CLASSIFYING SOCIETIES

Although humans have established many types of societies throughout history, sociologists and
anthropologists tend to classify different societies according to the degree to which different groups within
a society have unequal access to advantages such as resources, prestige or power, and usually refer to four
basic types of societies. From least to most socially Complex they are clans, tribes, chiefdoms and states.
Clan
These are small-scale societies of hunters and gatherers, generally of fewer than 100 people, who move
seasonally to exploit wild (undomesticated) food resources. Most surviving hunter-gatherer groups are of
this kind, such as the Hadza of Tanzania or the San of southern Africa. Clan members are generally kinsfolk,
related by descent or marriage. Clans lack formal leaders, so there are no marked economic differences or
disparities in status among their members.
Because clans are composed of mobile groups of hunter-gatherers, their sites consist mainly of seasonally
occupied camps, and other smaller and more specialised sites. Among the latter are kill or butchery sites—
locations where large mammals are killed and sometimes butchered— and work sites, where tools are
made or other specific activities carried out. The base camp of such a group may give evidence of rather
insubstantial dwellings or temporary shelters, along with the debris of residential occupation.
Tribe
These are generally larger than mobile hunter-gatherer groups, but rarely number more than a few
thousand, and their diet or subsistence is based largely on cultivated plants and domesticated animals.
Typically, they are settled farmers, but they may be nomadic with a very different, mobile economy based
on the intensive exploitation of livestock. These are generally multi-community societies, with the
individual communities integrated into the larger society through kinship ties. Although some tribes have
officials and even a "capital" or seat of government, such officials lack the economic base necessary for
effective use of
The typical settlement pattern for tribes is one of settled agricultural homesteads or villages.
Characteristically, no one settlement dominates any of the others in the region. Instead, the archaeologist
finds evidence for isolated, permanently occupied houses or for permanent villages. Such villages may be
made up of a collection of free-standing houses, like those of the first farms of the Danube valley in
Europe. Or they may be clusters of buildings grouped together, for example, the pueblos of the American
Southwest, and the early farming village or small town of Catalhoyuk in modern Turkey.
Chiefdom
These operate on the principle of ranking—differences in social status between people. Different lineages
(a lineage is a group claiming descent from a common ancestor) are graded on a scale of prestige, and the
senior lineage, and hence the society as a whole, is governed by a chief. Prestige and rank are determined
by how closely related one is to the chief, and there is no true stratification into classes. The role of the
chief is crucial.
Often, there is local specialisation in craft products, and surpluses of these and of foodstuffs are
periodically paid as obligation to the chief. He uses these to maintain his retainers, and may use them for
redistribution to his subjects. The chiefdom generally has a center of power, often with temples,
residences of the chief and his retainers, and craft specialists. Chiefdoms vary greatly in size, but the range
is generally between about 5000 and 20,000 persons.
Early State
These preserve many of the features of chiefdoms, but the ruler (perhaps a king or sometimes a queen)
has explicit authority to establish laws and also to enforce them by the use of a standing army. Society no
longer depends totally upon kin relationships: it is now stratified into different classes. Agricultural workers
and the poorer urban dwellers form the lowest classes, with the craft specialists above, and the priests and
kinsfolk of the ruler higher still. The functions of the ruler are often separated from those of the priest:
palace is distinguished from temple. The society is viewed as a territory owned by the ruling lineage and
populated by tenants who have an obligation to pay taxes. The central capital houses a bureaucratic
administration of officials; one of their principal purposes is to collect revenue (often in the form of taxes
and tolls) and distribute it to government, army and craft specialists. Many early states developed complex
redistribution systems to support these essential services.
This rather simple social typology, set out by Elman Service and elaborated by William Sanders and Joseph
Marino, can be criticised, and it should not be used unthinkingly. Nevertheless, if we are seeking to talk
about early societies, we must use words and hence concepts to do so. Service’s categories provide a good
framework to help organise our thoughts.
Question 1 - 7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE FALSE NOT GIVEN
1. There’s little economic difference between members of a clan.
2. The farmers of a tribe grow a wide range of plants.
3. One settlement is more important than any other settlements in a tribe.
4. A member’s status in a chiefdom is determined by how much land he owns.
5. There are people who craft goods in chiefdoms.
6. The king keeps the order of a state by using an army.
7. Bureaucratic officers receive higher salaries than other members.
Question 8 - 13
Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS OR/AND A NUMBER from the
passage for each answer.
8 What are made at the clan work sites?
9 What is the other way of life for tribes besides settled farming?
10 How are Catalhoyuk’s housing units arranged ?
11 What does a chief give to his subjects as rewards besides crafted goods?
12 What is the largest possible population of a chiefdom?
13 Which group of people is at the bottom of an early state but higher than the farmers?

