World History and Exploration Lecture Notes

Vocabulary flashcards covering topics from world history, exploration, ancient engineering, and modern technology discussions based on lecture transcripts.

Warp factor 10

A hypothetical Star Trek speed at which a vessel could travel $4,400,000,000\text{ miles}$ from the sun to Pluto in $21\text{ seconds}$.

Arawaks

The peaceful, non-warlike indigenous people who greeted Christopher Columbus in The Bahamas on October 12, 1492, trading parrots, cotton balls, and cane spears for hawk's bells and glass beads.

Delacostis (Delacasse)

A priest documented in Howard Zinn's book who initially favored replacing native laborers with Black enslaved people before relenting, and who provided detailed accounts of Spanish atrocities against indigenous populations.

The Moors

A progressive North African civilization that flourished in Spain for $700\text{ years}$, introduced advanced technologies that paved the way for the European Enlightenment, and surrendered Granada in 1492.

The Reconquest

The military campaign by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella culminating in the 1492 fall of Granada, ending Moorish dominion in Western Europe.

Jared Diamond's Ideology

The theory that powerful nations develop advanced warfare, weapons, germs, and steel to overrun weaker nations in order to dominate profits and control land and resources.

Mustard Gas

A horrific chemical weapon introduced in World War I that was universally outlawed by international agreements because the open atmosphere and wind cannot be regulated to contain its destruction.

Octagon Earthworks

An ancient ceremonial site near Newark, Ohio, consisting of a $20\text{-acre}$ circle and a $50\text{-acre}$ octagon precisely aligned to the moon's $18.6\text{-year}$ cycle.

Hopewell

An ancient Native American cultural network across the eastern United States that built sophisticated geometric and astronomical earthworks between $1\text{ CE}$ and $400\text{ CE}$.

Brad Lepper

An archaeologist who spent nearly $40\text{ years}$ researching the Hopewell Octagon earthworks in Ohio, describing their builders as skilled mathematicians and geometers.

Leap Year

A calendar recalibration adding an extra day every four years to account for an Earth day lasting $23\text{ hours, } 59\text{ minutes, and } 46\text{ seconds}$, preventing seasonal drift.

Line of Demarcation

A boundary established by the Pope dividing overseas territories between Spain and Portugal to prevent direct conflict between the two expanding powers in the Western Hemisphere.

Tunisian (Tenochtitlan)

The advanced capital of Aztec society, situated at modern-day Mexico City, encountered and besieged by Hernando Cortés starting in 1519.

Starving Time

The winter of 1609–1610 in Jamestown when English settlers faced extreme starvation and cannibalism due to poor agricultural skills and unfamiliarity with the environment.

Cash Crop

An agricultural crop produced specifically to be sold for high commercial profit, which made the Jamestown colony economically viable to English investors.

Middle Passage

The forced transatlantic voyage undertaken by slave ships transporting captured African peoples to the Americas.

Jacob Cox

A 27-year-old researcher who resigned from AI firm Anthropic and issued a public warning that advanced artificial intelligence could cause catastrophic human annihilation by the end of the decade.

Patriarchal Society

A social system where men hold primary leadership, illustrated in the lecture by Afghanistan under the Taliban, where females are forbidden from attending school past age $12$.

Caravel

A state-of-the-art Spanish and Portuguese wind-powered vessel measuring approximately $100\text{ feet}$ ($30\text{ yards}$) that sailed between $4$ and $9\text{ nautical miles per hour}$.

World Trade Center 7

A building that collapsed on September 11 despite not being struck by an airplane, noted during lecture discussions regarding the events of the 9/11 attacks.