Q 01/05

Which fossil skeleton from Ethiopia was named after a Beatles song played on repeat in the dig camp?

A) Ardi

B) Selam

C) Lucy

D) Toumaï

Answer · why

C) Lucy

Lucy takes her name from "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", which blared from a tape recorder all evening after the find. She lived around 3.2 million y...

Q 02/05

Which novelist earned an anthropology degree when Chicago accepted Cat's Cradle in place of a thesis?

A) Joseph Heller

B) Kurt Vonnegut

C) Saul Bellow

D) Philip Roth

Answer · why

B) Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut left Chicago without a degree after every thesis idea he proposed was rejected. The master's arrived 25 years later, with the novel stan...

Q 03/05

Which Melanesian movements built straw planes and jungle airstrips after World War II to lure back goods?

A) Millerites

B) Ghost Dancers

C) Rastafarians

D) Cargo cults

Answer · why

D) Cargo cults

Cargo cults copied the soldiers they had watched: islanders carved wooden headphones and sat in home-made control towers. The John Frum movement on Ta...

Q 04/05

Which primatologist first saw wild chimpanzees at Gombe strip twigs into tools to fish for termites?

A) Dian Fossey

B) Birutė Galdikas

C) Jane Goodall

D) Mary Leakey

Answer · why

C) Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall's mentor Louis Leakey replied that science must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human. She also found that chim...

Q 05/05

Which extinct human relatives are named after a German valley where workers dug up bones in 1856?

A) Cro-Magnons

B) Neanderthals

C) Australopithecines

D) Habilines

Answer · why

B) Neanderthals

Neanderthals owe their name to the Neander Valley, itself named after Joachim Neander, a 17th-century hymn writer who often visited. A local schooltea...