Pre Modern History Review
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296 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 River Valley Civilizations | Civilizations of the Nile River of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Areas were good for growing crops because they would flood |
| City-State | A city with political and economic control over the surrounding countryside |
| Patriarchal | Relating to a society in which men hold the greatest legal and moral authority |
| Tigris and Euphrates | The two rivers on either side of Mesopotamia |
| Gilgamesh | A legendary Sumerian king who was the hero of an epic collection of mythic stories |
| Ziggurat | A rectangular tiered temple or terraced mound erected by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians |
| Hammurabi's Code | A legal code developed by the king of Mesopotamia that specified crimes and punishments to help judges impose penalties |
| Sumer | A group of ancient city-states in southern Mesopotamia; the earliest civilization in Mesopotamia |
| Sargon | A warrior who found the Akkadian Empire and so became the first ruler of an empire in the Fertile Crescent |
| Cuneiform | An ancient wedge-shaped script used in Mesopotamia and Persia |
| Nile | The world's longest river; found in Egypt |
| Theocracy | The belief in government by divine guidance |
| Ma'at | The concept of divinely created and maintained order in the universe found in Egypt |
| Menes | The king of upper Egypt who united the two areas of upper and lower Egypt |
| Old Kingdom | The period from about 2700 to 2200 BC in Egyptian history that began shortly after Egypt was unified |
| Pyramids | Monumental architecture typical of Old Kingdom Egypt; used as burial sites for pharaohs |
| Hieroglyphics | An ancient Egyptian writing system in which pictures were used to represent ideas and sounds |
| Monsoon | Rainy season in southern Asia when the southwestern winds blows, bringing heavy rains |
| Yellow River | A river in China with fertile loess soil |
| Shang | The people in the earliest Chinese dynasty for which we have written records |
| Zhou | The dynasty that took over the dominant position in China from the Shang and created the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to justify their rule |
| Feudalism | A political and social system that developed during the Middle Ages; nobles offered protection and land in return for service (also seen in Period of Warring States) |
| Period of Warring States | A time when China was in constant war between its city states, occurring right after the fall Zhou dynasty and not ending until the formation of the Qin dynasty |
| Daoism | A philosophical system developed by of Lao-tzu advocating a simple life and noninterference with the course of natural events |
| Confucianism | A philosophy that shows the way to ensure a stable government and an orderly society in the present world and stresses a moral code of conduct |
| Social Harmony | The most important aspect of Confucianism |
| Filial Piety | A love and respect for one's parents and ancestors |
| Legalism | Strict conformity to the letter of the law rather than its spirit |
| Oracle Bones | Animal bones carved with written characters which were used for telling the future |
| Role of Family | Confucius believed family played a big role in society. He believed the ways family regulated their conduct at home prepared them to serve as citizens of the state. |
| Mandate of Heaven | A political theory of ancient China in which those in power were given the right to rule from a divine source |
| Nubia | An ancient region of northeastern Africa (southern Egypt and northern Sudan) on the Nile known for gold |
| Chavin | The first major urban civilization in South America noted for use of llamas |
| Olmec | The first Mesoamerican civilization noted for the rock heads |
| Bronze Age | A period between the Stone and Iron ages, characterized by the manufacture and use of copper-tin tools and weapons |
| Dark Age | Greek cultural decline; very few records from this period |
| Iron Age | The period following the Bronze Age; characterized by rapid spread of iron tools and weapons |
| Babylon | The chief city of ancient Mesopotamia and capitol of the ancient kingdom of Babylonia |
| Hittites | A people from central Anatolia who established an empire with power from iron and chariots |
| Akkad | A city state in northern Mesopotamia, the ruler of which conquered all the city-states and formed the first empire |
| Middle Kingdom | The period of Egyptian history marked by order and stability |
| Book of the Dead | A compilation of prayers, chants etc. from which the Egyptian would choose sections to be inscribed on the tomb wall of the deceased |
| Hyksos | A group of nomadic invaders from southwest Asia who invaded and ruled Egypt |
| New Kingdom | The period during which Egypt reached the height of its power and glory |
