NewsTracker Answers for week of Sep. 03, 2018

Q: Namibian officials in Berlin last week received the remains of some of the indigenous people killed in their country by German forces in a genocide more than a century ago. Where is the southwest African nation of Namibia?

Circle the area on this map

Q: Between 1904 and 1908, German troops were ordered to wipe out native tribes who had resisted colonization. Skulls and other body parts of some of the dead were sent back to Europe where they were used in a discredited attempt to prove European racial superiority. The Germans were ousted during World War I by troops from Namibia’s southern neighbor …

A. Angola

B. Botswana

C. South Africa

D. Zambia

C. Namibia’s western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. South Africa was comprised of former colonies of Britain, a foe of Germany in World War I.

Q: The Germans were hardly the only Europeans to slaughter indigenous people. What modern central African nation was once ravaged by the king of Belgium who ruled the land as his private property?

A. Algeria

B. DR Congo

C. Madgascar

D. Senegal

B. What is now the Democratic Republic of Congo was taken over in 1885 by King Leopold II, who used murder and mutilation – chopping off hands – to force the native population to extract ivory, rubber and minerals. It is estimated that half the population died before Leopold II’s personal rule ended in 1908.

Q: The extinction of the indigenous people who had lived on the island of Tasmania for 40,000 years served as an inspiration for H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” tale of Martian invaders intent on wiping out humanity. The native Tasmanians were hunted down by European settlers of what former British colony?

A. Australia

B. Canada

C. South Africa

D. United States

A. Tasmania is about 150 miles south of Australia, and its Aboriginal population was estimated to have been between 3,000 and 15,000 when the British started arriving in 1803. Thirty years later only 400 remained and were removed to internment camps where the last person of solely Tasmanian descent died in 1905.

Q: Since prehistoric times invaders have killed off existing populations in conquered territories in what would be now considered genocides. From the start of European colonization around 1500, the total population of native Americans declined by about how much by 1900?

A. 98%

B. 80%

C. 60%

D. 40%

B. By 1900 the indigenous population in the Americas declined by more than 80%, and by as much as 98% in some areas. The effects of Old World diseases during the first century of colonialism contributed greatly to the death toll, while violence, displacement and warfare by colonizers added more deaths in subsequent centuries.