Early Americans and North American Cultures

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from lecture notes on Early American and North American Cultures, including ancient civilizations, regional cultures, and social structures.

Surpluses

An extra supply of food.

Features of Civilization

A society or people sharing a language, territory, and economy with basic features like complex religion, cities, organized government, and different social classes.

Olmec

An early civilization that studied stars, developed a calendar, and whose farmers supplied nearby cities while leaders built stone temples.

Maya

An early civilization influenced by the Olmec, living in rain forests, known for producing great harvests of corn, developing city-states, and having powerful nobles and priests.

Aztec

A civilization that arose northwest of abandoned Maya cities, originally nomads, who built their capital Tenochtitlan and performed human sacrifices to the sun god.

Tenochtitlan

The capital city of the Aztec empire, built on an island in the middle of a lake.

Causeways

Raised roads made of packed Earth, used by the Aztec to link their capital to the mainland.

Inca

A vast empire in the Americas, south of the Aztec, with its magnificent capital at Cuzco, known for its well-organized government and extensive public works.

Cuzco

The magnificent capital of the Incan Empire, located high in the Andes in present-day Peru.

City-state

A political unit that controls a city and its surrounding land.

Hohokam and Ancestral Puebloans

Groups that irrigated the desert to farm.

Mound Builders

Groups like the Hopewell and Mississippians, known for building large mounds.

Mississippians

A group of mound builders who grew crops to feed large towns and built a significant city at Cahokia.

Cahokia

A large city built by the Mississippians in present-day Illinois, which may have housed up to 30,000 people.

Culture region

A region in which people share a similar way of life.

Cultural Diffusion

The process of spreading ideas from one culture to another.

Arctic Region (Inuit)

A cultural region where people used limited resources, including driftwood for tools and shelter in the short summer season.

Subarctic Culture Region

A forested belt across North America where groups like the Chipewyan were nomads, following large game like Caribou.

Northwest Coastal Region

A region with mild temperatures and abundant rainfall/food, where people built permanent villages and prospered from trade.

Potlatch

A ceremonial dinner held by families of the Northwest Coastal Region to show off their wealth and improve their standing.

Great Plains Region (Sioux)

A cultural region where tribes like the Sioux were nomads, hunting wild animals such as buffalo for survival.

Iroquois League

An alliance formed by five Iroquois nations (Mohawk, Senec, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga) in the 1500s to end internal fighting.

Longhouses

Wooden houses built clustered together, where the Iroquois lived.

Clan

A group of related families, particularly significant in Iroquois society where women chose clan leaders.