Humanities

Which of the following is not a theory about the reasons Paleolithic people created cave art?

Offerings to the dead found buried in the caves

Why are the Chauvet animal paintings probably not associated with the hurt?

Most of the animals painted on the walls were never or rarely hunted

How has Chauvet cave changed thinking about prehistoric art?

Art did not necessarily evolve in a linear progression from primitive to realistic

What is significant about Lascaux’s bird-headed man, bison, and rhinoceros painting?

It is one of the few cave paintings to depict a human

What effect does perspectival drawing create?

Three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface

What features distinguished homo sapiens from earlier hominids?

Lighter skeletal structure and larger brain

Why do Paleolithic female figurines vastly outnumber male representations?

Females played a central role in the culture

With what is the Venus of Willendorf’s original red color associated?

Menses

Why was agriculture such an enormous development?

It encouraged distinct centers of people with a common pursuit

Which of the following is one of the Great River Valley Civilizations?

Indus-Ganges

Where is the oldest known Neolithic settlement?

Jericho in the Middle East

Why did the Neolithic era lead to increased pottery creation?

Pottery is too fragile to have been practical for hunter-gatherers

According to the most recent discoveries, why was Stonehenge constructed?

A burial grounds

What is the most basic architectural technique for spanning space?

Post-and-Lintel

What new technology followed agriculture in defining Mesopotamia?

Metallurgy

Why did the arts develop in Mesopotamia?

As celebrations of the priest-kings’ power

What were ziggurats most likely designed to resemble?

A mountain

Why did visitors to the ziggurats often leave a statue representing themselves?

To serve as prayer offerings to the gods

How did the Mesopotamians view human society?

As part of a larger society

What was the Mesopotamian ruler’s role in religion?

To act as intermediary between the gods and humans

Which of the follow pairs correctly identifies the subjects illustrated on the Royal Standard of Ur?

‘War’ and ‘Peace’

What about the Royal Standard or Ur illustrates social perspective or hierarchy of scale?

The most important figures are represented as larger than others

Why is the Royal Standard of Ur such an important discovery?

It is one of the earliest example of historical narrative

Why is the legend of Sargon I considered a "rags to riches" story?

Child abandoned at birth grows up to be king

What did lost-wax casting enable the Mesopotamian sculptors to create?

Larger and more lightweight bronze pieces

Why did Mesopotamian scribes move from pictograms to the more linear cuneiform writing?

Drawing lines instead of curves in wet clay was easier

What distinguishes the Law of Code of Hammurabi from its predecessors?

It is the most complete set of laws

What does Hammurabi’s code tell about the position of Mesopotamian women?

They were inferior to men, on the same level as slaves

Why does Hammurabi’s law code represent an important change for Mesopotamian justice?

It made laws more uniform, objective, and impartial

What distinguishes an epic from other literary forms?

It describes a people’s common heritage

What classic struggle do Gilgamesh and Enkidu represent?

Nature versus civilization

Why is the Epic of Gilgamesh a first in known literary works?

It is the first to confront the idea of death

Which of the following differentiates the Hebrews from other Near Eastern cultures?

They worshipped a single god

What did the Hebrews believe their status as "chosen people" meant?

They were to set an example of a higher moral standard

Why do the Ten Commandments provide equal treatment for all classes of the Hebrews?

The Hebrews had once themselves been slaves

Why is King Solomon’s authorship of the "Song of Solomon" doubtful?

The female protagonist’s voice is stronger than the man’s

What was the role of the Hebrew prophets in the era following Solomon’s death?

To provide moral instruction according to the laws of the Torah

What is the Persian Zoroaster’s greatest contribution to religious thought?

The emphasis on free will

As noted in the chapter’s "Continuity and Change" section, what most distinguishes Mesopotamia from Egypt?

The Egyptians were united by a more stable succession of rulers

What was left behind by the Nile’s annual flooding?

Deep deposits of fertile soil

Why was Nebamun Hunting Birds a sort of visual pun?

The artist depicts actions that reflected sexual procreation, not hunting

What kind of government was found in Ancient Egypt?

Theocracy

Which god did the Egyptians believe the kind personified?

Horus

Why did the Egyptians believe that a good deity like Osiris required a bad deity like Seth?

Opposites were necessary for balance, harmony, and cycles

Why did Egyptian artists paint human’s faces, arms, legs, and feet in profile?

They believed it was the most characteristic view

Why was the Palette of Narmer created?

For a gift to a god or goddess

How are the figures on the Palette of Narmer similar to those on the Mesopotamian Royal Standard of Ur?

The king is shown as larger than anyone else

With what has most surviving Egyptian art and architecture been associated?

Burial and afterlife

Why did the Egyptians bury their dead on the west side of the Nile?