Undoing our Emotions

A. Three generations ago, 180 young women wrote essays describing why they wanted to join a convent
(a religious community of nuns). Years later, a team of psychological researchers came across these
autobiographies in the convent’s archives. The researchers were seeking material to confirm earlier
studies hinting at a link between having a good vocabulary in youth and a low risk of Alzheimer’s
disease in old age. What they found was even more amazing. The researchers found that, although the
young women were in their early twenties when they wrote their essays, the emotions expressed in
these writings were predictive of how long they would live: those with upbeat autobiographies lived
more than ten years longer than those whose language was more neutral. Deborah Danner, a
psychologist at the University of Kentucky who spearheaded the study, noted that the results were
particularly striking because all members of the convent lived similar lifestyles, eliminating many
variables that normally make it difficult to interpret longevity studies. It was a phenomenal finding’, she
says. ‘A researcher gets a finding like that maybe once in a lifetime.’ However, she points out that no
one has been able to determine why positive emotions might have such life-extending effects.
B. Barbara Fredrickson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, believes that part of the
answer is the ‘undo effect’. According to this theory, positive emotions help you live longer by shutting
down the effects of negative ones. Fredrickson’s theory begins with the observation that negative
emotions, like fear and stress, enhance our flight-or-fight response to very real threats. However, even
when the emergency is gone, negative emotions produce lingering effects. Brooks Gump, a stress
researcher at the State University of New York, explains that one of these effects is excessive
cardiovascular reactivity. Behaviourally, Gump says, this reactivity is related to excessive vigilance: the
state of being constantly on guard for potential dangers. Not only is it physically draining to live in a
perpetual state of high vigilance, but high cardiovascular reactivity could be linked to increased chances
of a heart attack.
C. Fredrickson believes positive emotions work their magic by producing a rapid unwinding of pent-up
tension, restoring the system to normal. People who quickly bounce back from stress often speed the
process by harnessing such emotions as amusement, interest, excitement, and happiness, she says. To
 test her theory, Fredrickson told a group of student volunteers that they had only a few minutes to
prepare a speech that would be critiqued by experts. After letting the students get nervous about that,
Fredrickson then told them they wouldn’t actually have to deliver their speeches. She monitored heart
rates and blood pressure. Not surprisingly, all students got nervous about their speeches, but those
who viewed the experiment with good-humored excitement saw their heart rates return to normal
much more quickly than those who were angry about being fooled. In a second experiment,
Fredrickson reported that even those who normally were slow to bounce back could be coached to
recover more quickly by being told to view the experiment as a challenge, rather than a threat.
D. Fredrickson believes that positive emotions make people more flexible and creative. Negative
emotions, she says, give a heightened sense of detail that makes us hypersensitive to minute clues
related to the source of a threat. But that also produces ‘tunnel vision’ in which we ignore anything
unrelated to the danger. Fredrickson speculated that just as positive emotions can undo the
cardiovascular effects of negative ones, they may also reverse the attention-narrowing effects of
negative feelings: broadening our perspectives.
E. To verify her theory, Fredrickson showed a group of students some film clips- some saw frightening
clips, some saw humorous ones or peaceful ones. They then did a matching test in which they were
shown a simple drawing and asked which of two other drawings it most resembled. The drawings were
designed so that people would tend to give one answer if they focused on details, and another answer
if they focused on the big picture. The results confirmed Fredrickson’s suspicion that positive emotions
affect our perceptions. Students who had seen the humorous or peaceful clips were more likely to
match objects according to broad impressions.
F. This fits with the role that positive emotions might have played in early human tribes, Fredrickson says.
Negative emotions provided focus, which was important for surviving in life-or-death situations, but
the ability to feel positive emotions was of long-term value because it opened the mind to new ideas.
Humour is a good example of this. She says: ‘The emotions are transient, but the resources are durable.
If you building a friendship through being playful, that friendship is a lasting resource.’ So while the
good feelings may pass, the friendship remains. On an individual level, Fredrickson’s theory also says
that taking time to do things that make you feel happy isn’t simply self-indulgent. Not only are these
emotions good for the individual, but they are also good for society.
G. Other researchers are intrigued by Fredrickson’s findings. Susan Folkman, of the University of
California, has spent two decades studying how people cope with long-term stresses such as
bereavement, or caring for a chronically ill child. Contrary to what one might expect, she says, these
people frequently experience positive emotions. ‘These emotions aren’t there by accident’, she adds.
‘Mother Nature doesn’t work that way, I think that they give a person time out from the intense stress
to restore their resources and keep going. This is very consistent with Fredrickson’s work.’

