World History Notes: Sections 1-5 Flashcards

Flashcards covering key terms and concepts from Sections 1-5 of Peopling the Americas to Transatlantic Encounters.

What does the term 'Nomadic' mean?

Moving from place to place in search of food and water.

Who were the Olmec?

A civilization that emerged as early as 1200 B.C. in what is now southern Mexico.

Who were the Maya?

A culture that built a dynamic civilization in Guatemala and the Yucatán Peninsula between A.D. 250 and 900.

Who were the Aztec?

A society that swept into the Valley of Mexico in the 1200s.

Who were the Inca?

An empire that stretched for nearly 2,500 miles along the mountainous western coast of South America around A.D. 1200.

Who were the Hohokam and Anasazi?

Early North American groups who introduced crops into the arid deserts of the Southwest.

What were Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian?

Societies east of the Mississippi River that excelled at trade and building mounds.

Who were Kashaya Pomo?

A Native American people who lived along the northern California coast.

Who were the Kwakiutl?

Peoples of the Northwest Coast who collected shellfish and hunted the ocean for whales, sea otters, and seals.

Who were the Pueblo?

Descendants of the Hohokam and Anasazi who lived in multistory houses made of adobe or stone in the Southwest.

Who were the Iroquois?

Native peoples of the Eastern Woodlands who built villages in forest clearings and blended agriculture with hunting and gathering.

What is kinship?

Strong ties among family members that ensured the continuation of tribal customs.

What is division of labor?

The assignment of tasks according to gender, age, or status.

What is Islam?

A religion founded in Arabia in 622 by Muhammad that spread across the Middle East and North Africa through trade.

What is a plantation?

A farm where a single crop, requiring much human labor, is grown on a large scale.

Who were the Songhai?

A West African empire that gained power and wealth by controlling the trans-Sahara trade.

What is the savanna?

The region of dry grassland in West Africa.

What was Benin?

A forest kingdom that dominated a large region around the Niger Delta in the 1400s.

Who were the Kongo?

A powerful kingdom that arose on the lower Zaire (Congo) River in West Central Africa.

What is lineage?

A line of common descent that formed the basis of kinship bonds in most of rural West Africa.

Who was Prince Henry?

Known as Henry the Navigator, he sponsored Portuguese ships to explore the west coast of Africa.

What was the Renaissance?

A period of 'rebirth' when Europeans began to investigate all aspects of the physical world, leading to a new confidence in human achievement.

What is hierarchy?

European communities were based on social hierarchy, organized according to rank, with monarchs and nobles at the top and peasants at the bottom.

What is a nuclear family?

The household consisting of a mother, father, and their children, which was the central unit of life in European society.

What were the Crusades?

A series of military expeditions from 1096 to 1270, launched by European Christians to the Middle East, that sparked an increase in trade and weakened the power of the nobles and the pope.

What was the Reformation?

A reform movement in the early 1500s that divided Christianity in western Europe between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Who was Christopher Columbus?

A Genoese sailor who, in 1492, embarked on a voyage to find a route to Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean.

Who were the Taino?

The group of people Columbus first encountered, whom he described as friendly and well-disposed.

What is colonization?

The establishment of distant settlements controlled by the parent country.

What is the Columbian Exchange?

The global transfer of living things that began with Columbus's first voyage, introducing new plants and animals to Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

What was the Treaty of Tordesillas?

An agreement signed in 1494 in which Spain and Portugal agreed to divide the Western Hemisphere between them.