| Hatshepsut | The female Egyptian pharaoh who expanded Egyptian trade routes |
| Akhenaten | An early ruler of Egypt who rejected the old gods and replaced them with sun worship |
| Ramesses II | The king of Egypt between 1304 and 1237 BC who built many monuments |
| Minoan Crete | A civilization on the island of Crete known for shipbuilding and agriculture |
| Mycenaean Greece | Rivals of the Minoans |
| Linear B | A syllabic script used in Greece in the 13th century B.C. |
| Neo-Assyrian | An empire extending from western Iran to Syria-Palestine that used force and terror and exploited the wealth and labor of their subjects |
| Ashurbanipal | An Assyrian king who told people to bring back writings and created a large library |
| Israel | An ancient kingdom of the Hebrew tribes at the southeastern end of the Mediterranean Sea |
| Phoenicians | Sailing and trading people who had many colonies on the Mediterranean coast |
| Carthage | An ancient city state on the north African coast near modern Tunis |
| Neo-Babylonian | New Kingdom of Babylon that continued rule in the fertile crescent |
| Satraps | The governors of provinces in the ancient Persian Empire |
| Cyrus | The king of the Persians who expanded the Persian Empire from Afghanistan to the Aegean Sea |
| Cambyses | The son of Cyrus who conquered Egypt and brought the entire Middle East under Persia's control |
| Darius | Persian ruler who brought order along with roads, an established postal system, and standardized weights, measures, and coinage |
| Xerses | The Persian ruler that led the Persian Army into Greece in 480 B.C. and was defeated at sea near Salamis |
| Zoroastrianism | The system of religion founded in Persia in the 6th century BC by Zoroaster |
| Polis | A Greek city-state |
| Limited Democracy | A government that includes voting but does not allow everyone to vote |
| Oligarchy | A political system governed by a few people |
| Urbanization | The social process whereby cities grow and societies become more urban |
| Herodotus | The ancient Greek known as the father of history |
| Persian Wars | A series of wars between Greek city-states and the Persian Empire |
| Athens | The capital and largest city of Greece |
| Sparta | An ancient Greek city famous for military prowess |
| Peloponnesian War | A war in which Athens and its allies were defeated by the league centered on Sparta |
| Solon | An Athenian reformer of the 6th century who established laws that eased the burden of debt on farmers |
| Socrates | The philosopher who believed in an absolute right or wrong; asked students pointed questions to make them use their reason |
| Plato | A student of Socrates who wrote The Republic about the perfectly governed society |
| Aristotle | A student of Plato who was the tutor of Alexander the Great |
| Pericles | An Athenian statesman whose leadership contributed to Athen's political and cultural supremacy in Greece |
| Golden Age of Athens | A period of growth in ancient Athens in intellectual & and artistic learning, including drama, sculpture, poetry, philosophy, architecture, and science |
| Alexander the Great | King of Macedonia who conquered Persia |
| Hellenistic Age | A period of time when ancient Greek and Asian cultures mixed |
| Monarchy | An autocracy governed by a monarch who usually inherits the authority |
| Roman Republic | The period during which Rome was largely governed by the aristocratic Roman Senate |
| Senate | The supreme governing body originally made up only of aristocrats |
| Consuls | Two officials from the patrician class that were appointed each year of the Roman Republic to supervise the government and command the armies |
| Patricians | The wealthy landowning class in Roman society |
| Plebeians | Farmers and workers who made up most of the Roman population |
| Roman Principate | Roman government based on the ambiguous title princeps adopted by Augustus to conceal his military dictatorship |
| Augustus Caesar | The first emperor of Rome and the adopted son of Julius Caesar who helped Rome come into Pax Romana or the Age of Roman Peace |
| Julius Caesar | Roman general and dictator who was murdered by a group of senators and his former friend Brutus who hoped to restore the normal running of the republic |
| Equites | Class of business people and landowners in ancient Rome who had wealth and power |
| Pax Romana | The Roman peace |
| Romanization | The process by which the Latin language and Roman culture became dominant in the western provinces of the Roman Empire |
| Aqueducts | Bridge-like stone structures that carry water from the hills into Roman cities |
| Constantine | Roman emperor who adopted Christianity for the Roman Empire and who founded Constantinople as a second capital |
| Constantinople | The capital of the Byzantine Empire |
| Diocletian | The Roman emperor who divided the empire in two and oversaw the eastern portion |
