Historical and Scientific SAT Day6

Archaeologists have estimated that the pre-Columbian Native American city of Cahokia, located across the Mississippi River from modern-day St. Louis, Missouri, had as many as 20,000 inhabitants in the year 1150 ______ it one of the largest cities in North America at the time.

• CE; making

• CE. Making

• CE, making

• CE making

In 2008, two years after the death of science fiction writer Octavia Butler, the Huntington Library in ______ received a collection of more than 8,000 items, including Butler’s private notes, research materials, manuscripts, photos, and drawings. Today, the Octavia E. Butler Collection is one of the most researched archives at the library.

• California

• California,

• California:

• California—

Nine months before Rosa Parks made history by refusing to comply with the segregated seating policy on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, a fifteen-year-old Montgomery girl named Claudette Colvin was arrested for the same ______ to some historians, Colvin’s arrest led to Parks’s action and eventually to the desegregation of Montgomery’s bus system.

• offense according

• offense, according

• offense. According

• offense and according

How do scientists determine what foods were eaten by extinct hominins such as Neanderthals? In the past, researchers were limited to studying the marks found on the fossilized teeth of skeletons, but in 2017 a team led by Laura Weyrich of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA tried something ______ the DNA found in Neanderthals’ fossilized dental plaque.

• new. Sequencing

• new: sequencing

• new; sequencing

• new, sequencing:

In 1727, dramatist Lewis Theobald presented a new play, Double Falsehood, at a London theater. Theobald claimed that his drama was based on a little-known play by William Shakespeare, Cardenio. Many, including poet Alexander Pope, were ______ historians have determined that Shakespeare’s company did perform a play called Cardenio in 1613.

• skeptical

• skeptical but

• skeptical,

• skeptical, but

Santa Clara Pueblo artist Roxanne Swentzell’s sculpture Mud Woman Rolls On consists of five human figures made of clay and plant fiber and arranged in descending size; each figure holds the smaller one in front of it. The arrangement of the figures, according to ______ represents her idea that 'we all come from the Earth, generation after generation.'

• Swentzell,

• Swentzell:

• Swentzell

• Swentzell—

While exploring Nevada’s Gypsum Cave in 1930, Seneca and Abenaki archaeologist Bertha Parker made her most famous discovery: the skull of an now-extinct ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis) alongside human-made tools. Parker’s crucial finding was the first ______ humans in North America as far back as 10,000 years ago.

• place

• to place

• places

• placed

Far from being modern inventions, ______ more than 5,000 years ago.

• Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia used drinking straws

• drinking straws were used by Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia

• ancient Mesopotamia was home to Sumerians who used drinking straws

• the use of drinking straws by Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia happened

The human brain is primed to recognize faces—so much so that, due to a perceptual tendency called pareidolia, ______ will even find faces in clouds, wooden doors, pieces of fruit, and other faceless inanimate objects. Researcher Susan Magsamen has focused her work on better understanding this everyday phenomenon.

• she

• they

• those

• it

The curves of a river ______ its sinuosity index, a ratio that compares the winding length the river travels to the straight-line distance between the river’s beginning and end.

• determine

• has determined

• determines

• is determining