Vocab Chap 8 Flashcards
Meso-America
Anthropology, Archaeology. the area extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua in which diverse pre-Columbian civilizations flourished.
Glyph
a pictograph or hieroglyph.
Olmec
of or designating a Mesoamerican civilization, c1000–400 b.c., along the southern Gulf coast of Mexico, characterized by extensive agriculture, a dating system, long-distance trade networks, pyramids and ceremonial centers, and very fine jade work.
Aztec
a member of a Nahuatl-speaking state in central Mexico that was conquered by Cortés in 1521.
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
Montezuma
c1470–1520, last Aztec emperor of Mexico 1502–20.
Yucatan 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
an ancient Mayan city occupied c200 b.c. to a.d. 900, an important center of Mayan civilization, situated in Petén in the jungles of northern Guatemala and the site of significant archaeological discoveries in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
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. 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 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.
Tenochtitlan
the capital of the Aztec empire: founded in 1325; destroyed by the Spaniards in 1521; now the site of Mexico City.
Chavin
of, relating to, or characteristic of a Peruvian culture flourishing from the 1st to the 6th century a.d.
Inca
a member of any of the dominant groups of South American Indian peoples who established an empire in Peru prior to the Spanish conquest.
Andes
a mountain range in W South America, extending about 4500 miles (7250 km) from N Colombia and Venezuela S to Cape Horn. Highest peak, Aconcagua, 22,834 feet (6960 meters).
Quechua
the language of the Inca civilization, presently spoken by about 7 million people in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.
Sacrifice
the offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage.
Francisco Pizarro
Francisco [fran-sis-koh;; Spanish frahn-thees-kaw,, -sees-] (Show IPA), c1470–1541, Spanish conqueror of Peru.
Stone heads
The Olmec colossal heads are at least seventeen monumental stone representations of human heads sculpted from large basalt boulders.
Maize
(chiefly in British and technical usage) corn1 (def 1).
Long count
Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. … The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base-20) and base-18 calendar used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is often known as the Maya (or Mayan) Long Count calendar.
Machu Pichu
Machu Picchu is an Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains in Peru, above the Urubamba River valley. Built in the 15th century and later abandoned, it’s renowned for its sophisticated dry-stone walls that fuse huge blocks without the use of mortar, intriguing buildings that play on astronomical alignments and panoramic views. Its exact former use remains a mystery.
Copan
Copán is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization located in the Copán Department of western Honduras, not far from the border with Guatemala. It was the capital city of a major Classic period kingdom from the 5th to 9th centuries AD.
Cusco
Cusco, a city in the Peruvian Andes, was once capital of the Inca Empire, and is now known for its archaeological remains and Spanish colonial architecture. Plaza de Armas is the central square in the old city, with arcades, carved wooden balconies and Incan wall ruins. The baroque Santo Domingo Convent was built on top of the Incan Temple of the Sun (Qoricancha), and has archaeological remains of Inca stonework.
Popol Vuh
Popol Vuh (modern K’iche’: Poopol Wuuj [ˈpʰoːpʰol ˈʋuːχ]) is a corpus of mytho-historical narratives of the Post Classic K’iche’ kingdom in Guatemala’s western highlands. The title translates as “Book of the Community”, “Book of Counsel”, or more literally as “Book of the People”.