| Qin | The dynasty that ended the first warring states period in China |
| Qin Shi Huangdi | An emperor of the Qin Dynasty who unified all of China under one ruler and created the Great Wall to protect it |
| Han | The imperial dynasty that ruled China from 206 BC to 221 and expanded its boundaries and developed its bureaucracy |
| Emperor Wu | The most influential emperor who adopted Confucianism and expanded China (also referred to as Han Wu Di) |
| Gentry | The class of prosperous families, next in wealth below the rural aristocrats, from which the emperors drew their administrative personnel |
| Bhagavad Gita | The most important work of Indian sacred literature, a dialogue between the great warrior Arjuna and the god Krishna on duty and the fate of the spirit |
| Dharma | The duties and obligations of each caste |
| Reincarnation | The Hindu or Buddhist doctrine that person may be reborn successively into one of five classes of living beings depending on the person's own actions |
| Ganges and Indus | The rivers that created India's two fertile river valleys |
| Vedas | Ancient Sanskrit writings that are the earliest sacred texts of Hinduism |
| Hinduism | A religion and philosophy developed in ancient India, characterized by a belief in reincarnation and a supreme being who takes many forms |
| Buddhism | A religion represented by the many groups that profess various forms of the Buddhist doctrine and that venerate Buddha |
| Jainism | A religion that branched off from Hinduism and was founded by Mahavira; its belief is that everything has a soul, and its purpose was to cleanse the soul |
| Varna | The name for the original social division of Vedic people into four groups |
| Caste | A hereditary social class among Hindus |
| Brahmin | The highest of the four varnas: the priestly or sacerdotal category |
| Kshatriya | A member of the royal or warrior Hindu caste |
| Vaishya | The third of the four classes of the caste system, made up of producers, such as farmers, merchants, and artisans |
| Shudra | The lowest of the four varnas; the servants and workers of low status |
| Untouchables | The lowest class of people in the caste system of Hinduism |
| Karma | The effects of a person's actions that determine his destiny in his next incarnation |
| Sanskrit | An ancient language of India |
| Moksha | The Hindu concept of the spirit's 'liberation' from the endless cycle of rebirths |
| Mahavira | The founder of Jainism |
| Siddhartha Gautama | The founder of Buddhism |
| Ascetic | The practice of self-denial |
| Four Noble Truths | As taught by the Buddha, the four basic beliefs that form the foundation of Buddhism |
| Nirvana | The lasting peace that Buddhists seek by giving up selfish desires |
| Bodhisattva | Buddhist worthy of nirvana who postpones it to help others |
| Mahayana | One of two great schools of Buddhist doctrine emphasizing a common search for universal salvation especially through faith alone where people viewed Buddha as God |
| Theravada | One of two great schools of Buddhist doctrine emphasizing personal salvation through your own efforts where people viewed Buddha as just as a person |
| Ahimsa | A Buddhist and Hindu and especially Jainist doctrine holding that all forms of life are sacred and urging the avoidance of violence |
| Silk Road | An ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean |
| Stirrups | Metal or leather loops that hang from a saddle and hold a rider's feet |
| Lateen Sails | Triangle-shaped sails whose design allowed ships to sail against the wind and were perfected by Arab traders |
| Camels | Pack animals that made cross-Sahara caravans possible |
| Arabian Peninsula | The peninsula between Egypt and Mesopotamia; mostly desert land |
| Mecca | The holiest city of Islam; Muhammad's birthplace |
| Ka`ba | A pre-Islamic cubed building in Mecca believed by Muslims to have been built by Abraham. It is the center of the Muslim Pilgrimage |
| Abraham | The first of the great Biblical patriarchs, father of Isaac, and traditional founder of the ancient Hebrew nation: considered by Muslims an ancestor of the Arab peoples through his son Ishmael |
| Muhammad | The Arab prophet who founded Islam |
| Monotheism | The belief in a single god |
| Polytheism | The belief in multiple gods |
| Five Pillars | A set of beliefs that all Muslims needed to carry out: Faith, Prayer, Alms, Fasting, and Pilgrimage |
| Jihad | A holy struggle or striving by a Muslim for a moral or spiritual or political goal |
| Khadija | The first wife of Muhammad and first to convert to Islam |
| Gabriel | The angel who served as the intermediate between God and Muhammad |
| Allah | The Arabic word for God |
| Islam | The religion of Muslims collectively which governs their civilization and way of life |
| Muslim | A follower of Islam |
| Medina | The second holiest city where Muhammad lived after fleeing Mecca |
