Quiz 1 · Reading a Social Studies Passage — Ancient America to the Singularity

Who made this?

1. Who made it?: The picture is a painting, not a photograph: the city as it may have looked about the year 1150, painted from the archaeology by Herb Roe in 2015. The mound at its center was built by the people of Cahokia, a city on the floodplain of the Mississippi River, across from where St. Louis stands today. Their own name for themselves and for their city is not recorded. “Cahokia” is the name of a different nation, the Cahokia of the Illinois confederacy, who were living nearby when French explorers arrived in the 1600s.
2. When, and where?: In stages, between about 900 and 1200, in what is now Collinsville, Illinois. Core samples show about fourteen building stages.
3. Why, and for whom?: As a platform. A wooden building about 100 feet long stood on the top; the city’s leaders may have governed from it or lived there. The whole mound was raised by hand, one basket of earth at a time: about 22 million cubic feet of it.
4. Who has it now, and how did it get there?: The State of Illinois holds it as Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, and UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1982. The name “Monks Mound” comes from Trappist monks who farmed its terraces from 1809 to 1813. For most of the 1800s the land was private farmland; the state began buying it in the 1920s. A highway runs past the foot of the mound.
5. Whose voice is missing here, and where can we hear it?: The builders left no writing that anyone has found. Several Native nations count the people of Cahokia among their ancestors; the Osage Nation is one. Their histories, and the archaeologists’ digging, are what we have.

For your notebook: the city’s own name is lost, and its largest mound wears the name of monks who farmed it for four years. What would you call it?

Sources: Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site; UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site”; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Cahokia Mounds.”

First, the idea

Every Social Studies question on the test comes with something to read first, and most of them ask one of three things: what the passage is mainly about, what one detail says, or what one part of the passage does. This quiz is about telling those three apart, and about reading the question as carefully as the passage.

A mound and its baskets. Monks Mound was raised one basket of earth at a time, about 22 million cubic feet of it, and no single basket looks like the mound. A passage works the same way. The central idea is the shape of the whole. The details are the basketfuls that make it. Hold up one basket and call it the mound, and you have a detail, not the idea. Describe the whole floodplain, and you have gone too wide.

The central idea is what the whole passage is about, said in one sentence that every part of the passage would agree with. Sometimes the first or last sentence says it. Often the test gives you a passage where no single sentence says it, and you have to build it from the baskets.

A detail is one fact, number, name, or example inside the passage. Detail questions usually begin “According to the passage” or “The passage states.” Those words are a rule: answer from the passage only, even if you know more from somewhere else.

What the question asks is the part readers skip. Look at the question’s verb and its limit. “Mainly about” wants the shape. “Which detail supports” wants a basket that holds up a particular idea. “Best summarizes” wants the shape, short. “Sentences 9 to 12” means those sentences and no others.

The wrong answers on the test are built on purpose, and they come in a few molds. Too broad covers more ground than the passage does. Too narrow is one true detail offered as the whole. The twist uses the passage’s own words to say something the passage does not say. Not in the passage may be true in the world, but the passage never says it, and the question said “according to the passage.”

Worked example — thinking out loud

Maize, the corn we eat, was bred from a wild grass called teosinte in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. A teosinte ear holds only a few hard kernels in a tough case. Over thousands of years, farmers saved seed from the plants with the biggest and softest kernels, and the plant changed under their hands. By the time Europeans arrived, maize was the main food of the Maya, the Mexica, and the people of Cahokia, and today it is one of the three largest crops in the world.

The question: What is the passage mainly about?

My first pull is toward the most surprising sentence, the one about the few hard kernels in a tough case. It is vivid and I remember it. But that is one basket. If I call it the mound, I have chosen too narrow.

So I ask what every sentence is doing. The first says where and when maize began. The second says what the wild plant was like. The third says how farmers changed it. The fourth says how far it went. All four are about one thing: how people turned a wild grass into a crop that fed the Americas. That sentence is not in the passage, but every sentence agrees with it. That is the central idea.

One more check. “The history of farming in the Americas” would be too broad: the passage is about one plant. “Maize is the largest crop in the world” is a twist: the passage says one of the three largest, and only in its last sentence.

Part A · The skill by itself

1. Read the passage, then choose.

The Inca built a road system through the Andes that reached from what is now Colombia to Chile. Runners called chasquis carried messages along it in relays, and storehouses stood at intervals with food and supplies. Armies, officials, and llama caravans used the roads; ordinary people needed permission to travel on them.

The passage is mainly about

how chasquis were trained for their work the Inca road system and how it was used why the Andes mountains are hard to cross the storehouses along the Inca roads

2. Read the passage, then choose.

Teotihuacan, north of today’s Mexico City, was one of the largest cities in the world around 500 CE, with perhaps 100,000 people. The name of the people who built it is unknown. “Teotihuacan” is the name the Mexica gave the empty city centuries later, in their language, Nahuatl.

According to the passage, who named the city Teotihuacan?

the people who built it the Mexica, centuries after it was built Spanish priests in the 1500s the passage does not say

3. Read the passage, then choose.

Many farming peoples of North America grew corn, beans, and squash together in one hill of soil. The corn stalk gave the beans a pole to climb. The beans put nitrogen into the soil, and corn needs nitrogen. The broad squash leaves shaded the ground and kept weeds down. The Haudenosaunee call the three crops the Three Sisters.

