Deck 13: Homo Sapiens and the Evolution of Modern Human Behavior

Question 1

The so-called human revolution in culture is said to have occurred about ________ years ago.

A) 200,000
B) 60,000
C) 4,000
D) 1,000

Answer 1

B

Question 2

The earliest anatomically modern Homo sapiens fossils come from ________ and are dated to about ________ years ago.

A) Africa; 300,000
B) Asia; 40,000
C) Africa; 190,000
D) Europe; 100,000

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Modern human cranial capacity is usually at least

A) 900 cc.
B) 1,000 cc.
C) 1,350 cc.
D) 750 cc.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Modern human skulls are characterized by

A) an angled occipital.
B) a low, retreating forehead.
C) a small nasal aperture (nose).
D) robust postcranial bones.

Question 5

Modern humans are thought to have migrated beyond Africa and spread throughout the world about

A) 100 ka.
B) 75 ka.
C) 60 ka.
D) 25 ka.

Question 6

Derived features of anatomically modern humans included

A) thicker bones.
B) a rounded skull.
C) a lack of a mental eminence (no chin).
D) shorter stature across the entire species.

Question 7

The first clear evidence of the construction and use of shelters is known for the

A) Middle Stone Age.
B) Upper Paleolithic.
C) Later Stone Age.
D) Early Stone Age.

Question 8

Richard Klein proposed that a single genetic mutation caused a human revolution in linguistic ability and material culture in

A) Neanderthals, which transformed them into modern humans.
B) anatomically modern humans, with no visible morphological change.
C) Neanderthals and modern humans simultaneously, allowing the two species to interbreed.
D) anatomically modern humans, with significant morphological change including the emergence of a chin.

Question 9

Derived features of anatomically modern humans included a

A) more procumbent face than that of Neanderthals.
B) wide nasal aperture.
C) larger brain.
D) protruding chin.

Question 10

The earliest Australians are associated with

A) Acheulean tools.
B) sites dated to 75,000 years ago.
C) ceremonial burials and cremations.
D) Homo floresiensis.

Question 11

Evidence of modern human behavior found at MSA sites includes

A) use of pottery.
B) common burials of the dead often with sacrificial goods.
C) heat-treating stone and the use of bone points.
D) finely made Mode 1 technology.

Question 12

The postcranial skeleton of modern humans

A) is more robust than Neanderthal skeletons.
B) includes heavily built hands.
C) is characterized by long limbs with thin-walled bones.
D) has a larger crural index.

Question 13

Modern people probably first entered Australia

A) more than 100,000 years ago.
B) 40,000 years ago or a bit earlier.
C) a bit less than 5,000 years ago.
D) 500 years ago.

Question 14

Imagine you are a paleoanthropologist. You have found a fossil that dates to 150 ka in Africa, and it has a chin. How would you classify this specimen?

A) Homo ergaster
B) Homo heidelbergensis
C) Homo neanderthalensis
D) Homo sapiens

Question 15

During the Middle Stone Age, innovations included

A) the exclusive use of stones for tools.
B) the exclusive use of animal material for tools.
C) a focus on the use of raw materials.
D) long-distance transportation of raw materials.

Question 16

Upper Paleolithic technology included the

A) introduction of hand axes and chopper tools.
B) introduction of Levallois flake technology.
C) introduction of blade technology and new raw materials such as bone.
D) use of wide variety of standardized tools made of stone or bone.

Question 17

It is generally thought that the evolution of modern human behavior involved

A) the components of modern human behavior and technology gradually evolving in Africa along with modern human morphology over a period of about 200,000 years.
B) a human revolution in Asia 45,000 years ago.
C) what seems like a revolutionary change in Europe that simply reflects the migration of modern people from Asia to Europe.
D) modern human behavior appearing at about 12,000 years ago with the advent of Mode 4 tool industries.

Question 18

Imagine you are a paleoanthropologist. You have found a fossil that dates to 190 ka in Africa, and it has a high, rounded skull; a cranial capacity of 1,400 cc; and long, thin femora (thigh bones). How would you classify this specimen?

A) Homo ergaster
B) Homo heidelbergensis
C) Homo sapiens
D) Homo neanderthalensis

Question 19

Imagine you are a paleoanthropologist. You have found a fossil that dates to 45 ka in Europe, and it has a cranial capacity of 1,400 cc and a chin and is associated with Aurignacian tools. How would you classify this specimen?

A) Homo ergaster
B) Homo heidelbergensis
C) Homo sapiens
D) Homo neanderthalensis

Question 20

An atlatl is

A) a form of boat.
B) the main source of prey humans encountered when they entered the temperate zone of Europe and Asia.
C) a notched stick that extends the arm while throwing a spear, causing it to fly with much greater velocity.
D) the curved bone associated with the larynx and pharynx.