| Hijra | The Migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in A.D. 622, marking the founding of Islam |
| Umma | The community of all Muslims |
| Caliphate | The territorial jurisdiction of a caliph |
| Dar al-Islam | The "house of Islam" and that refers to lands under Islamic rule |
| Quran | The sacred writings of Islam revealed by God to the prophet Muhammad during his life at Mecca and Medina |
| Umayyad | The first hereditary dynasty of Muslim caliphs that ruled one of the largest empires in history that extended from Spain to India |
| Ali | The fourth caliph of Islam who is considered to be the first caliph by Shiites |
| Abu Bakr | The first caliph after Muhammad's death |
| Shi'ites | Muslims that believe that only direct descendants of Muhammad should become caliph |
| Sunnis | Muslims belonging to branch of Islam believing that the community should select its own leadership |
| Abbasid | Descendants of the Prophet Muhammad's uncle, overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate and ruled an Islamic empire from their capital in Baghdad |
| Harun al-Rashid | The caliph who is responsible for a Golden Age in the Muslim World |
| Madrasas | Islamic institutions of higher education |
| Grand Canal | The waterway linking the Yellow and the Yangzi River begun in the Han period and completed during the Sui Empire |
| Sui | The short dynasty between the Han and the Tang; built the Grand Canal, strengthened the government, and introduced Buddhism to China |
| Li Shimin | One of the founders of the Tang Empire and its second emperor who led the expansion of the empire into Central Asia |
| Tang Taizong | The founder of the Tang Dynasty who expanded China to include all that the Han controlled |
| Tang | Empire unifying China and part of Central Asia, the emperors presided over a magnificent court at their capital, Chang'an |
| Uighurs | A group of Turkic-speakers who controlled their own centralized empire in Mongolia and Central Asia |
| Wu Zhou | An empress who declared herself first woman emperor and conquered Korea |
| An Lushan | One of the Tang dynasty's foremost military commanders who mounted a rebellion and captured the capital at Chang'an and the secondary capital at Luoyang |
| Huang Chao | The man who crossed the Yangtze River with 600,000 men and conquered the capitol of Chang'an |
| Song | Empire in southern China distinguished for its advances in technology, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics |
| Liao | Khitan pastoral nomad empire in the northeast |
| Jin | The empire developed by the Jurchens, The Song Dynasty had South China |
| Junk | A very large flat bottom sailing ship produced in the Tang and Song Empires, specially designed for long-distance commercial travel |
| Gunpowder | The formula, brought to China in the 400s or 500s, was first used to make fumigators to keep away insect pests and evil spirits. Later, it was used to make explosives and grenades |
| Neo-Confucianism | The term that describes the resurgence of Confucianism and the influence of Confucian scholars during the T'ang Dynasty; a unification of Daoist or Buddhist metaphysics with Confucian pragmatism |
| Zhu Xi | Most prominent neo-Confucian scholar during the Song dynasty; stressed importance of applying philosophical principles to everyday life |
| Chan Buddhism | Known as Zen in Japan; stressed meditation and appreciation of natural and artistic beauty; popular with members of elite Chinese society |
| Movable Type | Type in which each individual character is cast on a separate piece of metal, replaced woodblock printing, allowing for the arrangement of individual letters and other characters on a page. Invented in Korea 13th Century |
| Flying Money | Chinese credit instrument that provided credit vouchers to merchants to be redeemed at the end of the voyage |
| Foot binding | Process of wrapping young girls feet to stop growth |
| Koryo | Korean kingdom founded in 918 and destroyed by a Mongol invasion in 1259 |
| Fujiwara | Japanese aristocratic family in mid-9th century; exercised exceptional influence over imperial affairs; aided in decline of imperial power |
| Kamakura | Yorimoto's capital during his shogunate, destroyed in 1331 |
| Tale of Genji | Written by Lady Murasaki; first novel in any language; evidence for mannered style of Japanese society |
| Annam | Vietnam province of China for around 1,000 years |
| Champa Rice | Quick-maturing rice that can allow two harvests in one growing season. Originally introduced into Champa from India, it was later sent to China as a tribute gift by the state |
| Tribute System | A system in which defeated peoples were forced to pay a tax in the form of goods and labor, forced transfer of food, cloth, and other goods subsidized the development of large cities |
| Marco Polo | Venetian traveler who explored Asia in the 13th century and served Kublai Khan |
| Temujin | The man (later referred to as Genghis Khan) who led the Mongols to take over the Chinese, Muslims, and some of the Europeans |
