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A103, Human Origins and Prehistory

Milestone Quiz 1 February 8, 2006

Please answer the following questions based on materials in class readings, lectures, and web materials. Each question is worth 1 (one) point. The total number of points is 20 with two bonus points (that is, 22 possible). Circle or fill in the blank with the correct answer.

* = correct answer

1. Anthropologists are not the only scholars who study people, but they are uniquely holistic in their approach.

*True False (text p. 7)

2. Applied anthropology:

a. is often considered to be a fifth subfield of anthropology.

b. involves the use of anthropological knowledge and methods to solve practical

problems.

c. is often done for a specific client.

*d. all of the above

e. only b and c above. (text p. 7, lecture)

3. The key element connecting all the subfields of anthropology is:

a. science.

b. epistemology.

*c. culture.

d. biology.

e. environment. (Lecture on anthropology and text)

4. A theory is:

a. an observation verified by several observers skilled in the necessary techniques

of observation.

b. a tentative explanation of the relation between certain phenomena.

c. an assertion of opinion or belief formally handed down by an authority as

indisputable and true.

*d. an explanation of natural phenomena, supported by a reliable body of data.

e. Either b or d above. (text p. 19 box, lecture)

5. Darwin’s ideas about natural selection had few precedents in the history of science and was built on a nearly complete rejection of the work of others in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries. True * False (lecture)

6. Darwin provided the natural selection part of the theory of evolution, but __________ provided the notion of heredity.

a. Malthus

b. Watson & Crick

c. Linneaus

*d. Mendel

e. Lamarck (text 38, lecture)

7. The ultimate source of evolutionary change is mutation. * True False (text p. 47)

8. As one of the four evolutionary forces, the introduction of alleles from the gene pool of one population into another is:

a. genetic drift.

b. the founder effect.

*c. gene flow.

d. mutation.

e. either a or c above. (text p. 49, lecture)

9. Science seeks truth. *True False (lecture)

10. Myths are like hypotheses because they attempt to explain the relationships between the known and the unknown. *True False (lecture)

11. Globalization has mostly been good for the under-developed world because it has brought greater wealth to poor countries with relatively few costs to local traditions.

True *False (text p. 25)

12. While we now understand that other animals use and even make tools, we humans are almost completely dependent on our tools for survival. * True False (lecture)

13. The nature of language is mostly arbitrary, based on shared human perceptive mechanisms and shared positions in the environment. Because culture is based on language, this means that culture itself is “artificial” and that value judgments between cultures may be inappropriate and even ethnocentric. *True False (lecture)

14. 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 changes in a culture. *True False (lecture)

15. One reason that ideas about evolution had and continue to have such a difficult time was that the scala naturae placed humans above all other living things as a special creation, while evolution placed humans at the same level as other living things, subject to the same rules. *True False (lecture)

16. Some of Darwin’s thinking about natural selection derives from the observations of Thomas Malthus that animal populations, including humans, remained stable due to a large proportion of offspring not surviving to maturity.

True *False (text p. 37, lecture)

17. Alleles are:

a. produced during mitosis.

b. the diploid state of a chromosome.

*c. alternate forms of a single gene.

d. the same as DNA.

e. c and d above. (text p. 40, lecture)

18. Although culture is a key to human existence, it actually plays very little role in human biological evolution. True * False (text 54, lecture)

19. A population is a group of interbreeding individuals whose genotype is the total number of different alleles available, that is, its gene pool.

*True False (text 55, lecture)

20. Evolution is best viewed or quantified in terms of individual organisms within a population. True *False (text 55, lecture)

Bonus

1. Evolution is scientifically more valid than creationism or intelligent design.

*True False (lecture)

2. A beneficial series of adjustments that an organism or culture makes to changes in the environment is:

a. Natural selection

*b. Adaptation

c. Evolution

d. Heredity

e. Both a and d above.

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