Chapter 8 - Pre-Columbian America Flashcards
Mesoamerica
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.
Glyph
a hieroglyphic character or symbol; a pictograph.
Olmec
The Olmecs were the first major civilization in Guatemala and Mexico following a progressive development in Soconusco and modern southwestern pacific lowlands of Guatemala.
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to 16th centuries.
Hernan Cortes
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca 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 the King of Castile in the early 16th century.
Montezuma
Moctezuma II, variant spellings include Montezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma and referred to in full by early Nahuatl texts as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, was the ninth tlatoani or ruler of Tenochtitlan, reigning from 1502 to 1520.
Yucatán Peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea, encompassing 3 Mexican states, plus portions of Belize and Guatemala. On the Caribbean, Mexico’s Riviera Maya resort strip is bookended by 2 popular destinations: Cancún, with its high-rise hotels and nightlife, and, down the coast, quieter Tulum, a rare seaside example of the Mayan ruins found throughout the peninsula’s interior.
Tikal
Tikal is an ancient Mayan citadel in the rainforests of northern Guatemala. Possibly dating to the 1st century A.D., Tikal flourished between 200 and 850 A.D. and was later abandoned.
Chichenitza
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.
Lake Texcoco
Lake 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.
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
Quipus, sometimes known as khipus or talking knots, were recording devices historically used in a number of cultures and particularly in the region of Andean South America.
Chavin
The Chavín culture is an extinct, prehistoric civilization, named for Chavín de Huantar, the principal archaeological site at which its artifacts have been found. The culture developed in the northern Andean highlands of Peru from 900 BC to 200 BC.
Inca
The Inca Empire, also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, and possibly the largest empire in the world in the early 16th century.
Andes
The Andes, running along South America’s western side, is among the world’s longest mountain ranges. Its varied terrain encompasses glaciers, volcanoes, grassland, desert, lakes and forest.
