time of our ancestors
D) they have evolved too far from the earliest origins
Q5) Ju/'hoansi society is known for absolute and restrictive control over their lands.
A)True
B)False
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Page 14
Chapter 12: Sex, Marriage, and Family
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108 Verified Questions
108 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the adaptive value of fraternal polyandry?
Q2) Which of the following statements is true regarding first-cousin marriage?
A) it does not cause a significant increase in genetic deficiency
B) it causes significantly increased genetic risks
C) it produces unhealthy children
D) it is a threat to civilized life
Q3) Which of the following societies is traditionally polyandrous?
A) English
B) Samoan
C) Trobriand Islanders
D) Nyimba of Nepal
Q4) Divorce did not occur before urbanization.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is the anthropological definition of marriage? Using this definition, describe what each aspect of it means and how it contributes to cultural adaptation.
Q6) Among Trobriand Islanders, sexual relations are not permitted before marriage.
A)True
B)False
Q7) Co-marriage is also known as __________________________.
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Chapter 13: Kinship and Other Methods of Grouping
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Sample Questions
Q1) Kindred are lineally organized.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What two important tasks do kinship terminologies accomplish?
Q3) Totems and totemism often guide social behavior and act as a source of unification for members within clans. What examples of totemic behavior and affiliation can you cite from within contemporary United States society? Why do you think totems are used as, for example, sports mascots and even elementary school classroom identifications?
Q4) People form groups based on gender, age, and social rank.
A)True
B)False
Q5) How might new reproductive technologies affect a society's kinship classification?
Q6) What is totemism?
Q7) The Eskimo system is also known as the _______________ system.
Q8) When an original lineage splits into two, it is called fusion.
A)True
B)False
Q9) _______________ descent is tracing descent through the male line.
Page 16
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Chapter 14: Politics, Power, and Violence
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112 Verified Questions
112 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the primary reason for lower incidences of warfare among food foragers?
A) frequent mobility
B) little occupational specialization
C) significant role of the family lineage
D) small amounts of food surplus
Q2) _______________ is the use of direct argument and compromise by the parties to a dispute to arrive voluntarily at a mutually satisfactory agreement.
Q3) Among the _______________, only women could nominate men to high offices on the great council.
Q4) Over the past 200 years, warfare has:
A) involved the destruction of property
B) been associated with religious strife
C) intensified
D) decreased
Q5) A _______________ society is one which has within its borders people of more than one nation.
Q6) In chiefdoms power is often hereditary.
A)True
B)False
Page 17
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Chapter 15: Spirituality, Religion, and the Supernatural
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104 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Aztecs had a monotheistic religion.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Goddesses are most likely to be prominent in food-foraging cultures.
A)True
B)False
Q3) In a society where women hold little public authority, you would commonly find a religion in which:
A) there are many supreme goddesses
B) there are many supreme gods
C) the supreme goddess is feminine
D) the supreme god is masculine
Q4) A __________________________ is a spiritual movement promising resurrection of dead relatives, destruction of whites, and arrival of material riches.
Q5) _______________ is the belief in multiple gods and goddesses.
Q6) The Ju/'hoansi enter into a trance in order to heal themselves.
A)True
B)False
Q7) What are the benefits of shamanism for individual members?
Page 18
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Chapter 16: Global Changes and the Role of Anthropology
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101 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) Today, the top 100 companies control what percentage of the world's total assets?
A) 33%
B) 21%
C) 50%
D) 73%
Q2) Today, over a quarter of the world's countries do not produce enough food to feed their populations.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The World Health Organization classifies which of the following as a worldwide epidemic?
A) obesity
B) skin cancer
C) shingles
D) emphysema
Q4) Pressing others through attraction and persuasion to change their beliefs is called
Q5) Name four kinds of external migration.
Q6) What is adaptive about ethnocentrism?
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