Title: Vocabulary List Chapter 1 and 2

 

Write a definition for each of the following words or write a sentence identifying what the term means.

Answer any questions that may appear at the end of the list.

 

1) Pg. 10: Migration

 

A movement of people from one region to another. Paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to North America up to 50,000 years ago.

2) Glaciers

 

Vast slow-moving masses of ice. Glaciers linked the Asian and North American land masses into one region called Beringia.

 

3) Indian

 

It is the name given to the native peoples of the Bahamas when Christopher Columbus in 1492. 

4) Pg. 11: Nomads

 

People who have no permanent home and who move in search of food. The first people who migrated to the Americas were nomadic peoples.

 

5) Pg. 13: Culture

 

Culture includes the art, beliefs, inventions, traditions, and language of a given people. Farming changed the culture of the early Americans.

 

6) Agriculture

 

The growing of food, or farming, is called agriculture. The earliest farming took place about 9000 BC. Agriculture in the Americas began in Mexico around 7,000 BC.

 

7) Pg. 14: Civilization

 

A society in which a high level of art, technology, and government exists. Over the centuries a number of civilizations rose and fell in Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America). 

8) Pp 15-17: Mayas, Aztecs, Incas (list when and where each group of people lived)

Mayas: Located in tropical lowlands of present day Yucatan, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, Mayan city-states flourished from 300 to 900 AD.

 

Aztecs: During the 100s and 1400s, Aztecs built Tenochtitlan in the Valley of Mexico as an island capital in Lake Texcoco.

 

Incas: In the 1400s, the Incas dominated the Pacific Coast of South America high in the Andes Mountains.

 

 

9) Pg. 20: Anasazi

 

They lived in the high desert country of the Colorado Plateau around 700 AD.

 

10) Pg. 44: Marco Polo


Italian traveler who went with his father across Asia and into China around 1271. He wrote Description of the
World. 

 

11) Pg. 45: Aryans

 

This people invaded Northern India around 1500 BC, dominating India for 2000 years. Their ideas and language spread across the region. Hinduism and Buddhism were two religions that came from Aryan culture.

 

12) Pg. 46: Navigation

 

The science of getting ships from place to place. The Chinese contributed to this science with the magnetic compass and the sailing junk.

 

13) Pg. 52: The Renaissance

 

The period when Europeans wanted to explore nature, the arts, ancient cultures, and distant lands. This period was known as the Renaissance, French for "rebirth, and it took place between the 1300s and 1500s in Europe.

 

14) Pp. 52-53: Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal

 

He was a ruler of Portugal during the mid-1400s who set up a center of exploration at Sagres in southern Portugal. His shipbuilders used the caravel to explore the African coast. These voyages opened the way for further exploration around the Cape of Good Hope.

15) Pg. 53: Colony

 

A settlement made by a group of people in a distant place that remains under the control of the home country. Henry set up a colony on the island of Madeira for growing sugar cane.

 

Things to think about: Please complete in full sentences

 

1) Pg. 10: why do Native Americans prefer to be called by the name of their tribe rather than by the term Indian?

 

The name Indian was put on them by a European, Columbus, to mean all inhabitants of the New World. Most tribes want to maintain their own identity, so they use their tribal name.

 

2) When do scientists believe the first Americans migrated to the Americas?

 

 The descendants of the first migrants into North America were fully spread across the continent by 20,000 BC. Some may have come as early as 50,000 BC and some as late as 11,500 BC.

 

3) What does an archaeologist study? What does an anthropologist study? Look these terms up in the glossary or dictionary to answer the question.

 

Anthropology: the science of human beings; especially : the study of human beings in relation to distribution, origin, classification, and relationship of races, physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture.

 

Archaeology: the scientific study of material remains (as fossil relics, artifacts, and monuments) of past human life and activities

 

4) Pg. 39: List three major trading kingdoms of Africa.

 

Ghana, Mali, and Songhai were African trading kingdoms built on the gold and salt trade.

 

 

5) List two contributions the Chinese made to navigation.

 

The Chinese contributed to this science with the magnetic compass and the sailing junk.

 

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