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage has seven sections, A-G. Which section contains the following information? Write the
correct letter, A-G, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. a conclusion that it is possible to train people to deal with anxiety conclusive evidence that lifespan can
be influenced by emotions.
2. an explanation of the way negative emotions affect what people concentrate on
3 an experiment that showed how a positive outlook can help people adjust to
4. a stressful situation faster than others
5. a discovery beyond what researchers were investigating
6. an experiment where the nature of a material seen by participants affected the way they performed a
task
Questions 7-10 Look at the following statements (Questions 7-10) and the list of researchers below. Match
each statement with the correct researcher, A-D. Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 7-10 on your
answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.
 7. People whose daily lives are stressful often have surprisingly positive emotions.
8. The body’s reaction to a crisis may trigger a life-threatening event.
9. It is unusual to have a study group whose circumstances were very alike.
10. The reasons for a link between positive emotions and a longer life have not been established.

Questions 11-13
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your
answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

List of Researchers In early tribes, negative emotions gave humans the ________
that they needed to deal with emergencies.
A. Deborah Danner
Fredrickson believes that a passing positive emotion can lead to
an enduring asset such as a _________ , which is useful in times
B. Barbara Fredrickson to come.

C. Brooks Gump Fredrickson also believes that both individuals

and ________________ benefit from positive emotions.
D. Susan Folkman

The Voynich Manuscript

The starkly modern Beinecke Library at Yale University is home to some of the most valuable books in the
world: first folios of Shakespeare, Gutenberg Bibles and manuscripts from the early Middle Ages, Yet the
library’s most controversial possession is an unprepossessing vellum manuscript about the size of a hardback
book, containing 240-odd pages of drawings and text of unknown age and authorship. Catalogued as MS408,
the manuscript would attract little attention were it not for the fact that the drawings hint at esoteric
knowledge, while the text seems to be some sort of code – one that no-one has been able to break. It’s known
to scholars as the Voynich manuscript, after the American book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who bought the
manuscript from a Jesuit college in Italy in 1912.
Over the years, the manuscript has attracted the attention of everyone from amateur dabblers to top
codebreakers, all determined to succeed where countless others have failed. Academic research papers, books
and websites are devoted to making sense of the contents of the manuscript, which are freely available to all
“Most other mysteries involve secondhand reports,’ says Dr Gordon Rugg of Keele University, a leading
Voynich expert. But this is one that you can see for yourself.
It is certainly strange: page after page of drawings of weird plants, astrological symbolism and human figures,
accompanied by a script that looks like some form of shorthand. What does it say and what are the drawings
about? Voynich himself believed that the manuscript was the work of the 13th century English monk Roger
Bacon, famed for his knowledge of alchemy, philosophy and science. In 1921 Voynich’s view that Bacon was
the writer appeared to win support from the work of William Newbold, Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Pennsylvania, who claimed to have found the key to the cipher system used by Bacon. According
to Newbold, the manuscript proved that Bacon had access to a microscope centuries before they were
supposedly first invented. They claim that this mediaeval monk had observed living cells created a sensation. It
soon became clear, however, that Newbold had fallen victim to wishful thinking. Other scholars showed that
his ‘decoding’ methods produced a host of possible interpretations. The Voynich manuscript has continued to
defy the efforts of world-class experts. In 1944, a team was assembled to tackle the mystery, led by William
Friedman, the renowned American codebreaker. They began with the most basic code breaking task: analysing
the relative frequencies of the characters making up the text, looking for signs of an underlying structure. Yet
Friedman’s team soon found themselves in deep water. The precise size of the ‘alphabet’ of the Voynich
manuscript was unclear: it’s possible to make out more than 70 distinct symbols among the 170,000-character
text. Furthermore, Friedman discovered that some words and phrases appeared more often than expected in
a standard language, casting doubt on claims that the manuscript concealed a real language, as encryption
typically reduces word frequencies.
Friedman concluded that the most plausible resolution of this paradox was that “Voynichese’ is some sort of
