The Four World Zones Become Connected

Which sentence from the article reflects a CENTRAL idea of it?

• Many other historians focus on the two largest world zones — Afro-Eurasia, which they often call the “Old World,” and the Americas, which they call the “New World.” 
• There never was a land bridge between Australasia and Afro-Eurasia; a significant sea passage always existed, which is why the arrival of humans in Australasia seems such an achievement.
• The rising seas cut off the four groups of humans from each other long enough for them to develop different experiments in culture and civilization.
• Perhaps critically, it had the largest networks of collective learning, which contained more — and more diverse — information than those networks existing in the smaller zones.

Which of these details from the article BEST helps develop a central idea of it?

• There was no regular contact among the four world zones until Europeans sailed to the Americas in the late fifteenth century.
• The Pacific Islands were the fourth world zone to emerge and existed only from about 2000 BCE to 1500 CE.
• Differences in human societies in the four world zones tend to be the focus of world history and anthropology courses.
• Agriculture emerged on some of the larger islands of the smaller world zones even though these zones had few resources.

Read the paragraph below from the section "What the four world zones reveal". "Agrarian civilizations emerged only in the two largest world zones for very specific reasons. A closer look at the four zones demonstrates that some zones had more advantages than others. Afro-Eurasia was so much larger. It lucked out with better plants for food and animals better suited for transportation, allowing civilization to emerge there several thousand years earlier than in the Americas. This gave peoples from Afro-Eurasia a decisive edge when they arrived in the Americas and found civilizations similar to theirs in structure, but earlier in their development." Which phrase in the paragraph BEST helps to explain what "agrarian" means?

• more advantages
• so much larger
• better plants for food
• better suited for transportation

Read the sentence below from the first paragraph of the article. "Isolated from one another, four groups of people developed and conducted their own experiments in human culture." In the sentence, the word "experiments" connotes a sense of...

• challenge
• accomplishment
• innovation
• determination

Which statement from the article would be MOST important to include in a summary of the article?

• Homo sapiens migrated to Australasia about 60,000 to 50,000 BCE.
• Humans reached the Americas about 20,000 to 15,000 BCE.
• Hence, three of the four world zones existed from about 10,000 BCE to about 1500 CE.
• After 1500, all of the zones became connected through extensive sea travel.

Read the sentence below from the section "What are world zones?" "Each of the four world zones functioned as a separate world." Which word could replace "functioned" WITHOUT changing the meaning of the sentence?

• competed
• developed
• operated
• transformed 

Read the sentence below from the section "What the four world zones reveal". "When you compare the four zones, it’s easy to see that people living in Afro-Eurasia had a huge head start." How does the phrase "huge head start" affect the meaning of the sentence?

• It emphasizes that the people living in Afro-Eurasia were very competitive with the people living in other world zones.
• It stresses that the people living in Afro-Eurasia had numerous advantages that other world zones lacked.
• It suggests that the people living in Afro-Eurasia were often unfair in the way they interacted with other world zones.
• It indicates that the people living in Afro-Eurasia received assistance from people living in other world zones.

Read the following paragraph from the section "What are world zones?" For most of human history, humans existed only in Afro-Eurasia. Humans moved to Australasia about 60,000 to 50,000 BCE. We reached the Americas about 20,000 to 15,000 BCE. Humans interacted together in these three areas until the end of the Ice Age. As the Ice Age ended, ice melted. Sea levels began to rise. There was a land bridge connecting Asia and the Americas. But the rising waters covered the land bridge. Which answer choice is CLOSEST in meaning to "interacted" as used in this paragraph?

• traveled and stayed to live
• had wars with each other
• lived and formed a civilization together
• moved away from areas with rising sea levels as a group

Read the sentence below from the section "What are world zones?" "A world zone is simply a large region of human interaction." Which word could replace "region" WITHOUT changing the meaning of the sentence?

• area
• island
• country
• community

Read the sentences below from the section "What the four world zones reveal"."-Eurasia had the greatest advantages. It was extremely large and had better plants for food and better animals for transportation. These advantages allowed civilization to emerge there several thousand years earlier than in the Americas." What does the word "emerge" mean in the third sentence?

• develop
• conquer
• discover
• change