Because of the symbolic reference to death and rebirth, as the sun sets in the west

Why did the Egyptians go to such lengths to preserve the dead?

The believed the deceased’s ka and ba would not recognize a decomposed body

What is Imhotep’s distinction?

He is the first artist or architect whose name survives

Why was deciphering the Rosetta Stone so significant?

The stone was provided the key to reading hieroglyphs

The Egyptian word for sculpture is the same as the word for what other act?

Giving birth

Why did the Egyptian sculptors idealize rulers in their sculptures?

The rulers’ perfection mirrored the perfection of the gods themselves

How can we tell than an Egyptian statue portrays a lesser person?

Lesser persons’ statues were often made of less permanent materials

What is one of the greatest changes that took place during the Middle Kingdom?

Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative

On what measure are the squares in the Egyptian grid system based?

One clenched fist

Why can the reliefs on Ramses II’s pylon gate at Luxor be viewed as symbolic rather than historical?

The battle scene they describe was not the success depicted

What radical change in Egyptian religion did Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) decree?

He mandated worship of one god exclusively

Why would Akhenaten’s change in the religion create change in the visual arts?

The gods were no longer seen as perfect, so art’s subjects also could be perfect

Why was Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb so "wonderful?"

This was the only royal tomb in Egypt not to have been looted

What creature, part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus, would devour the unworthy deceased at the final judgment?

Ammit

Why were Egyptians buried with Book of Going Forth by Day (Books of the Dead)?

To help them survive the ritual of judgment

Why during the 8th century BCE were the Kushites able to control Egypt?

The Egyptians needed stronger leadership to thwart an Assyrian invasion

Why are archaeologists so certain that Egypt had contact with other civilizations?

Egyptians artifacts have been discovered throughout the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Mesopotamian worlds

Why were the Greeks faced with rebuilding Athens after 479 BCE?

The Persians had destroyed it

What events began and ended Athens’ Golden Age?

Victory over the Persians, defeat by Sparta

Why did Athenians turn first to rebuilding the agora following the Persian War?

NOT they needed a place to train military OR they needed a place to worship their gods

Why were the Athenian citizens endowed with so much leisure time?

Slaves outnumbered Athenian citizens more than two to one

What was the primary duet of women in Athenian society?

To produce mall offspring

Why in part did Sparta form its own Peloponnesian League?

Athens’ use of Delian Fund leagues to rebuild its acropolis

Why does Pericles claim in his funeral speech that Athens is "the school of Hellas"?

Athens taught all of Greece by example

Why did fifth-century Greeks not see themselves as at the mercy of the gods?

They believed natural forces were knowable, not punishment from a god

How does the Kritios Boy define classical beauty?

He shows a lively posture and a sense of action

Why was Doryphoros, or Spear Bearer, famous throughout the ancient world?

It demonstrated Polyclitus’s treatise on proportion

Why was entasis, each column swelling about a third of the way up, employed in the Parthenon?

To fool the eye against them appearing narrower as they rise

Why today does the Parthenon lie mostly in ruins?

In 1687 the Venetians exploded gunpowder the Turks had stored in it

How did Socrates’ view of the good, true, and just disagree with that of the Sophists?

The meaning of these things were not relative

Why was Socrates brought to trail and condemned to death?

Subversive behavior, impiety and corruption of Athens’ youth

Why was Socrates not a staunch defender of democracy?

He believed that most people were incapable of exercising good government

Which of the following statements would be true about Plato’s idealistic Republic?

The Arts

With which cult was drama originally associated?

The cult of Dionysus

What is the central subject of most Greek tragedies?

Conflict between individual and his or her community

Why does Sophocles’ Antigone oppose her uncle, Creon?

She believes that burying her brother is her democratic right

What qualities define Hellenistic art?

Animation, drama, and psychological complexity

Why was Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos such a sensation?

She may be the first fully nude female in Greek sculpture

Accoriding to Aristotle, how could a person come to know universal truths?

By observing the material world itself in which reality exists

Why did Aristotle consider catharsis to be so important to a tragedy?

NOT it caused the protagonist to seem realistic OR it provided a climax for the drama

According to Aristotle, how might one attain the "good life"?

Balancing

Why can Hellenistic sculpture be equated with Aristotle’s idea of catharsis?

Both aim to elicit viewer emotional response

Why can it be claimed in the chapter’s "Continuity and Change" section that even though Rome conquered Greece in 146 BCE, Greece "ruled" Rome culturally?

The Romans greatly admired and even copied Greek art

Why did Roman artists deviate from the Greeks’ portrayals of mythological events and heroes, instead depicting in their art current events and real people?

To awe the world with the state’s accomplishments

To what two groups does Roman culture trace its origins?

The Greeks and the Etruscans

Why does the Etruscan language present such a problem for translators?