specially created artificial language, whose words are devised from concepts, rather than linguistics. So, could
the Voynich manuscript be the earliest known example of an artificial language? Friedman’s hypothesis
commands respect because of the lifetime of crypt analytical expertise he brought to bear,’ says Rob Churchill,
co-. author of 7heVoynich Manuscript, that still leaves a host of questions unanswered, however, such as the
identity of the author and the meaning of the bizarre drawings. ‘It does little to advance our understanding of
the manuscript as a whole,’ says Churchill. Even though Friedman was working more than 60 years ago, he
suspected that major insights would come reality that the device that had already transformed codebreaking:
the computer. In this he was right – it is now the key tool for uncovering clues about the pleasure from
manuscript’s language.
The insights so far have been perplexing. For example, in 2001 another leading Voynich scholar, Dr Gabriel
Landin of Birmingham University in the UK, published the results of his study of the manuscript using a
pattern-detecting method called spectral analysis. This revealed evidence that the manuscript contains
genuine words, rather than random nonsense, consistent with the existence of some underlying natural
language. Yet the following year, Voynich expert Ren Zandbergen of the European Space Agency in Darmstadt,
Germany showed that the entropy of the text (a measure of the rate of transfer of information) was consistent
with Friedman’s suspicions that an artificial language had been used.
Many are convinced that the Voynich manuscript isn’t a hoax. For how could a medieval hoaxer create so
many telltale signs of a message from random nonsense? Yet even this has been challenged in new research
by Rugg.
Using a system, first published by the Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano in 1150in which a specially
constructed grille issued to pick out symbols from a table, Rugg found he could rapidly generate text with
many of the basic traits of the Voynich manuscript. Publishing his results in 2004Rugg stresses that he hadn’t
set out to prove the manuscript a hoax. ‘I simply demonstrated that it’s feasible to hoax something this
complex in a few months, he says. Inevitably, others beg to differ. Some scholars, such as Zandbergen, still
suspect the text has genuine meaning, though believe it may never be decipherable. Others, such as Churchill,
have suggested that the sheer weirdness of the illustrations and text hint at an author who had lost touch with
reality. What is clear is that the book-sized manuscript kept under lock and key at Yale University has lost none
of its fascination. “Many derive great intellectual pleasure from solving puzzles,’ says Rugg. The Voynich
manuscript is as challenging a puzzle as anyone could ask for.
Questions 27- 30
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet, write
27. It is uncertain when the Voynich manuscript was written.
28. Wilfrid Voynich donated the manuscript to the Beinecke Library.
29. Interest in the Voynich manuscript extends beyond that of academics and professional codebreakers.
30. The text of the Voynich manuscript contains just under 70 symbols
Questions 31 – 34
Look at the following statements (Questions 31-34) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A-H.
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 31-34 on your answer sheet.
31. The number of times that some words occur make it unlikely that the manuscript is based on an authentic
language.
32. Unlike some other similar objects of fascination, people can gain direct access to the Voynich manuscript.
33. The person who wrote the manuscript may not have been entirely sane.
34. It is likely that the author of the manuscript is the same person as suggested by Wilfrid Voynich
List of People
A Gordon Rugg B Roger Bacon
C William Newbold D William Friedman
E Rob Churchill F Gabriel Landini
 G Ren Zandbergen H Girolamo Cardano
Questions 35-39
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 35-39
on your answer sheet.
Voynich Researchers
William Newbold believed that the author of the Voynich manuscript had been able to look at cells through a
35…………………., Other researchers later demonstrated that there were flaws in his argument. William
Friedman concluded that the manuscript was written in an artificial language that was based on 36………………
He couldn’t find out the meaning of this language but he believed that the 37 ……………………would continue to
bring advances in code breaking.
Dr Gabriel Landini used a system known as 38…………………… in his research, and claims to have demonstrated
the presence of genuine words.
Dr Gordon Rugg’s system involved a grille, that made it possible to quickly select symbols that appeared in a
39……………………Rugg’s conclusion was that the manuscript lacked genuine meaning.
Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, Cor D
Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.
The writer’s main aim in this passage is to
1. explain the meaning of the manuscript.
2. determine the true identity of the manuscript’s author.
3. describe the numerous attempts to decode the manuscript.
4. identify which research into the manuscript has had the most media coverage.