Chapter 1: When Old Worlds Collide: Contact, Conquest, Catastrophe
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32 terms
Spanish | English |
|---|---|
 Mesoamerica | an area embracing Central America an southern and central Mexico. |
| Christopher Columbus | The Genoese mariner who persuaded Queen Isabella of Spain to support of manufactured goods; sometimes used to describe the dependence of the South on the North. |
| Beringia | A land bridge during the last ice age across the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska. I was once and area where plants, animals, and humans could live. |
| Tierra del Fuego | The region at the southern tip of South America. |
| Amerind | The forerunner of the vast majority of Indian languages in the Americas. |
| Clovis tip | A superior spear point developed before 9000 B.C. It was in use nearly everywhere in North and South America and produced such an improvement in hunting ability that it contributed to the extinction of most large mammals. |
| Neolithic | The period known also as the late Stone Age. Agriculture developed, ans tone, rather than metal, tools were used. |
| maritime | Of, or relating to, the sea. |
| staple crop | A crop grown for commercial sale. It usually was produced in a colonial area and was sold in Europe. The first staple crops were sugar and tobacco. |
| caravel | A new type of oceangoing vessel that could sail closer to a head wind than any other sailing ship and male speeds of from 3 to 12 knots per hour. |
| astrolabe | A device that permitted accurate calculation of latitude of distances north and south. |
| factories | A term used to describe small posts established for the early slave trade along the coast of Africa or on small offshore islands. |
| Atlantic slave trade | A European commerce that led to the enslavement of millions of people who were shipped from their African homelands to European colonies in the Americas. |
| millenium | The period at the end of history when Christ is expected to return and rule with his saints for a thousand years. |
| hidalgos | The minor nobility of Spain. Many possessed little wealth and were interested in improving their position through the overseas empire. |
| Hernán Cortés | The Spanish conquistador who vanquished the Aztecs. |
| Aztec | The last pre-Columbian high culture in the Valley of Mexico. It was conquered by the Spaniards in 1519-1521. |
| Tenochtitlán | The huge Aztec capital city destroyed by Cortés. |
| sedentary | Societies that are rooted locally or are nonmigratory for part of the year. |
| semisedentary | ... |
| slash and burn | A system of agriculture in which trees were cut down, girdled, or in some way destroyed. The underbrush then was burned, and a crop was planted. Men created the farms, and women did the farming. The system eventually depleted the fertility of the soil, and the entire tribe would move to a new area after 10 or 20 years. |
| Inca | The last and most extensive pre-Columbian empire in the Andes and along the Pacific coast of South America. |
| Olmec | The oldest pre-Columbian high culture to appear in what is now Mexico. |
| chinampas | A highly productive gardens built on Lake Taxcoco on the Aztecs. |
| Cahokia | The largest city created by Mississippian mound builders. Located in Illinois near modern St. Louis, it thrived from A.D. 900 to 1250 and then declined. |
| Anasazi | An advanced pre-Columbian cliff-dwelling culture that flourished for two centuries in what are now the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado before abandoning these sites in the late 13th century A.D. |
| matrilineal | A society that determines inheritance and roles in life based on the female or maternal line. |
| conquistadores | The Spanish word for conquerors. |
| encomienda | A system of labor introduced into the Western Hemisphere by the Spanish. It permitted the holder, or encomendero, to claim labor from Indians in a district for a stated period of time. |
| haciendas | Large, landed estates established by the Spanish. |
| bandeirantes | Brazilian frontiersmen who traveled deep into South America to enslave Indians. The slaves then were worked to death on the sugar plantations. |
| serfdom | Early medieval Europe's predominant labor system, which tied peasants to their lords and the land. They were not slaves because they couldn't be sold from the land. |
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