| Mongol Yoke | The 200 year rule of the Mongol khan over the former territories of Kievan Russia |
| Golden Horde | Mongol khanate founded by Genghis Khan's grandson Batu based in southern Russia that quickly adopted both the Turkic language and Islam |
| Khubilai Khan | Last of the Mongol Great Khans and founder of the Yuan Empire |
| Great Khan | The Mongol empire that included China & Mongolia |
| Yuan | One of the four khanates after Genghis Khan's death, led by Khubilai Khan, that abolished Confucianism in order to create a more cosmopolitan state |
| Il-Khan | Representatives of the Great Khan who ruled Iran and Iraq in Middle Ages |
| Ghazan | The Persian leader of the Mongols, led a movement that repaired many of the cities & neglected irrigation works in Persia |
| Timurids | The descendents of Timur; could not hold the empire together; laid the groundwork for the establishment in India of a Muslim Mongol-Turkic regime, the Mughals |
| Timur | Mongolian ruler of Samarkand who led his nomadic hordes to conquer an area from Turkey to Mongolia |
| Rashid al-Din | Adviser to the Il-khan ruler Ghazan, who converted to Islam on his advice |
| Beijing | China's northern capital, first used as an imperial capital in 906 |
| Ming | Empire based in China that Zhu Yuanzhang established after the overthrow of the Yuan Empire. The emperor Yongle sponsored the building of the Forbidden City and the voyages of Zheng He |
| Zhu Yuangzhang | The son of peasant who raised an army, ended the Mongol dynasty and set up the Ming Dynasty |
| Hongwu | First emperor of the Ming dynasty |
| Yongle | The person who sponsored the building of the Forbidden City, a huge encyclopedia project, the expeditions of Zheng He, and the reopening of China's borders to trade and travel |
| Zheng He | An imperial eunuch and Muslim, entrusted by the Ming emperor Yongle with a series of state voyages that took his gigantic ships through the Indian Ocean, from Southeast Asia to Africa |
| Kamikaze | The 'divine wind,' which the Japanese credited with blowing Mongol invaders away from their shores in 1281 |
| Ibn Battuta | Moroccan Muslim scholar, the most widely traveled individual of his time. He wrote a detailed account of his visits in his Rihla. |
| Delhi Sultanate | Centralized Indian empire of varying extent, created by Muslim invaders |
| Mali | West African kingdom founded in the thirteenth century that reached its peak during the reign of Mansa Musa |
| Sundiata | The founder of the Mali Empire |
| Mansa Musa | The Mali king who brought Mali to its peak of power and wealth from 1312 the 1337; he was the most powerful king in western Africa |
| Mansa Suleiman | Successor of Mansa Musa, praised for safety in land and passage of trade |
| Iltutmish | Founder of the Delhi Sultanate |
| Raziya | The daughter of Iltutmish who ruled well, dressed like a man, and rode at the head of troops |
| Gujarat | A region of western India famous for trade and manufacturing |
| Dhow | A lateen-rigged sailing vessel used by Arabs |
| Church of St. George | One of four churches carved from solid rock at Labelia that is open to the sky but forty feet deep |
| Swahili Coast | East African shores of the Indian Ocean between the Horn of Africa and the Zambezi River; from the Arabic sawahil, meaning 'shores' |
| Kilwa | A city-state on the east coast of Africa that exported gold across the Indian Ocean |
| Great Zimbabwe | A stone-walled enclosure found in Southeast Africa associated with trade, farming, and mining |
| Aden | A port city in the modern south Arabian country of Yemen. It has been a major trading center in the Indian Ocean since ancient times |
| Malacca | Port city in the modern Southeast Asian country of Malaysia, founded about 1400 as a trading center on the Strait |
| Urdu | The official literary language of Pakistan, closely related to Hindi |
| Sati | A Hindu custom that called for a wife to join her husband in death by throwing herself on his funeral pyre |
| Charlemagne | King of the Franks who through a series of military conquests he established the Carolingian Empire, which encompassed all of Gaul and parts of Germany and Italy. Illiterate, though started an intellectual revival |
| Medieval Period | A span of history extending roughly from the year 500 to about 1400; also known as the middle ages; usually divided into sub periods |
| Byzantine | The eastern portion of the Roman Empire from the fourth century onward, taken from 'Byzantion,' an early name for Constantinople, the capital city |
| Schism of 1054 | The separation of most of the Eastern churches from the Western Church in A.D. 1054 |
| Serf | A person who is bound to the land and owned by the feudal lord |
| Lord | A noble who owned and controlled all activities on his manor |
| Vassal | A noble who was given a fief by his lord in exchange for loyalty |
