8.1 Flashcards
Meso-America
Mesoamerica was a region and cultural area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica, within which pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries.[1][2] It is one of six areas in the world where ancient civilization arose independently, and the second in the Americas along with Norte Chico (Caral-Supe) in present-day northern coastal Peru.
Glyph
a hieroglyphic character or symbol; a pictograph.
Olmec
a member of a prehistoric people inhabiting the coast of Veracruz and western Tabasco on the Gulf of Mexico ( circa 1200–400 BC), who established what was probably the first Meso-American civilization.
Aztec
a member of the American Indian people dominant in Mexico before the Spanish conquest of the 16th century.
HernanCortes
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca (Spanish pronunciation: [erˈnaŋ korˈtes ðe monˈroj i piˈθaro]; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of …
Montezuma
Montezuma was emperor of the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest. Montezuma tried to appease the Spanish but failed and was captured by them and deposed. During the ensuing Aztec revolt he was either killed by his own people or murdered by the Spanish.
Yucatan peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula (Spanish: Península de Yucatán), in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel.
Tikal
Tikal (/tiˈkäl/) (Tik’al in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. Ambrosio Tut, a gum-sapper, reported the ruins to La Gaceta, a Guatemalan newspaper, which named the site Tikal.
Chichen itza
Chichén Itzá is a world-famous complex of Mayan ruins on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. A massive step pyramid known as El Castillo dominates the 6.5-sq.-km. ancient city, which thrived from around 600 A.D. to the 1200s. Graphic stone carvings survive at structures like the ball court, Temple of the Warriors and the Wall of the Skulls. Nightly sound-and-light shows illuminate the buildings’ sophisticated geometry.
Lake texcoco
Lake Texcoco (Spanish: Lago de Texcoco) was a natural lake within the Anáhuac or Valley of Mexico. Lake Texcoco is most well known as where the Aztecs built the city of Tenochtitlan, which was located on an island within the lake. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, efforts to control flooding by the Spanish led to most of the lake being drained. The entire lake basin is now almost completely occupied by Mexico City, the capital of the present-day nation of Mexico.
Chinampa
Chinampa (Nahuatl: chināmitl [tʃiˈnaːmitɬ]) is a type of Mesoamerican agriculture which used small, rectangular areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico.
Quipu
an ancient Inca device for recording information, consisting of variously colored threads knotted in different ways.
Chavin
An early pre-Incan civilization that flourished in northern and central Peru from about 900 to 200 bc, known for its carved stone sculptures and boldly designed ceramics.
Inca
a South American hummingbird having mainly blackish or bronze-colored plumage with one or two white breast patches.
Andes
A major mountain system of South America, extending for about 7250 km (4500 miles) along the entire W coast, with several parallel ranges or cordilleras and many volcanic peaks: rich in minerals, including gold, silver, copper, iron ore, and nitrates.
