Excavators at an early Neolithic village in Southwest Asia find grain storage bins, permanent mud-brick houses for several hundred people, and skeletons with more tooth decay and shorter stature than those of foragers who had lived in the same region two thousand years earlier. These findings best support which conclusion about the shift to agriculture?

Farming fed larger settled populations but often left individuals less well nourished

Farming villages appeared only after cities and writing had already developed

Farming spread because it quickly made individuals healthier than foragers had been

Farming was abandoned in the region once herding offered a more reliable food supply

The Roman senator Tacitus, writing about 98 C.E., described the Germanic peoples beyond the Rhine as brave, faithful in marriage, and untouched by the luxury and corruption he deplored in Rome. He most likely never visited the region and relied on earlier writers and on reports from soldiers and traders. (summary of Tacitus, Germania) A historian using this work as evidence about Germanic society should be most cautious because Tacitus

may have idealized the Germans in order to criticize Roman morals

wrote to persuade the Senate to grant the Germans citizenship

wrote long after Germanic peoples had settled inside the empire

was a Germanic chieftain defending the customs of his own people

The United Nations Security Council was able to authorize military action in Korea in 1950 mainly because

the Soviet Union was boycotting the council and so cast no veto

the People's Republic of China held China's seat and chose to abstain

the General Assembly had already stripped permanent members of the veto

North Korea's invasion had been publicly condemned by the Soviet Union

“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” — Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison (1803) How did the Court apply this principle in deciding the case?

It held void a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that enlarged its original jurisdiction

It ruled that Maryland could not tax a branch of a bank chartered by Congress

It ordered Secretary of State Madison to deliver the commission Marbury had been promised

It struck down a Georgia statute that had rescinded an earlier grant of state lands

The Supreme Court's 1904 decision in Northern Securities Co. v. United States was significant because it

showed that the Sherman Antitrust Act could be enforced against a major rail combination

announced the 'rule of reason' for deciding which combinations unlawfully restrained trade

held that manufacturing was not commerce and so lay beyond the reach of the Sherman Act

exempted labor unions from prosecution as combinations in restraint of trade

Which factor best explains why Egypt was united under a single ruler much earlier than Mesopotamia?

The Nile linked a narrow valley that deserts shielded on both sides

The Egyptians adopted iron weapons centuries before their neighbors

The Tigris and Euphrates flooded on a regular and predictable schedule

The delta cities formed a league that elected a common high king

Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan scholar trained in Islamic law, visited Mali in 1352–1353. He praised its people for their hatred of injustice, the safety of travelers on their roads, and their care in attending Friday prayers and memorizing the Quran, but he condemned customs such as women appearing in public unveiled. (paraphrased from Ibn Battuta, Travels) Which observation about the author is most important for evaluating this account?

He measured Malian society against the Islamic norms of his training

He was a paid official of Mali's ruler and was obliged to flatter him

He wrote to recruit Moroccan settlers for new colonies in West Africa

He based the account on oral epics of griots, not on his own travel

The Congo's independence in 1960 quickly became a Cold War crisis mainly because

its prime minister sought Soviet aid against a Belgian-backed secession

Belgium refused to withdraw and asked NATO to restore colonial rule

the United Nations refused to send any peacekeeping force to the country

Cuban troops intervened there on behalf of a Marxist liberation movement

“... the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” — President James Monroe, annual message to Congress (1823) Which circumstances most directly prompted this declaration?

Russian claims on the Pacific coast and fear of European intervention in Spanish America

French plans to reoccupy Louisiana and close the Mississippi River to American commerce

British plans to annex Texas and block American expansion toward the Pacific Ocean

Spanish refusal to cede Florida after American troops pursued the Seminole across the border

In the 1910s, Alice Paul's National Woman's Party differed from Carrie Chapman Catt's National American Woman Suffrage Association chiefly in its

use of White House pickets and hunger strikes to demand a federal amendment

argument that only women who owned property should be allowed to vote

insistence that the vote be won one state at a time by popular referendum

support for the administration's war effort as a way of earning the ballot

Praxis World and U.S. History Content Knowledge (5941)

Free Praxis World and U 5941 Practice Questions

10 sample questions for the Praxis World and U.S. History Content Knowledge (5941), with the correct answer and an explanation for each. No account needed. Try each one before you open the answer.

Sections covered on the exam: World History to 1450 C.E., Historical Thinking Skills, World History: 1450 C.E. to the Present, United States History: 1877 to the Present, United States History to 1877.