| Holy Roman | A loose federation of mostly German states and principalities, headed by an emperor elected by the princes. It lasted from 962 to 1806 |
| Investiture Controversy | The struggle between popes and kings regarding control of offices or appointments |
| Monasticism | A way of life in which men and women withdraw from the rest of the world in order to devote themselves to their faith |
| The Crusades | A series of military campaigns to retake the Holy Lands from Muslim control |
| Pope Urban II | Leader of the Roman Catholic Church who asked European Christians to take up arms against Muslims, starting the Crusades |
| Cyrillic Alphabet | The alphabet for writings of the Slavic languages, devised in the 9th century A.D. by Saints Cyril and Methodius |
| Justinian | The Byzantine emperor in the 6th century A.D. who reconquered much of the territory previously ruler by Rome who initiated an ambitious building program as well as a new legal code |
| Caesaropapism | The doctrine that the state is supreme over the church in ecclesiastical matters |
| Corpus Juris Civilis | A new code of the Roman Law decided by Justinian I in 529 CE that made Orthodox Christianity the law of the land. It means the "body of civil law" |
| Hagia Sophia | The most famous example of Byzantine architecture, it was built under Justinian I and is considered one of the most perfect buildings in the world |
| Canon Law | The body of codified laws governing the affairs of a Christian church |
| Ecclesiastical | Of or associated with a church |
| Venice | An Italian trading city that agreed to help the Byzantines' effort to regain the lands in return for trading privileges in Constantinople |
| Latin West | The territories of Europe that adhered to the Latin rite of Christianity and used the Latin language for intellectual exchange in the period ca. 1000-1500 |
| Late Middle Ages | A period of great change in Europe that included increased exposure to classical text through trade with the Ottoman Empire |
| Three-Field System | A rotational system for agriculture in which one field grows grain, one grows legumes, and one lies fallow. It gradually replaced two-field system in medieval Europe |
| Black Death | An outbreak of bubonic plague that spread across Asia, North Africa, and Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, carrying off up to one in three people |
| Water Wheel | A mechanism that harnesses the energy in flowing water to grind grain or to power machinery |
| Windmills | A machine that uses the power of the wind to turn sails |
| Hanseatic League | A commercial and defensive confederation of free cities in northern Germany and surrounding areas |
| Guilds | Association of merchants or artisans who cooperated to protect their economic interests |
| Flanders | An area that became the center of trade for northern Europe (now part of Belgium) and was known for its woolen cloth |
| Medici | A powerful banking family who ruled Florence in the 1400s and who were patrons of the arts |
| Fuggers | A family of prominent bankers and merchants in Augsberg who gained great status through wealth |
| Gothic Cathedrals | Large churches originating in twelfth-century France; built in an architectural style featuring pointed arches, tall vaults and spires, flying buttresses, and large stained-glass windows |
| European Renaissance | A period of intense artistic and intellectual activity; the "rebirth" of Greco-Roman culture |
| Universities | Degree-granting institutions of higher learning. Those that appeared in Latin West from about 1200 onward became the model of all modern universities |
| Scholasticism | A philosophical and theological system, associated with Thomas Aquinas, devised to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and Roman Catholic theology in the thirteenth century |
| Summa Theologica | One of the most notable scholastic works of the medieval period. Written by Thomas Aquinas, the work founded Christian belief on Aristotelian principles |
| Humanists | European scholars, writers, and teachers associated with the study of the humanities (grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, languages, and moral philosophy), influential in the fifteenth century and later |
| Dante | An Italian poet famous for writing the Divine Comedy that describes a journey through hell and purgatory and paradise guided by Virgil and his idealized Beatrice |
| Chaucer | The English poet remembered as author of the Canterbury Tales |
| Johannes Gutenberg | The creator of mechanical movable type as well as his revolutionary bible for the masses |
| Printing Press | A mechanical device for transferring text or graphics from a woodblock or type to paper using ink. Presses using movable type first appeared in Europe in about 1450 |
| Jan van Eyck | Flemish painter who was a founder of the Flemish school of painting and who pioneered modern techniques of oil painting |
