Terms : Hide Images
| 121239128 | When did the Ice Age take place? | Roughly 35,000 years ago | |
| 121239129 | Bering Straight | One theory of the origins of the first Americans. A land bridge from Eurasia to Alaska, which people crossed for some 25,000 years. | |
| 121239130 | Incas/Mayans/Aztecs | Native American peoples who shaped advanced cultures. and built large cities. Depended on the cultivation of maize. Characterized by religious sacrifices and far-flung commerce. | |
| 121239131 | Pueblo Indians | Resided in the American southwest. These people built intricate irrigation systems to water their cornfields; also built multi-storied terraced buildings. Pueblo = village. However, their societies were not as dense of complex as those of the Aztecs in Mexico. | |
| 121239132 | Matrilinear culture | Characteristic of Native American cultures; women held substantial authority, and as such, a lot of power and possessions passed down the female side of the family line. | |
| 121239133 | Number of Native Americans that lived in 1492 | No more than 4 million | |
| 121239134 | First Europeans to reach New World | Scandinavians, roughly 1000 AD. Did not live there long. | |
| 121239135 | Reasons for North American exploration | Christian crusades = introduction to silk, drugs, perfume, spices, etc. Renaissance = curiosity about new lands. Reformation = desire for religious freedom. Monarchs wanted new sources of $$$. Technological advances made travel easier. | |
| 121239136 | Marco Polo | Italian adventurer; returned to Europe in 1295 and gave fanciful stories of his travels in "China". Doubtful that he ever even WENT to China, but it's whatevs. | |
| 121239137 | caravel | A ship developed by Portuguese mariners that could overcome northerly winds and south-flowing currents, making southward travel accessible. | |
| 121239138 | First people to navigate beyond Sahara Desert | Portuguese | |
| 121239139 | Madeira, Canaries, Sao Tome, Principe | Coastal African trading posts | |
| 121239140 | Vasco de Gama | A Portuguese explorer who reached rounded the tip of Africa and reached India in 1498 and returned home with an array of jewels and spices. Tickled the public's curiosity about foreign lands. | |
| 121239141 | Ferdinand and Isabella | Two Spanish soveriegns who married and helped strengthen the Spanish empire. Spanish became determined to beat the Portuguese in tapping the wealth of the Indies. Needed to look Westward. | |
| 121239142 | Christopher Columbus | An Italian navigator who convinced the Spanish monarchs to outfit him w/ three ships. He wanted to travel westward and reach India. Got to America on 10/12/1492. Didn't quite work out, but he died thinking he did. | |
| 121239143 | Conquistadores | Conquerers; Spain became the dominant power in 1500s. Traveled to the New World in search of the 3 G's - Gold, God, and Glory. | |
| 121239144 | Treaty of Tordesillas | An agreement between Spain and Portugal that divided the world in half. The reason why Brazil is today a Portuguese-speaking country! | |
| 121239145 | Ferdinand Magellan | A conquistadore who, between 1519 and 1522, was the first person to circumnavigate the globe. | |
| 121239146 | Juan Ponce de Leon | Explored Florida, but was killed. | |
| 121239147 | Francisco Coronado | Between 1540 and 1542, this dude searched areas between Arizon and New MExico for "golden cities" aka pueblos. Discovered the Grand Canyon and buffalo. | |
| 121239148 | Hernando de Soto | Another dude in search of gold, traveling from Florida westward to Arkansas River. He mistreated the Indians, and died of fever and wounds. His troops had to dump his body in the river so that Indians wouldn't mess with it. | |
| 121239149 | encomienda | A Spanish institution, wherein the government "commended" Indians to colonists for the purpose of Christianization. It was essentially slavery. | |
| 121239150 | Hernan Cortes | Set sail from Cuba in 1519 bound for Mexico. The Aztec empire greeted him as a God and offered him gold and housing. In 1521, the Spanish finally took rule of the Aztec empire. He wasn't such a nice guy, and probably was killed by the Aztecs after he exhausted their warm welcome. | |
| 121239151 | mestizos | People of mixed Indian and European heritage. Responsible for today's mixed Mexican culture of Old World and New World. | |
| 121239152 | John Cabot | Sent by the English king Henry VII to explore the Northeastern US after the Spanish's success in the New World. | |
| 121239153 | St. Augustine, Florida | A fortress erected by the Spanish in 1565 to fend off the French from the Caribbean. The oldest continually inhabited European settlement in the US. | |
| 121239154 | Pope's Rebellion | A 1680 Indian uprising wherein the Pueblo peoples had enough supression, and burned every Catholic Church in colonial New Mexico. They killed hundreds of Spanish settlers. Took half a century for the Spanish to reclaim New Mexico. | |
| 121239155 | Black Legend | The belief that the Spanish only tortured and killed Indians, stole gold, infected native peoples with smallpox, and ultimately did nothing good. | |
| 121239156 | Francisco Pizzaro | Crushed the Incas of Peru in 1532, adding a huge portion of land to the New World Spanish empire. Notably, his taking silver from the dead Incas sparked mass inflation in Spain and began the system of capitalism. | |
| 121239157 | Mound builders | Native American peoples who used a "three-sister" farming technique of beans, squash, and maize. This rich diet produced some of the highest population densities on the continent. |
