Evolutionary Quiz

Pretty simple really, Click Here For Quiz Linkification.

I haven't seen the show that this quiz relates to, but apparently, I must be teaching anthropology in a university somewhere, lol.

This is the Link to the home page of the same website. It looks like a really good show so I for one will be hoping to be able to watch it eventually.

How climate change made humans who we are, I believe is the title of the first show.

Link to synopsis

Humans are unlike any other species on Earth. But it wasn't always that way, says Canadian anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson. Planet Earth, he says, was once like the fictional Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. "At the beginning, there were a lot of other kinds of humans … other intelligent walking apes just like us. Over that space of time they all went extinct and only one survived. "It's a wonderful starting point for a story. What is it that makes us the great survivor?"

One of the big surprises for him was that in the past million years, humans evolved not in a lush, Eden-like Africa but one with a wildly unstable climate, swinging quickly between floods and droughts, heat and cold within the span of a human lifetime. Thompson thinks that fluctuation played a big role in the natural selection that made humans what they are today. "What I'm convinced by is climate shifts were a really important forcer. They forced our evolution rapidly and in certain directions," he said in an interview. DNA evidence shows that during that period of time, humans came close to going extinct — our population may have dropped as low as 600 individuals.

One of the other many interesting elements to this show;

To see how ancient humans survived conditions that likely wiped out their hominin cousins, Thompson and his crew spent time among traditional cultures including:

The Kalahari bushmen, who still live a hunter gatherer lifestyle in an African desert with almost no water.
The Crocodile People of Papua New Guinea, whose rare, secret skin-cutting initiation ritual was captured on film for the series.
The Badjoa of the Philippines, the last remaining free-diving nomads in the world, who can spend several minutes at a time holding their breath 100 metres underwater as they gather food from the sea floor.

Anyway, see how you go with the quiz and keep your eyes peeled for the show, should be pretty good I reckon.

Kind Regards
Myselfaswell

If you scored over 500, you’re either a natural genius... or you teach anthropology in a university.

I mean I'll take the complement but I think they are over selling that one

Cause I guessed on more then I knew and got over 500.

That test is way too nice. I guessed over half of the answers, got my fair share of wrong stuff and yet...

YOU SCORED 620 POINTS IN ONLY 82 SECONDS!

Congratulations! You've tested your knowledge of our human origins. If you scored over 500, you're either a natural genius... or you teach anthropology in a university.

I'm not a genius at all and I certainly don't teach anthropology.

But I mean, if this site would like to worship me and give me a million dollars, based on my "being a genius", then... well, who am I to stop them?

a reply to: myselfaswell

1140 in 70 seconds.

Boy, I am bad at guessing. I just clicked on one of the answers and only got one correct. You would think you would get two that way, got myself an eighty.

a reply to: rickymouse

Lol, at least you had a crack at it, and anyway scores only count if you know the answers. I only knew 6 of the 10 questions I got and that's, in part, because I read the synopsis for the show. I suppose it's one of those subjects that perhaps people think they know, but not really. And I include myself in the "people" statement.

More reading required I suppose, or at least watching the show when it's available.

Kind Regards
Myselfaswell

1530 in 45 seconds.

I dunno how one could score under 500... at least if you're interested enough to take the quiz?

originally posted by: myselfaswell
a reply to: rickymouse

Lol, at least you had a crack at it, and anyway scores only count if you know the answers. I only knew 6 of the 10 questions I got and that's, in part, because I read the synopsis for the show. I suppose it's one of those subjects that perhaps people think they know, but not really. And I include myself in the "people" statement.

More reading required I suppose, or at least watching the show when it's available.

Kind Regards
Myselfaswell

I don't believe there is enough evidence that forms the science of those questions. Out of Africa seemed to be a basis of some of the questions and the way it shows correlates to consensus of the time. Lack of evidence found means nothing in my book, if you are not looking then you will not see. If everyone is convinced mankind started in Africa, then we will not look for earlier life elsewhere. For all we know, Africa could have been populated by ancestors that came out of South America by floating across in a homemade boat or floating Island made of Pumice long ago. The evidence I have seen proves nothing as to where man originated. It may be true that we evolved out of Africa but I will not put myself into a position to accept the evidence they have shown.

I lost interest in the quiz when it appeared that I was being led in a direction I did not want to go in. I would rather believe that we do not really know what happened.

They know the population isn't that bright, so they're throwing ya a bone and giving you the fuzzies by calling basic knowledge being a genius now a days...

I dunno about those questions. They asked about when humans almost went extinct 75,000 years ago and they claimed that the homo sapiens were down to 600 individuals capable of breeding. I've never heard the number referenced being that low. I've heard 10,000, and some even suggested 2000, but 600? I hope they have a reference on that.

Wiki

The Toba catastrophe theory as presented in the late 1990s to early 2000s suggested that a bottleneck of the human population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals[3] when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change. The theory is based on geological evidence of sudden climate change and on coalescence evidence of some genes (including mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome and some nuclear genes)[4] and the relatively low level of genetic variation in humans.[3]

io9.com...

Roughly 70,000 years ago, give or take a few thousand years, an enormous eruption occurred in what is now Sumatra, leaving behind Lake Toba (the crater lake pictured above). The eruption coincides with a population bottleneck that is often cited as the reason for the relatively low genetic diversity across Homo sapiens sapiens. Research suggests as few as 2,000 humans were left alive by the eruption and its aftereffects.

So why did the evolution quiz low ball that number to 600? And why change the 70,000 years to 75,000 years? Hmmmm, maybe it was a trick question and I'm too tired to notice. I'll be back tomorrow to try it again.