AP World
Practice Test
Unit 1 – Chapter 1
1. About how long ago did Homo sapiens appear?
a. About 25,000 years ago
b. About 100,000 years ago
c. About 250,000 years ago
d. About 45,000 years ago
2. What was the Neolithic Revolution?
a. A turning point in human history when Homo sapiens began making stone tools
b. A turning point in human history when Homo sapiens began to gather together in large chiefdoms that fought each other
c. The invention of writing, making it possible for us to know about the past
d. A turning point in human history when Homo sapiens started the deliberate cultivation of plants and domestication of animals
3. Where did Homo sapiens first emerge?
a. Africa
b. Asia
c. Europe
d. South America
4. What is the name given to Paleolithic figurines that depict the female form, often with exaggerated sexual features?
a. Athena figurines
b. Venus figurines
c. Ishtar figurines
d. Aphrodite figurines
5. Which gathering and hunting society developed the complex world view known as Dreamtime, which holds that everything in the natural world is simply a vibration of ancient happenings?
a. Native Americans
b. The Maori of New Zealand
c. The Australian Aboriginals
d. The Igbo of Africa
6. In what part of the world did Clovis culture flourish about 13,000 years ago?
a. South America
b. North America
c. Europe
d. The Middle East
7. Which is the last region of the world to which humans migrated?
a. South America
b. Siberia
c. Asia
d. The Pacific islands
8. In humankind’s first settling of the earth, which is the only region where the migrants were already agriculturalists?
a. South America
b. Europe
c. The Pacific islands
d. Australia
9. Which of the following best describes Paleolithic societies?
a. They were small, consisting of bands of 25 to 50 people.
b. They lived in small villages, numbering 100 to 200 people.
c. They were highly stratified societies.
d. They were dominated by men.
10. Which of the following was a rule of Paleolithic societies?
a. Killing of other members of the band was utterly forbidden.
b. Once a leader gained power, he held it until he was killed.
c. There was a gender-based division of labor, with women as gatherers and men as hunters.
d. The first to reach a territory was free to gather or hunt food there.
11. Which of the following statements is true of Paleolithic societies’ relationship with the environment?
a. Paleolithic societies had a significant impact on the environment.
b. Their numbers were so small and their needs so few that they had very little impact on the environment.
c. Paleolithic societies utterly transformed the environment in which they lived.
d. Paleolithic agriculture caused significant soil erosion.
12. Which of the following was a reason why some Paleolithic societies were able to settle in permanent villages?
a. The organization of teams of long-distance gatherers who could efficiently bring supplies to settled peoples
b. The end of the Ice Age, which improved conditions for hunting and gathering
c. Decline in numbers after an enormous volcanic eruption, so surviving peoples could gather and hunt in a small area without exhausting resources
d. The development of agriculture
13. Which site has been dubbed the “world’s oldest temple”?
a. Jericho
b. Catalhüyük
c. Stonehenge
d. Göbekli Tepe
14. Which of the following statements is true of the Neolithic Revolution?
a. It led to population decline, as newly settled peoples fell prey to new diseases.
b. It led to a new mutual dependence between humans and the plants and animals they domesticated.
c. Little changed in the plants and animals that were domesticated.
d. Humans continued to depend on gathering and hunting for thousands of years after their societies had adopted agriculture.
15. Which of the following statements is true of the Agricultural Revolution?
a. It occurred in the Fertile Crescent and spread gradually as travelers took the newly developed agricultural techniques to other regions.
b. It occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and spread gradually as humans migrated to other parts of the earth.
c. It occurred independently in many widely scattered parts of the world.
d. It occurred in several regions of Eurasia, but agriculture only reached the Americas when travelers brought the new techniques with them.
