01 Converging Cultures, Prehistory-1763

Question 1

radiocarbon dating

Answer 1

a method used by scientists to determine how old objects are by measuring the radioactivity left in carbon-14

Question 2

Ice Age

Answer 2

a period of time beginning about 100,000 years ago when the earth’s water froze into huge ice sheets

Question 3

glaciers

Answer 3

huge ice sheets

Question 4

Beringia

Answer 4

during the Ice Age, an area of dry land that connected Asia with the part of North America that is now Alaska

Question 5

nomads

Answer 5

people who continually move from place to place in search of food and water

Question 6

agricultural revolution

Answer 6

the period of time about 9,000 to 10,000 years ago when Native Americans in Mesoamerica learned how to plant and raise crops

Question 7

maize

Answer 7

a large-seeded grass today known as corn

Question 8

civilization

Answer 8

a highly organized society marked by advanced knowledge of trade, government, the arts, science, and often a written language

Question 9

obsidian

Answer 9

volcanic glass

Question 10

kivas

Answer 10

ceremonial rooms of the Anasazi

Question 11

pueblos

Answer 11

the Spanish word for villages

Question 12

kachina

Answer 12

a good spirit of the Pueblo people

Question 13

Algonquian

Answer 13

language of Native Americans who lived in areas that later became known as New England, Delaware, the Ohio River valley, and Virginia

Question 14

Iroquoian

Answer 14

language of Native Americans who lived in areas that later became known as New York, southern Ontario and north to Georgian Bay

Question 15

slash-and-burn agriculture

Answer 15

the practice of cutting down forests and then burning the cleared land to use for farming

Question 16

longhouses

Answer 16

rectangular houses with barrel-shaped roofs covered in bark

Question 17

wigwams

Answer 17

cone- or dome-shaped houses made using bent poles covered with hides or bark

Question 18

kinship groups

Answer 18

extended families

Question 19

Dekanawidah

Answer 19

a shaman or tribal elder who helped found the Iroquois Confederacy

Question 20

Hiawatha

Answer 20

a Mohawk chief who helped found the Iroquois Confederacy

Question 21

Sahara

Answer 21

an Arabic word for desert; a desert in the interior of West Africa

Question 22

savannah

Answer 22

a kind of rolling grassland

Question 23

Islam

Answer 23

the religious faith that includes the belief in one god whose prophet is Muhammad

Question 24

Muslims

Answer 24

the followers of Islam

Question 25

Soninke

Answer 25

the people of the Ghana empire

Question 26

mosques

Answer 26

Muslim places of worship

Question 27

Malinke

Answer 27

the people of the Mali empire

Question 28

Sorko

Answer 28

the people of the Songhai empire

Question 29

Yoruba

Answer 29

the people of Ife along West Africa’s southern coast

Question 30

matrilineal

Answer 30

the tracing of lineage or descent through mothers

Question 31

Crusades

Answer 31

military expeditions by European Christians in the late 1000s to the 1200s to regain the Holy Land from the Muslims

Question 32

Roman Empire

Answer 32

the empire that dominated much of Europe for centuries and collapsed by A.D. 476

Question 33

feudalism

Answer 33

the political system that developed in western Europe during the Middle Ages in which the king gave estates to nobles in exchange for their military support

Question 34

manorialism

Answer 34

the economic system in western Europe during the Middle Ages in which peasants provided services for the lord of the manor in return for his protection

Question 35

serf

Answer 35

a peasant who worked the land of a manor and who was not allowed to leave it without permission

Question 36

Renaissance

Answer 36

an intellectual revolution in western Europe that began around A.D. 1350 and lasted until around 1600

Question 37

astrolabe

Answer 37

a device that uses the position of the sun to determine direction, latitude, and local time

Question 38

lateen sails

Answer 38

triangle-shaped sails that made it possible for ships to sail against the wind

Question 39

caravel

Answer 39

a ship with multiple sails that was easier to steer and that made travel much faster

Question 40

Henry the Navigator

Answer 40

a prince of Portugal who set up a center for studying astronomy and geography in Portugal in 1419

Question 41

Bartolomeu Dias

Answer 41

a Portuguese ship commander who reached the southern tip of Africa in 1488

Question 42

Vasco da Gama

Answer 42

a Portuguese ship commander who found a water route to Asia from Portugal and around Africa to India’s southwest coast

Question 43

Vikings

Answer 43

a group of people from Scandinavia

Question 44

Christopher Columbus

Answer 44

an Italian navigator who sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a sea route to Asia and who instead landed in the Americas in 1492

Question 45

Claudius Ptolemy

Answer 45

a Greek-educated Egyptian geographer and astronomer who drew maps of a round world in “Geography” in the A.D. 200s

Question 46

San Salvador Island

Answer 46

the place in the Bahamas where Christopher Columbus most likely landed on his first voyage

Question 47

Santo Domingo

Answer 47

the town founded by Christopher Columbus’s brother Bartholomew in 1496 that later became the first capital of Spain’s empire in America

Question 48

Pope Alexander VI

Answer 48

leader of the Roman Catholic Church who, in 1493, established the line of demarcation

Question 49

line of demarcation

Answer 49

an imaginary north-to-south line running down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that granted Spain control of everything west of it and Portugal control of everything east

Question 50

Amerigo Vespucci

Answer 50

an Italian who explored South America and concluded that it could not be part of Asia; America was named for him

Question 51

circumnavigate

Answer 51

sail around

Question 52

Columbian Exchange

Answer 52

a series of interactions between the Native American and European cultures and environments