Reading Practice Test 5: Mixed Question Types

Read the text below and answer questions 1-13.

Walking the Stone Giants

For centuries, visitors to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) have puzzled over the same question: how did a small Polynesian population move hundreds of multi-tonne stone statues, known as moai, from the quarry where they were carved to platforms scattered across the island, often several kilometres away? Early explanations assumed the islanders must have used wooden rollers or sledges dragged across cleared paths, a method that would have required enormous quantities of timber and manpower. For decades this remained the standard account, despite there being surprisingly little physical evidence — no worn roller-tracks, no large deposits of discarded rope or sledge fragments — to support it.

A different explanation gained attention when archaeologists Dana Ostrander and Paul Reyes began investigating island oral tradition, which consistently describes the statues as having 'walked' to their final positions rather than having been dragged. Rather than dismissing this as folklore, the pair wondered whether it might describe an actual transport technique: moving each moai upright, in a rocking, side-to-side motion, using ropes attached at three points around the statue's head.

To test the idea, the team built a precise 5-tonne concrete replica of a moai and recruited eighteen volunteers, split into three rope teams. By pulling in a coordinated rhythm — left, right, and a stabilising tug from behind — the volunteers found they could rock the statue's rounded base forward in short arcs, walking it in a zigzag path much like someone shuffling a heavy wardrobe across a room without lifting it. The replica covered a hundred metres in under an hour, with far less physical strain than the team had anticipated.

Ostrander argues that this was no accident. The moai were carved with a forward lean and a distinctively wide, rounded base — features that make little sense if the statues were always going to be dragged flat on a sledge, but which are close to ideal for controlled rocking. Reyes points to worn, rounded edges on the bases of several statues abandoned along old transport roads, a wear pattern the team says is more consistent with a rocking gait than with dragging.

Not every specialist is convinced that walking explains every statue's journey. Some moai were moved across terrain that would have made rocking impractical, such as steep or muddy sections of road, and a handful of researchers maintain that sledges were likely still used for those stretches. Ostrander accepts this, noting that the islanders were probably practical enough to combine methods depending on the ground. What the experiment does show, she says, is that walking was a genuine, physically plausible option — not simply a myth to be dismissed.

Read the text below and answer questions 14-26.

Iceland's Cod Quota System

Cod has been central to Iceland's economy for centuries, and by the mid-twentieth century the fishery had become one of the country's most important industries. Open access to the fishing grounds, combined with increasingly efficient trawlers, meant that by the early 1980s catches were badly outpacing what the cod population could sustain. Marine biologists warned that without intervention, the stock faced a serious and possibly irreversible decline.

In response, the Icelandic government introduced a system of Individual Transferable Quotas, or ITQs, in 1984. Each year, a scientific committee estimates the Total Allowable Catch based on stock surveys, and this total is divided into individual quotas allocated to vessel owners according to their historical share of the catch. Crucially, these quotas are not fixed to a single vessel or owner: they can be bought, sold, or leased, allowing fishing rights to move toward those who can harvest them most efficiently.

The policy was controversial from the outset. Owners of large trawlers, who held substantial historical catch records, received correspondingly large quotas, while owners of small boats in coastal villages often received barely enough to remain viable. Many smaller operators argued the system rewarded existing scale rather than skill or need. Nonetheless, over the following fifteen years, the cod stock showed steady signs of recovery, and by the late 1990s catches had stabilised at a level well below the historic peak, but considerably more predictable than during the years of open competition.

That stability came at a social cost. As quotas were traded, they tended to concentrate in the hands of fewer, larger companies, often based in a handful of ports. Several small fishing communities that had depended on local boats for generations saw their quotas sold away entirely, leaving harbours empty and processing plants closed even as the national cod population recovered. Economists studying the policy have described it as a case where a resource was successfully rescued biologically while leaving unresolved questions about who should benefit from that recovery.

An international fisheries certification body reviewing the Icelandic cod fishery in the early 2000s initially hesitated over these social concerns, given that its usual focus was strictly environmental. After extended consultation, the reviewers concluded that the fishery met their sustainability criteria on biological grounds, while separately recommending that Iceland consider policy measures to support the coastal communities affected by quota consolidation. Since then, several other countries managing their own depleted fish stocks have studied the Icelandic system as a possible model, while debating how to avoid its social side effects.