Question 21

The fact that humans lived in Australia by 40 ka suggests that

A) they were capable of walking very long distances.
B) they migrated there from Europe.
C) glaciers extended into the Southern Hemisphere.
D) they were capable of building boats.

Question 22

Blades are classified in what kind of tool kits?

A) Mode 2
B) Mode 3
C) Mode 4
D) Mode 5

Question 23

Bone, antler, and teeth are known to have been used to construct which types of tools?

A) Acheulean
B) Mousterian
C) Oldowan
D) Upper Paleolithic

Question 24

Which of the following statements correctly describes the Upper Paleolithic people?

A) They had a subsistence economy similar to that of the Neanderthals but hunted a wider range of animals.
B) They had a subsistence economy totally different and more advanced than that of the Neanderthals.
C) They hunted a much narrower range of animals than Neanderthals.
D) They had a subsistence economy similar to that of Neanderthals but without the use of animal resources.

Question 25

Which of the following statements correctly describes the Herto skulls?

A) They are intermediate between those of modern humans and African Homo heidelbergensis.
B) They are indistinguishable from skulls of modern Africans.
C) They are Neanderthal-like in their characteristics.
D) They are so variable that they cannot be compared with other fossils.

Question 26

Which of the following statements about Upper Paleolithic tools is correct?

A) They are like Middle Paleolithic tools but date to a later time period.
B) They were almost indistinguishable across broad geographic areas.
C) They took more time to make and are more standardized compared with earlier technologies.
D) They are also known as Acheulean.

Question 27

Differences between Upper Paleolithic peoples and Neanderthals include the fact that Upper Paleolithic peoples

A) lived shorter life spans than Neanderthals.
B) lived at lower densities than Neanderthals.
C) were less likely to suffer injuries than Neanderthals.
D) were more dependent upon hunting for sustenance.

Question 28

The fact that Upper Paleolithic people lived at higher population densities than Neanderthals is evidence of which of the following statements?

A) Upper Paleolithic people could obtain more food from their environment than Neanderthals.
B) Upper Paleolithic people lived in larger social groups than Neanderthals.
C) Upper Paleolithic people lived longer than Neanderthals.
D) Upper Paleolithic people ate better food than Neanderthals.

Question 29

mtDNA is inherited

A) from the father.
B) from the mother.
C) from both the father and the mother.
D) mostly from the father, but some from the mother.

Question 30

The tools found in Australia are classified as which type of tools?

A) Mousterian
B) Oldowan
C) Upper Paleolithic
D) Middle Stone Age

Question 31

The oldest fossils suggesting a transition to anatomically modern human fossils are found in

A) Java, in Southeast Asia.
B) Jebel Irhoud, Omo Kibish, and the Middle Awash.
C) several cave sites in South Africa.
D) southern Australia.

Question 32

The hallmarks of modern human behavior are partly due to cognitive ability and partly due to a(n)

A) increased ability to transmit complex information and to learn.
B) large brain.
C) large geographic range.
D) large body size.

Question 33

Evidence in favor of the viewpoint that modern humans evolved in Africa includes the fact that in ________ lived side by side.

A) Asia, Homo erectus and modern humans
B) the Middle East, Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans
C) Africa, Homo ergaster and modern humans
D) Australia, Homo erectus and modern humans

Question 34

The mtDNA and Y chromosome evidence favors the viewpoint that

A) modern humans evolved in areas of the Old World.
B) modern humans evolved in Africa.
C) African populations of modern humans interbred with archaic populations in Europe and Asia.
D) modern humans are descended from a single pair of individuals like Adam and Eve.

Question 35

Imagine you are an archaeologist working in the Czech Republic. You have found remains of a hearth within a large structure that appears to have been constructed with the bones of a woolly mammoth. Which hominin species is responsible for this site?

A) Homo erectus
B) Neanderthals
C) Denisovans
D) Homo sapiens

Question 36

Among the differences between Upper Paleolithic peoples and Neanderthals are that Upper Paleolithic peoples

A) had shorter life spans than Neanderthals.
B) lived at higher densities than Neanderthals.
C) were more likely to suffer injuries than Neanderthals.
D) lived over a much smaller geographical region than Neanderthals.

Question 37

Upper Paleolithic people were the first to

A) make tools from stone and bamboo.
B) regularly create art and ornamentation, perform ritual burials, and practice other forms of symbolic expression.
C) live in caves.
D) migrate out of Africa.

Question 38

Which of the following statements is true of Upper Paleolithic peoples?

A) They constructed shelters including those of mammoth bone and hide.
B) They did not have fire.
C) They did not have clothing.
D) They built the first permanent dwellings.

