Chapter 2 | Student Practice Quizzes

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the Submit my answers button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:

Before agriculture and urbanization, humans organized themselves into ________.
a) clans based on gender
b) tribes based on skin colour
c) hunter-gatherer societies
d) trade-bearing societies

Question 2:

The term ‘axis mundi’ refers to ________.
a) sites where people believed they had sacred experiences
b) the latitude and longitude of a society’s location
c) spirits
d) ancient myths

Question 3:

‘Simple subsistence peoples’ refers to ________.
a) large-scale societies that obtain what they need by bartering rather than by using currency
b) small-scale societies that obtain what they need by bartering rather than by using currency
c) large-scale societies that survive by hunting-gathering or simple agricultural methods
d) small-scale societies that survive by hunting-gathering or simple agricultural methods

Question 4:

Indigenous religions view the process of birth, death, and rebirth as ________.
a) a one-time occurrence
b) eternal
c) an illusion
d) karmic

Question 5:

It is believed that the human capacity for language to create and build culture existed by ________.
a) 100 BCE
b) 1000 BCE
c) 10,000 BCE
d) 100,000 BCE

Question 6:

The progressive complexity in the mastery of tools was accompanied by what two features?
a) Literacy and increasingly complex myth and ritual
b) Development of writing and observance of religious rituals
c) Rational attitudes and awareness of other societies
d) Development of language ability and presence of religion

Question 7:

In 2001, ________ of Canadians reported ‘at least some aboriginal ancestry’.
a) 4.4 per cent
b) 7.2 per cent
c) 3.8 per cent
d) 1.1 per cent

Question 8:

Fairly recently, scholars learned that first peoples were actually ________.
a) superstitious, irrational, and simple-minded
b) highly skilled, rational, and sophisticated in their thinking
c) irrational, primitive in their thinking, and moderately skilled
d) highly rational, subdued, and analytical

Question 9:

In indigenous cultures the fact that females gave birth and could feed their offspring from their own bodies was most likely viewed as ________.
a) ordinary
b) a miracle to be revered
c) shameful and should be hidden from sight
d) submissive

Question 10:

Evidence suggests that the function of burial in indigenous societies was to ________.
a) please the relatives of the departed
b) ensure a good crop for that season
c) submit to the expectations of the gods
d) open a gateway to an afterlife

Question 11:

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of indigenous religion?
a) A linear view of time
b) A strong relatedness to the natural world
c) Engagement of all the bodily senses and emotions with the natural world
d) Expressions of singing, dancing, and fasting

Question 12:

According to French sociologist Émile Durkheim, religion’s power to ________ keeps it central in human life.
a) tell us how to live
b) heal us
c) convert us
d) bind us together

Question 13:

The term ‘shaman’ originally came from a group of hunters and reindeer herders in ________.
a) Norway
b) Finland
c) Siberia
d) Antarctica

Question 14:

The four religious figures central to understanding the world’s religions are ________.
a) priest, pope, Buddha, and disciple
b) shaman, prophet, sage, and priest
c) pope, god, ancestors, and shaman
d) sage, disciple, philosopher, and priest

Question 15:

Across the globe, the role of a shaman is considered to be ________.
a) easy
b) mortally dangerous
c) occupationally careless
d) inherited

Question 16:

The term ‘indigenous religions’ implies that the social and religious lives of a group are ________.
a) very poor
b) well developed
c) primitive
d) rooted deeply to a given place

Question 17:

In 2001, ________ of Aboriginal people in Canada claimed that they could carry on a conversation in an Aboriginal language.
a) 72 per cent
b) 24 per cent
c) 43 per cent
d) 13 per cent

Question 18:

Which of the following was NOT a major concern in indigenous societies?
a) Fertility
b) Gender boundaries
c) Trade
d) Group boundaries

Question 19:

An example of archaic practices still enduring in East Asia is ________.
a) ancestor veneration
b) karma
c) yoga
d) performance of miracles

Question 20:

The Canadian Indian Act of 1876 was designed to support the Canadian policy of ________.
a) protecting the practitioners of indigenous religions from persecution
b) ensuring the equality of all people before the state
c) preventing indigenous peoples from claiming special privileges
d) ensuring the extinction of Indians as a distinct group

Question 21:

Indigenous religions are usually linked to specific geographical locations and relatively small groups of people.
a) True
b) False

Question 22:

2. Aboriginal religious traditions emphasize the collective, eternal identity of the group.
a) True
b) False

Question 23:

In Canada today, there is an increasing tendency for people to identify themselves as aboriginal on official documents.
a) True
b) False

Question 24:

The development of complex tools followed the development of religion.
a) True
b) False

Question 25:

Early Homo sapiens led lives characterized by deprivation and brutality and had limited and disorganized knowledge of the world in which they lived.
a) True
b) False

Question 26:

It was necessary for man to develop symbolic language in order to express conceptions about divine power. It was necessary for man to develop symbolic language in order to express conceptions about divine power.
a) True
b) False

Question 27:

Hunter-gatherer groups were almost uniformly patriarchal.
a) True
b) False

Question 28:

Religion originated in practices essential to human survival.
a) True
b) False

Question 29:

In indigenous societies, being religious is about a particular kind of bodily engagement with the world.
a) True
b) False

Question 30:

In indigenous societies, death marks an irrevocable dislocation between the living and the dead.
a) True
b) False

Question 31:

Most indigenous people view ancestral spirits as custodians of tradition.
a) True
b) False

Question 32:

In indigenous religions, illness often indicates that the one who is ill has lost their soul.
a) True
b) False

Question 33:

It was once legal in the US to discriminate against Native American religious practices.
a) True
b) False

Question 34:

Shamanistic rituals are carefully controlled and almost always very safe.
a) True
b) False

Question 35:

One is born with the qualities necessary to be a shaman and therefore is not compelled to engage in extensive study.
a) True
b) False

Question 36:

In Canadian Inuit traditions, the shaman plays a vital role in repairing the damage done to the world when people behave wrongly.
a) True
b) False

Question 37:

Indigenous peoples who live at a distance from modern technologies are less likely to be able to survive.
a) True
b) False

Question 38:

Modern world religions have virtually no similarities to shamanistic faiths.
a) True
b) False

Question 39:

Religious practice creates group bonds and aids in the organization of bonds between individuals.
a) True
b) False

Higher Education

World Religions Today - Chapter 2