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| Nomadic peoples from beyond the northern frontier of the sedentary agricultural area in Mesoamerica; established capital of Tula following migration into central Mesoamerican plateau; strongly militaristic ethic including cult of human sacrifice; Succeeded Teotihuacan culture in central Mexico; Nahuatlspeaking people; established political control over large territory after 1000 c.e.; declined after 1200 c.e. | ||
| The Mexica; one of the nomadic tribes that used political anarchy after fall of Toltecs to penetrate into the sedentary agricultural zone of Mesoamerican plateau; established empire after 1325 around shores of Lake Texcoco. | ||
| Members of the hereditary nobility and occupied the top positions in the government, the army and the priesthood; helped increase social stresses which attributed to internal weaknesses of the Aztec Empire's downfall | ||
| Major god of Aztecs; associated with fertility and the agricultural cycle; god of rain | ||
| Originally a separate island city in Lake Texcoco; later incorporated into Tenochtitlan; market remained most important in combined city | ||
| Seven clans in Aztec society, later expanded to more than sixty; divided into residential groupings that distributed land and provided labor and warriors | ||
| Modern interpretation of Aztec society created by Marvin Harris; based on observation that Mesoamerica lacked cattle and sheep that replaced human sacrifice in the Old World | ||
| Pachacuti's son and successor from 1471 to 1493; conquered northern coastal kingdom of Chimor by seizing it's irrigation system; extended Inca control into the southern area of what is now Ecuador | ||
| Inca practice of descent; all titles and political power went to successor, but wealth and land remained in hands of male descendants for support of cult of dead Inca's mummy | ||
| Inca religious center locates at Cuzco; center of state religion; held mummies of past Incas | ||
| A class of people within Inca society removed from their ayllus to serve permanently as servants, artisans, or workers for the Inca or the Inca nobility | ||
| Religious leader and reformer of the Toltecs; dedicated to god Quetzalcoatl; after losing struggle for power, went into exile in the Yucatan peninsula | ||
| Language spoken by the Toltecs and Aztecs | ||
| System of knotted strings utilized by the Incas in place of a writing system; could contain numerical and other types of information for censuses and financial records | ||
| Aztec tribal patron god; central figure of cult of human sacrifice and warfare; identified with old sun god | ||
| Beds of aquatic weeds, mud, and earth placed in frames made of cane and rooted in lakes to create "floating islands"; system of irrigated agriculture utilized by Aztecs | ||
| Serfs; new class of workers created to serve as laborers on these lands; were sometimes from dependent clans or more often from conquered peoples | ||
| Group of clans centered at Cuzco that were able to create empire in Andean civilization c. 1438 | ||
| Word for Inca Empire; region from present-day Colombia to Chile and eastward to northern Argentina | ||
| Labor extracted for lands assigned to the state and the religion; all communities were expected to contribute; an essential aspect of Inca imperial control | ||
| Inca colonists in new regions; could be Quechua-speakers; used to pacify new conquest or conquered population moved to new home | ||
| Households in Andean societies that recognized some form of kinship; traced descent from some common, sometimes mythical ancestor | ||
| Originally a Mayan city; conquered by Toltecs c. 1000 and ruled by Toltec dynasties; architecture featured pyramid of Feathered Serpent (Quetzalcoatl) | ||
| Founded c. 1325 on marshy island in Lake Texcoco; became center of Aztec power; joined with Tlacopan and Texcoco in 1434 to form a triple alliance that controlled most of central plateau of Mesoamerica | ||
| Advisor to Aztec rulers from 1427 to c. 1480; had histories of Mexico rewritten; expanded cult of human sacrifice as effective means of political terror | ||
| Toltec deity; Feathered Serpent; adopted by Aztecs as a major god | ||
| Special merchant class in Aztec society; specialized in long-distance trade in luxury items | ||
| A view created by Spanish authors to describe Inca society as a type of utopia; image of the Inca Empire as a carefully organized system in which every community collectively contributed to the whole | ||
| Ruler of Inca society from 1438 to 1471; launched a series of military campaigns that gave Incas control of the region from Cuzco to the shores of Lake Titicaca |