Question 39

When sites and remains of Upper Paleolithic populations and Neanderthal populations are compared, a greater percentage of the Upper Paleolithic people's remains are from older individuals. This implies that

A) Neanderthals lived longer lives.
B) modern humans lived longer lives.
C) Neanderthals buried fewer of their dead than modern humans did.
D) modern humans buried fewer of their dead than Neanderthals did.

Question 40

Which of the following is an example of behavior almost totally unique to modern humans?

A) tool use
B) art
C) living in Europe
D) living in a social group

Question 41

If there was a human revolution, it may have been caused by a

A) cognitive adaptation caused by a mutation that allowed fully modern speech.
B) population of modern humans from Africa replacing Eurasian ones.
C) hybridization of modern humans with Eurasian humans.
D) period of climate stability.

Question 42

Which tool industry indicates that Neanderthals may have tried to copy modern human tools?

A) Aurignacian
B) Mousterian
C) Solutrean
D) Châtelperronian

Question 43

How does the archaeological evidence support the hypothesis that modern humans arose in Africa?

Question 44

Modern ________ populations are genetically more variable than other populations.

A) American
B) Asian
C) African
D) European

Question 45

In what ways was the transition to Upper Paleolithic technology and lifeways a result of biological change? In what ways was it a matter of cultural change?

Question 46

Middle Stone Age (MSA) behavior may not have been as primitive as some anthropologists posit. Which of the following evidence supports this statement?

A) Anthropologists have found shell beads colored with ocher.
B) Anthropologists have found that MSA people did not transport materials over long distances.
C) Anthropologists have found that the only tools MSA people used were microliths.
D) Anthropologists have found that MSA people did not process tools before they manufactured them.

Question 47

As the human population spread out of Africa into new regions, genetic diversity

A) went up as an adaptation to new environments.
B) went down because each expansion had a chance of leaving behind one or more genetic variants.
C) maintained an equilibrium because population density stayed the same while territory expanded.
D) varied randomly, so some populations had greatly increased variation while some had greatly decreased variation.

Question 48

The low levels of genetic variation in contemporary human populations are likely due to the fact that contemporary humans

A) all come from a single female ancestor, the mitochondrial Eve.
B) all come from a single male ancestor, Adam.
C) arose from a very small population.
D) arose from a very large population.

Question 49

mtDNA evidence supports the idea that modern humans arose in

A) Africa.
B) Asia.
C) Europe.
D) India.

Question 50

How does the fossil evidence support the hypothesis that modern humans arose in Africa?

Question 51

Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans in the Middle East

A) have an ancestor-descendant relationship.
B) lived side by side for thousands of years.
C) did not overlap in time.
D) are almost indistinguishable in their anatomy.

Question 52

Genetic data from fossils and living groups of people tell us that

A) modern humans evolved in Africa between 200 and 400 ka and all modern humans outside of Africa are descended from an African population.
B) one small population of modern people left Africa about 60 ka and first traveled along the southern coast of Asia and then into Eurasia.
C) there was extensive interbreeding between modern human populations and other hominins that lived in Eurasia, such as the Neanderthals.
D) modern humans migrated out of Africa to Europe first and then traveled east to Asia.

Question 53

According to the genetic data, after modern humans left Africa, they migrated first to which geographic area?

A) Europe
B) the Pacific
C) Northern Asia
D) Southern Asia

Question 54

Artifacts and fossils from the site of Arcy-sur-Cure indicate that

A) Neanderthals and modern humans fought each other.
B) only modern humans lived there.
C) Neanderthals borrowed ideas and technology from modern humans.
D) Neanderthals killed off that population of modern humans.

Question 55

The genetic data indicate that modern humans and Neanderthals

A) are more closely related to each other than either is to the Denisovan hominins.
B) must have never interbred.
C) may have interbred to a limited degree.
D) are represented by contemporary Papua New Guineans.

Question 56

Genetic evidence indicates that humans underwent a ________ between 90,000 and 200,000 years ago, which is why the human species is less genetically variable than are other species.

A) geographic expansion
B) bottleneck
C) geologic catastrophe
D) cultural revolution

Question 57

Can tools be used to track the evolution of cultural and/or behavioral complexity in the Upper Paleolithic? If so, how?

Question 58

Data from Y chromosome studies

A) do not agree with the results of mtDNA studies.
B) support an Asian origin for modern humans.
C) indicate that African populations are older than populations in other parts of the world.
D) indicate that African populations are younger than populations in other parts of the world.

Question 59

How are modern humans different morphologically from earlier species of hominins?

Question 60

What are the two main theories about the origin of modern humans?

Question 61

Why do geneticists think that there was some, albeit limited, interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans?

Question 62

Who is mitochondrial Eve? Did all humans evolve from mitochondrial Eve? Why or why not?

Question 63

Why do some researchers feel that there was not a human revolution at all?