Which sentence states a detail that supports the idea that the three crops helped each other?

“Many farming peoples of North America grew corn, beans, and squash together in one hill of soil.” “The corn stalk gave the beans a pole to climb.” “The Haudenosaunee call the three crops the Three Sisters.” “The Three Sisters were grown across what is now New York.”

Part B · The skill in the wild

A passage of the length the test uses, with its sentences numbered, and a figure. Read the whole thing once before you look at the questions.

A City Without Its Name

1Nine hundred years ago, the largest city north of Mexico stood on the floodplain of the Mississippi River, across from the place where St. Louis is today. 2Archaeologists call it Cahokia, but that is not what its people called it. 3The name belongs to a different nation, the Cahokia of the Illinois confederacy, who were living nearby when French explorers arrived in the 1600s, long after the city had emptied. 4The builders’ own name for their city is not recorded, because they left no writing that anyone has found.

5At its height, between about 1050 and 1150, Cahokia may have held 10,000 to 20,000 people, about as many as a major European city held at the time. 6Its people built about 120 earthen mounds across six square miles. 7The largest, now called Monks Mound, rises about 100 feet in four terraces, and its base covers about 14 acres, slightly more than the base of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. 8It was raised by hand, basket by basket, in stages over about three hundred years, and a long wooden building stood on top.

9By about 1350 the city was empty. 10Archaeologists have proposed floods, drought, the cutting of nearby forests, and conflict as causes, and they do not agree. 11Today the State of Illinois keeps about 70 of the mounds as a historic site, and UNESCO listed Cahokia as a World Heritage Site in 1982. 12A highway runs through the middle of the old city.

Seen from above, at one scale. The solid outline is the greatest length and width of Monks Mound; its sides are not straight, and its base covers about 14 acres inside that outline (Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site). The dashed square is the base of the Great Pyramid, about 756 feet on each side, about 13 acres.

Written for this quiz from: Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site; UNESCO World Heritage Centre; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Cahokia Mounds.”

4. The passage is mainly about

why the people of Cahokia left their city a large city built by Native people in what is now Illinois, what is known about it, and what is not the history of the Mississippi River valley how Monks Mound compares with the Great Pyramid

5. According to the passage, where does the name Cahokia come from?

the language of the people who built the city a nation that lived nearby centuries after the city emptied French explorers, who named it after a fort the State of Illinois, when it made the site a park

6. The word “may” in sentence 5 tells the reader that

the writer is not sure the city existed the population figure is an estimate, not a count the writer disagrees with the archaeologists the city was smaller than the cities of Europe

7. Which is the best summary of sentences 9 to 12?

A flood destroyed Cahokia in 1350. The city emptied by about 1350 for reasons still debated; the site is protected today, though a highway crosses it. UNESCO made Cahokia a World Heritage Site in 1982. Archaeologists never agree about why cities fall.

8. Complete the sentence so that it matches the passage and the figure.

The base of Monks Mound is [larger than / the same size as / smaller than] the base of the Great Pyramid, and the mound was built [in a single season / in stages over about three centuries / by Trappist monks].

The key — and why the tempting answers tempt

1. B. Every sentence is about the road system: where it ran, who ran on it, what stood beside it, who was allowed on it. D is too narrow, one basket (the storehouses). A is not in the passage; it never says how chasquis were trained. C is too broad and also not there; the passage never says the Andes are hard to cross.

2. B. Sentence 3 says it outright: the Mexica gave the name, centuries later, in Nahuatl. A is a flat contradiction of sentence 2. C may be true of other places, but it is not in this passage, and the question said “according to the passage.” D tempts because the passage does say one thing is unknown, the builders’ name; but the namer is stated. The twist: right word (“unknown”), wrong question.

3. B. The stalk as a pole is one crop doing something for another. That is support for “helped each other.” A restates the topic; growing together is not the same as helping each other. C is true but idle: a name supports nothing. D is not in the passage at all.

4. B. The passage moves from the city’s name to its size to its end to its present, and every part fits “what is known and what is not.” A and D are each one basket, too narrow: A is sentences 9–10, D is sentence 7. C is too broad; the passage is about one city, not the valley’s history.

5. B. Sentence 3. A contradicts sentence 2. C and D add facts the passage never states; the French appear in sentence 3 only as the people who arrived, and the state appears in sentence 11 only as the keeper of the site.

6. B. “May have held” is the writer’s way of marking an estimate, and the range “10,000 to 20,000” confirms it. Reading those small words is part of reading the passage. A turns a careful word into a doubt about the whole city. C invents a quarrel. D is the twist: sentence 5 says about as many as a major European city, not fewer.

7. B. It covers all four sentences and keeps the passage’s care: “still debated,” not one cause. A picks one proposed cause and states it as fact, a twist. C is too narrow, sentence 11 alone. D is too broad; sentence 10 says they disagree about this city, not about all cities.

8. larger than; in stages over about three centuries. Sentence 7 and the figure give the first; sentence 8 gives the second. “By Trappist monks” is the twist: the monks named it by farming it in the 1800s, six hundred years after it was built. The passage does not say that, but the card at the top of the page does, and the test will sometimes tempt you with a true fact from outside the passage.

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