Question 1 · World History to 1450 C.E.
Excavators at an early Neolithic village in Southwest Asia find grain storage bins, permanent mud-brick houses for several hundred people, and skeletons with more tooth decay and shorter stature than those of foragers who had lived in the same region two thousand years earlier.
These findings best support which conclusion about the shift to agriculture?
- A.Farming villages appeared only after cities and writing had already developed
- B.Farming fed larger settled populations but often left individuals less well nourished
- C.Farming spread because it quickly made individuals healthier than foragers had been
- D.Farming was abandoned in the region once herding offered a more reliable food supply
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Farming fed larger settled populations but often left individuals less well nourished
Storage bins and permanent houses for hundreds of people show that farming supported a larger, settled population, while the tooth decay and shorter stature point to a narrower, starch-heavy diet. The tempting error is to assume that agriculture spread because it made each person healthier; the skeletal evidence here shows the opposite. Villages of this kind came long before cities and writing, not after them.
Question 2 · Historical Thinking Skills
The Roman senator Tacitus, writing about 98 C.E., described the Germanic peoples beyond the Rhine as brave, faithful in marriage, and untouched by the luxury and corruption he deplored in Rome. He most likely never visited the region and relied on earlier writers and on reports from soldiers and traders. (summary of Tacitus, Germania)
A historian using this work as evidence about Germanic society should be most cautious because Tacitus
- A.wrote to persuade the Senate to grant the Germans citizenship
- B.may have idealized the Germans in order to criticize Roman morals
- C.wrote long after Germanic peoples had settled inside the empire
- D.was a Germanic chieftain defending the customs of his own people
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. may have idealized the Germans in order to criticize Roman morals
Tacitus praises exactly the virtues he thought Rome had lost, so his portrait may tell more about a Roman moralist's concerns than about life beyond the Rhine, especially since he wrote at second hand. He was a Roman senator, not a Germanic leader, and he wrote about three centuries before the large Germanic settlements inside the empire. Nothing in the work argues for extending citizenship.
Question 3 · United States History: 1877 to the Present
The United Nations Security Council was able to authorize military action in Korea in 1950 mainly because
- A.the People's Republic of China held China's seat and chose to abstain
- B.the Soviet Union was boycotting the council and so cast no veto
- C.the General Assembly had already stripped permanent members of the veto
- D.North Korea's invasion had been publicly condemned by the Soviet Union
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. the Soviet Union was boycotting the council and so cast no veto
The Soviet delegate had walked out in January 1950 to protest the council's refusal to give China's seat to the People's Republic, so no Soviet veto was cast when the resolutions on Korea passed. China's seat was still held by the Nationalist government on Taiwan, so the People's Republic was not present to abstain. The veto itself was never removed.
Question 4 · United States History to 1877
“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” — Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison (1803)
How did the Court apply this principle in deciding the case?
- A.It held void a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that enlarged its original jurisdiction
- B.It ruled that Maryland could not tax a branch of a bank chartered by Congress
- C.It ordered Secretary of State Madison to deliver the commission Marbury had been promised
- D.It struck down a Georgia statute that had rescinded an earlier grant of state lands
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. It held void a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that enlarged its original jurisdiction
Marshall concluded that Marbury had a right to his commission but that the Court could not issue the writ he sought, because the statute giving it that power expanded its original jurisdiction beyond what Article III allows; this was the first time the Court held an act of Congress unconstitutional. Ordering delivery of the commission is the tempting error, since the Court pointedly did not do so. The other two options describe McCulloch v. Maryland and Fletcher v. Peck.
Question 5 · United States History: 1877 to the Present
The Supreme Court's 1904 decision in Northern Securities Co. v. United States was significant because it
- A.announced the 'rule of reason' for deciding which combinations unlawfully restrained trade
- B.held that manufacturing was not commerce and so lay beyond the reach of the Sherman Act
- C.showed that the Sherman Antitrust Act could be enforced against a major rail combination
- D.exempted labor unions from prosecution as combinations in restraint of trade
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. showed that the Sherman Antitrust Act could be enforced against a major rail combination
Theodore Roosevelt's administration sued to dissolve the Northern Securities holding company, and the Court's ruling revived a Sherman Act that had been nearly a dead letter against big business. The statement that manufacturing is not commerce describes United States v. E. C. Knight (1895), the decision that had weakened the act. The 'rule of reason' came later, in the Standard Oil case of 1911, and the Court did not exempt unions.