The language was unrelated to any other in Europe

Why is the city of Rome’s location geographically improbable?

Its hillsides were not favorable to building

According to its founding story, why was Rome named after Romulus, not his twin brother Remus?

Romulus killed Remus and became Rome’s first king

According to the Roman poet Virgil, to whom do the Romans trace their origin?

The Trojans

When they overthrew the Etruscans in 510 BCE, what did the Romans decide not to have in their society?

A monarch

Why beginning in 264 BCE did Rome engage Carthage in the Punic Wars?

The Romans desired control of Carthage’s western Mediterranean wealth

Why was Gaius Julius Caesar murdered in the Senate on March 14, 44 BCE?

He had assumed dictatorial control over Rome

Why would 2nd- and 1st- century BCE Romans portray their ancestors with verism, showing every wart and wrinkle?

To show the wisdom and experience of age

What deeply-seated Roman virtue demanded respect towards the gods, country, and parents?

Pietas

Why is Cupid riding a dolphin shown at Augustus’s feet on the sculpture Augustus of Primaporta?

To show Augustus’s divine descent from Venus

Why did Augustus pass laws forcing citizens to marry and penalizing them for being childless?

TO increase the number of citizens in Rome

Why were the Romans attracted to the philosophy os Stoicism?

They appreciated

Why did Virgil compose the Aeneid?

To provide Rome and Augustus with a suitably grand founding myth

Why did Augustus permanently banish the poet Ovid from Rome?

For writing Ars Amatoria, a guidebook for having affairs

What Roman invention enabled builders to construct the Colosseum’s vaulted arches?

Concrete

Why did Rome have multiple forums?

Emperors competed with their predecessors to build the grandest forums

Why was the Arch of Titus constructed?

To celebrate Titus’s sack of the Second Temple of Jerusalem

Why was the Pantheon constructed with a 30-foot-diameter oculus (hole) in its roof?

To symbolize Jupiter;s ever-watchful eye over Rome

Why can it be said that in a sense, the Pantheon mirrors the Roman Empire?

Vast size, unified, harmonious, and orderly space

Why is Pompeii such an important archaeological site?

It tells us most of what we know about everyday Roman life

What feature occupied the center of a Roman comus?

A garden

Why did the Roman baths come to signal a decline in values and morals?

They came to symbolize material excess

Why, by the end of the third century, were the Romans justified in feeling politically and culturally threatened by the Christians?

Christians made up nearly one-thenth of the empire’s population

Why is Masada one of the most symbolic sites in all of Israel?

It represents the sacrifice of Jews rather than submit to Roman defeat

Why around 168 BCE did the Jewish religion start becoming increasingly messianic?

The Seleucids tried to impose worship of Greek gods on the Jews

Why did Judaism split into three distinct sects by the early first century CE?

Difference in philosophy

Which sect is associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Essenes

Why did Jesus of Nazareth identify himself as the Messiah?

He never made this claim; his followers did

What promise became the foundation of Christian faith?

Resurrection

According to the evangelist Paul, what did sinners have to do to earn redemption?

Show their faith in Christ and his salvation

Why did the developing Church ban the Gnostic texts?

They were at odds with what would become normative belief

Why are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke known as the synoptic gospels?

They tell the same stories, in the same sequence, differing only in details

Why did early Christians develop symbols to identify themselves to each other?

They feared persecution for their faith

Why was the Nicene Creed so important?

It created a unified, universal faith

On what Roman style did Constantine base St. Peter’s in Rome?

Basilica

Why was early Christianity syncretistic, incorporating into itself pagan mythic traditions?

To convert pagans by presenting Christianity in their terms

From which cult did Christianity draw baptism, sacrifice for the good of humanity, and Jesus’s birth date?

The Persian Mithras

Why is Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions particularly noteworthy as a literary work?

It is the first Western autobiography

According to Augustine, why was the singing of hymns and psalms in church established?

To prevent people from becoming bored or sad

Why in 325 CE did Constantine move his capital from Rome to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople?

Rome was too vulnerable to attack from Germanic tribes

Why did the emperor Justinian begin construction of the Hagia Sophia in 532 CE?

To divert attention from domestic turmoil stirred up by warring gangs

What was the occupation of the two men Justinian appointed to design the Hagia Sophia?

Mathematicians

Why did Justinian choose the Sinai peninsula as the site for St. Catherine’s Monastery?

This was the location of God’s fist address to Moses

Why, by the fifth and sixth centuries, was Ravenna the most prosperous city in the West?

Its natural defenses against Germanic invasion

What about its design made Justinian’s San Vitale church in Ravenna unique?

Its octagonal shape

Why did the Sane Vitale artists depict their subjects in reverse perspective and in shallow space?

