Meso-America Vocab Flashcards
Meso-America
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
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.
2.
Hernan Cortes
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
Emperor of the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest.
Yucatan Peninsula
Was a Yucatec Maya word meaning “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Others claim that the source of the name is the Nahuatl (Aztec) word Yocatlān, “place of richness.”
Tikal
The ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala.
Chichenitza
A Majestic Maya Archaeological Site in Yucatan, Mexico.
Lake Texcoco
A natural lake within the Anáhuac or Valley of Mexico.
Tenochtitlan
An Aztec city that flourished between A.D. 1325 and 1521.
Chauin
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 2
Inca
A South American hummingbird having mainly blackish or bronze-colored plumage with one or two white breast patches.
Andes
The longest continental mountain range in the world.
Quechua
A member of an American Indian people of Peru and parts of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador.