Question 6 · World History to 1450 C.E.
Which factor best explains why Egypt was united under a single ruler much earlier than Mesopotamia?
- A.The Egyptians adopted iron weapons centuries before their neighbors
- B.The Nile linked a narrow valley that deserts shielded on both sides
- C.The Tigris and Euphrates flooded on a regular and predictable schedule
- D.The delta cities formed a league that elected a common high king
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The Nile linked a narrow valley that deserts shielded on both sides
The Nile made travel and communication easy along one ribbon of farmland, and the deserts on either side limited invasion, so a single kingdom could form late in the fourth millennium B.C.E. Mesopotamia's open plain and its violent, irregular floods favored rival city-states that were not united until Sargon of Akkad, centuries afterward. Egypt's unification belongs to the Bronze Age, long before iron, and it came through conquest rather than an elected league.
Question 7 · Historical Thinking Skills
Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan scholar trained in Islamic law, visited Mali in 1352–1353. He praised its people for their hatred of injustice, the safety of travelers on their roads, and their care in attending Friday prayers and memorizing the Quran, but he condemned customs such as women appearing in public unveiled. (paraphrased from Ibn Battuta, Travels)
Which observation about the author is most important for evaluating this account?
- A.He was a paid official of Mali's ruler and was obliged to flatter him
- B.He measured Malian society against the Islamic norms of his training
- C.He wrote to recruit Moroccan settlers for new colonies in West Africa
- D.He based the account on oral epics of griots, not on his own travel
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. He measured Malian society against the Islamic norms of his training
Both the praise and the criticism follow from one standard: the author approves what agrees with the Islamic law and practice he knew and condemns what departs from it, so the account shows his point of view as well as Malian customs. He was a visitor, not an official of Mali, and he reported what he saw on his own journey. No plan to settle Moroccans in West Africa lay behind the work.
Question 8 · United States History: 1877 to the Present
The Congo's independence in 1960 quickly became a Cold War crisis mainly because
- A.Belgium refused to withdraw and asked NATO to restore colonial rule
- B.the United Nations refused to send any peacekeeping force to the country
- C.its prime minister sought Soviet aid against a Belgian-backed secession
- D.Cuban troops intervened there on behalf of a Marxist liberation movement
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. its prime minister sought Soviet aid against a Belgian-backed secession
When mineral-rich Katanga broke away with Belgian support and United Nations forces would not end the secession by force, Patrice Lumumba turned to Moscow, which alarmed Washington and led to his overthrow and death. The United Nations did send a large force in 1960. Large-scale Cuban intervention on behalf of a Marxist movement describes Angola in the 1970s, a different conflict.
Question 9 · United States History to 1877
“... the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” — President James Monroe, annual message to Congress (1823)
Which circumstances most directly prompted this declaration?
- A.French plans to reoccupy Louisiana and close the Mississippi River to American commerce
- B.Russian claims on the Pacific coast and fear of European intervention in Spanish America
- C.British plans to annex Texas and block American expansion toward the Pacific Ocean
- D.Spanish refusal to cede Florida after American troops pursued the Seminole across the border
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Russian claims on the Pacific coast and fear of European intervention in Spanish America
Monroe's noncolonization principle answered Russia's expanding claims on the Northwest coast, and the message as a whole responded to fears that the continental monarchies would help Spain regain its newly independent colonies. The Louisiana question had been settled in 1803 and Florida by the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, both before the message. British interest in Texas belongs to the 1840s.
Question 10 · United States History: 1877 to the Present
In the 1910s, Alice Paul's National Woman's Party differed from Carrie Chapman Catt's National American Woman Suffrage Association chiefly in its
- A.argument that only women who owned property should be allowed to vote
- B.insistence that the vote be won one state at a time by popular referendum
- C.use of White House pickets and hunger strikes to demand a federal amendment
- D.support for the administration's war effort as a way of earning the ballot
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. use of White House pickets and hunger strikes to demand a federal amendment
Paul's party borrowed confrontational tactics from British suffragettes, picketing the White House in 1917 and staging hunger strikes in jail to hold the party in power responsible for a federal amendment. Catt's larger association combined state campaigns with lobbying and publicly backed the war effort, so those two options describe the mainstream organization rather than Paul's. Neither group asked for a property qualification.

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