To reject earthy illusion for the sacred space of the image

Which of the following did Boethius consider the highest form of music?

Musica mundana

Why did the Byzantine emperor Leo III inaugurate a program of iconoclasm?

He argued that God in the Ten Commandments had prohibited images

As explained in the chapter’s "Continuity and Change" section, why is Venice home to a vast amount of Byzantine art?

Venetian mercenaries looted Constantinople of art during the Fourth Crusade

Why was Mecca important to the Bedouin traders?

It had natural springs

Why was the Kaaba significant to the Bedouins?

It housed images of their gods

Why is the Kaaba significant to Muslims today?

It represents the physical center of the planet and universe

What does the word Islam mean>

Submission

Why in 610 CE did the Archangel Gabriel first visit Mohammad?

To deliver messages from the one one and only god

How are the surahs in the Qur’an arranged?

Longest to shortest

Why do Muslims believe that the Qur’an cannot be translated?

It is the direct word of God

What is the hadith?

Mohammad’s sayings

Why did Mohammad leave Mecca for Medina in 622?

Mecca’s leadership was displeased with him

Why is the Muslim year shorter than the Christian year?

The Muslim year is based on lunar cycles

What does the Arabic word masjid mean?

Place of prostration

What structure inspired the design of most masques?

Muhammad’s house in Medina

Why does a mosque feature a qibla?

To indicate Mecca’s direction

Why did Mohammad allow Muslim men to have up to four wives?

To provide protective charity

Why in the Qur’an are Muslim women advised to dress modestly?

To avoid harassment

Why was Islam able to spread so quickly after Muhammad’s death?

NOT: The people in these areas embraced Islam as an alternative to paganism OR The Muslims viewed converting non-believers as their greater jihad

Why did Islam split into two main groups around 661?

Disagreement over ways of choosing a caliph

Why do Muslims decorate their mosques without figurative images?

Mohammad warned that image makers would face punishment at Judgment

Why perhaps were conquered Africans eager to convert to Islam?

To avoid enslavement

Why did Mali’s Mansa Moussa cause the value of gold in Egypt to fall in 1334?

He distributed so much gold to the poor

Why did the Spanish Jews welcome the Muslims invasion?

The Visigoth rulers had persecuted them

What did Muhammad and his followers initially think music would do?

Distract the faithful from their true purpose

Why does an author use a framing tale?

To unite different stories

Why does Scheherazade in The Thousand and One Nights tell her husband a story each night?

To prevent execution the next morning

Why are practitioners of Islam’s mystical branch called Sufi (from the Arabic suf)?

NOT: They write intense metaphorical poetry

As reported in the chapter’s "Continuity and Change" section, why did Islam inevitably come into conflict with Christianity?

Islam’s belief that Jesus was a mere prophet, not the son of God

How has Chauvet Cave changed thinking about prehistoric art?

Art did not necessarily evolve in a linear progression from primitive to realistic

What does the Greek word archaiologia mean?

Knowing the past

Why are the most than 100 Aegean islands between mainland Greece and Crete known as the Cyclades?

The islands form a rough circular shape

Why do we think the Cycladic figurines served a mortuary function?

Most were found in graves

Why was the Minoan civilization on Crete able to flourish?

Crete’s position lay on diverse trade routes

What is the bull associated with in Minoan art?

Male virility and strength

How do Minoan frescoes differ from Egyptian frescoes?

Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs

Why is the palace at Knossos known as the House of Double Axes?

Representations of double axes decorated it

Why do we think the Minoans abandoned Knossos in about 1450 BCE?

They were overwhelmed by the Mycenaean army

How do we know that the Mycenaeans were a warlike people?

Battle and hunting scenes dominate their art

Why did Homer include formulaic epithets into his poems?

To fit a given name into the line’s meter

What is the Greek concept of arete?

Being the best one can be

According to Greek legend, why did Greece sink into a Dark Ages around 1100 BCE?

Dorians from the North overran Greece

Why did Athens emerge from the Dark Ages as a leading polis?

It had provided a safe haven during the Dark Ages

What are the three orders of classical Greek architecture?

Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian

What function did the korai, the female equivalent of the kouroi, seem to serve?

Votive offerings to Athena

The term ceramics comes from which of the following?

Kerameikoes, a cemetery in Athens

What subject was depicted on many early ceramic pots?

Gods and Goddesses

Why is the celebrated poet Sappho so extraordinary for this period in Greece?

Sappho was a female

Why in 508 BCE did Athens turn to a democratic form of government?

In reaction to the tyranny of Hippias

Why did the Athenians turn first to rebuilding the agora following the Persian War?

They needed a place to practice politics

Why had Judaism split into three distinct sects by the early first century CE?

Difference in philosophy