16. Where was the Fertile Crescent?
a. Egypt
b. China
c. Sub-Saharan Africa
d. Southwest Asia
17. Which region that experienced the Agricultural Revolution did not have a comparable process of animal domestication?
a. The Americas
b. The Sahara
c. The Fertile Crescent
d. China
18. Why did the transition away from gathering and hunting take so much longer in Mesoamerica than it did in other early agricultural societies?
a. A highly competitive masculine culture valued hunting long after the need for it had passed.
b. Population was so much smaller that there was little pressure to develop agriculture.
c. There was a lack of domestic animals, and the process needed to make maize productive was long and selective.
d. The land was so bountiful that people could acquire sufficient food by gathering and hunting.
19. What term is used to describe the gradual spread of agricultural techniques from the places they originated?
a. Diaspora
b. Diffusion
c. Infusion
d. Dispersion
20. In what region did the spread of Bantu languages accompany the development of agricultural societies?
a. The Philippine and Indonesian islands
b. Europe
c. Southern Africa
d. China
21. Which of the following regions maintained a gathering and hunting economy into the modern era?
a. The west coast of North America
b. Central Africa
c. New Guinea
d. Madagascar
22. Which of the following statements best describes human life in early farming communities?
a. Human health rapidly improved as their new, permanent homes provided better protection from the elements.
b. People were more vulnerable to famine, as they relied on a small number of plants or animals.
c. Life expectancy rapidly increased as people had access to better nutrition.
d. People were happier.
23. When did humans begin working with metals?
a. In the Paleolithic Era
b. After the Agricultural Revolution was over and large towns had begun to grow
c. In the Iron Age
d. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution
24. What was the “secondary products revolution”?
a. The beginning of trade networks in which farmers sold their surplus products to neighboring towns
b. The invention of recreational drinks, such as beer
c. The discovery of effective fishing methods, making it possible to have permanent settlements without a full-scale Agricultural Revolution
d. The finding of new uses for domesticated animals, such as milking or riding them
25. What is a pastoralist?
a. A person who relies on domesticated animals as main source of food
b. An early farmer
c. A person who practices a mixed agriculture that includes both plants and domesticated animals
d. A person who keeps cattle
26. In which region of the earth did no early pastoral societies emerge?
a. Central Asia
b. The Sahara
c. The Americas
d. The Arabian Peninsula
27. How were agricultural village societies usually ruled?
a. They had chiefs who inherited their offices.
b. They had chiefs who came to office by merit rather than inheritance.
c. They had formal councils of elders.
d. They had a lineage system that ran things by kinship groups rather than formal government.
28. The last Ice Age may have helped early gatherer-hunters in which of the following ways?
a. The heavier rainfall of the Ice Age’s weather fluctuations made it possible for them to grow crops.
b. Ice served as an important preservative for food, making it possible for them to settle in the same place for extended periods.
c. The cold weather killed off most large mammals that had been predatory on early human beings.
d. The lower sea levels associated with the Ice Age created land bridges, allowing human beings to travel to many regions of the earth.
29. Which of the following was generally true of Paleolithic peoples?
a. Paleolithic societies failed to innovate, stubbornly refusing to change in response to new situations or environments.
b. Paleolithic societies regularly relied on trade to secure items needed to survive.
c. Paleolithic societies often developed elaborate and complex understandings of the world.
d. Paleolithic societies were technologically complex, relying on a surprisingly wide array of tools and weapons made from both stone and metal.
30. The unique feature of the chiefdom (as compared to a stateless agricultural village) that was replicated, elaborated, and assumed to be natural in all later states and civilizations was
a. the distinction between elite and commoner based on charisma.
b. the distinction between elite and commoner based on achievement.
c. the distinction between elite and commoner based on birth.
d. the distinction between religious and secular elites.
Answer Key
1. c
2. d
3. a
4. b
5. c
6. b
7. d
8. c
9. a
10. c
11. a
12. b
13. d
14. b
15. c
16. d
17. a
18. c
19. b
20. c
21. a
22. b
23. d
24. d
25. a
26. c
27. d
28. d
29. c
30. c