Term | Definition |
anthropologist | scientist who study the origins of man |
appease | satifsy |
Aztec Religion | -believed sun god had an appetite for human blood and hearts
-sacrificed humans conquered in war to appease the sun god
-thought their very existence depended on the sacrifices |
Aztec rulers | -descended from the gods
-supported by nobles, warriors and priests |
Aztecs | believed to have settled in Mexico and was an advanced society with a higly structured economy |
basalt | volcanic rock Olmecs used to carve stone heads |
causeways | land bridges |
cenotes | deep sink holes from which Mayans got their water |
chinampas | garden islands |
codex | type of books Mayans made, and was about 8 inches high and several yards long |
conquistador | Spanish conqueror |
Decline of Aztecs | -Spanish invasion
-weakened by disease |
Diego de Land | Spanish priest who tried to convert Mayans to Roman Catholicism |
dikes | walls that prevent flooding |
Game of Life and Death | -Mayan game
-only nobles could play
-losers were sacrificed to the gods |
Hernando Cortes | Spanish conquistador or conqueror who defeated the Aztecs |
How did the Mayan civilization end? | no one knows, they just seemed to have disappeared |
La Venta | one of largest and most famous Olmec cities |
Lake Texcoco | one of the largest cities in the world built on this lake |
maize | corn |
Mayan achievements | made advances in art, architecture and literature |
Mayan architecture | made thousands of sculptures and constructed huge pyramid-shaped temples |
Mayan calendar | based on the cycles of the moon and sun. Solar year had same number of days that ours does |
Mayan currency | went to markets to trade goods |
Mayan food | -maize (corn)
-avocados
-beans
-loved chocolate |
Mayan homes | -groups of houses surrounded by fields
-built their homes on high plateaus, lowlands & rainforests |
Mayan Kings | -lived in palaces
-descended from the gods |
Mayan literature | -wrote thousands of books |
Mayan nobles | -lived in large houses near center of city
-held gov. positions
-architects, nobles, and scribes
-NO manual labor |
Mayan peasants | -lived in small wooden houses with grass-thatched roofs
-farmers
-laborers
-military |
Mayan Religion | -thought world was a large flat square atop a crocodile god in a pond with water lilies
-believed almost everything had its own god |
Mayan Social classes | -Kings
-Priests/Nobles
-peasants
-slaves |
Mayan view of beauty/appearance | -preferred long noses and sloping foreheads |
Mayas | another great civilization in Mesoamerica |
Mesoamerica | lands from central Mexico to Costa Rica in central America |
Montezuma | emperor of the Aztecs when the Spanish conquistadors began landing in 1519 |
obsidian | sharp glasslike volcanic rock that Mayans used to make the blades of tools and weapons |
Olmecs | 1500 B.C., lived along southern Gulf Coast of Mexico, and declined by 400 B.C. |
rubber | -Rubber People (Olmecs)
-believed to be the first people to use rubber |
San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan | urban center of Olmec civilization |
stone heads | most famous archaeological find from the Olmec civilization |
stucco | fine plaster or cement used to coat or decorate walls |
Templo Mayor | Great Pyramid |
Tenochtitlan | one of the largest cities in the world at that time and is where modern Mexico City is built upon |
Tikal | one of the largest and most magnificent Mayan city-states |
zero | Mayas developed the idea of zero, and used it to do difficult calculations and keep detailed records |