| Leonardo da Vinci | An Italian painter, engineer, musician, and scientist. He filled notebooks with engineering and scientific observations that were in some cases centuries ahead of their time. As a painter he is best known for The Last Supper and Mona Lisa |
| Michelangelo | An Italian painter, sculptor, and architect of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Among many achievements in a life of nearly ninety years, he sculpted the David, painted the ceiling and rear wall of the Sistine Chapel, and served as an architect of Saint Peter's Basilica |
| Rafael | The man who painted the "School of Athens" that summarizes the Italian Renaissance |
| Great Schism | A division in the Latin (Western) Christian Church between 1378 and 1417, when rival claimants to the papacy existed in Rome and Avignon |
| Magna Carta | A document signed in 1215 by king John of England that requires the king to honor certain rights |
| Hundred Years War | A series of campaigns over control of the throne of France, involving English and French royal families and French noble families |
| Joan of Arc | A French heroine and military leader inspired by religious visions to organize French resistance to the English and to have Charles VII crowned king |
| Teotihuacan | A powerful city-state in central Mexico with a population of about 150,000 at its peak in 600 |
| Mayans | A Mesoamerican civilization of Central America and southern Mexico. Achievements include mathematics, architecture, and a 365 day a year calendar |
| Toltec | A people who invaded central Mexico and were ruled by a military class; had a capital city of Tula; influenced the Maya; introduced the working of gold and silver; spread the worship of their god Quetzalcoatl |
| Aztecs | A group from the north that invaded central Mexico; were first wandering warriors; built their capital city at Tenochtitlan; increased their power until they dominated central Mexico; known for dedication to the sun god but ended when conquered by Spanish explorers in the 1500s |
| Quetzalcoatl | Mesoamerican creator god worshiped at Teotihuacan and by the Toltecs; believed by the Aztecs to have presided over a golden age |
| Chinampas | Raised fields constructed along lake shores in Mesoamerica to increase agricultural yields |
| Tenochtitlan | Capital of the Aztec Empire, located on an island in Lake Texcoco. Its population was about 150,000 on the eve of Spanish conquest. Mexico City was constructed on its ruins |
| Moctezuma II | The Aztec ruler from 1502 to 1520 who was the emperor of the Aztecs when Cortés and his army conquered the empire |
| Huitzilopochtli | The Aztec tribal patron god who was a central figure of cult of human sacrifice |
| Hernan Cortes | The Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the conquest of Aztec Mexico in 1519-1521 for Spain |
| Kivas | Underground chamber in a pueblo village, used by the men especially for ceremonies or councils |
| Chiefdom | A form of political organization with rule by a hereditary leader who held power over a collection of villages and towns. Less powerful than kingdoms and empires, these were based on gift giving and commercial links |
| Khipu | A system of knotted colored cords used by preliterate Andean peoples to transmit information |
| Ayllu | Andean lineage group or kin-based community |
| Mit'a | Andean labor system based on shared obligations to help kinsmen and work on behalf of the ruler and religious organizations |
| Mississippi Culture | A loose collection of communities dispersed along the Mississippi River from Louisiana to Illinois that shared similar technologies and beliefs |
| Anasazi | A Native American civilization established in what is now southern Colorado, Utah, northern Arizona, and New Mexico and who built cliff dwellings |
| Incas | A Native American civilization that built a notable civilization in western South America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries |
| Age of Exploration | A period characterized by men sailing the seas in search of new lands, peoples, and riches |
| Han Fei | The foremost legalist writer and political adviser to the ruler of the Qin state |
| Du Fu | Considered China's greatest poet. After the rebellion of An Lushan, he fell into poverty and experienced difficulties. The poetry of his later years lamented the chaos of the late eighth century |
| Maritime Revolution | A period where caravel, triangular sails, and magnetic compasses were created |
| Reconquest of Iberia | Beginning in the eleventh century, military campaigns by various Christian states to recapture territory taken by Muslims. In 1492 the last Muslim ruler was defeated, and Spain and Portugal emerged as united kingdoms |
| Roman | An empire established by Augustus in 27 BC and divided in AD 395 into the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern or Byzantine Empire |
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