Chapter 1 - The Americas, Europe, and Africa Before 1492

The Indians living east of the Mississippi differed from those living to the west in all of these ways except:

A chief or group of tribal elders made decisions

Motives for European conqest of the New World included:

All of these: Converting Native Americans to Christianity, Finding riches, The glory of exploration

Which of the following Indian peoples built homes in cliff dwellings that still exist?

Anasazi

an ancient land bridge linking Asia and North America

Beringia

two strains of the bubonic plague that simultaneously swept western Europe in the fourteenth century, causing the death of nearly half the population

Black Death

Which of these products imported from Mesoamerica became the basis of one of our favorite modern sweets?

Cacao

What was the location of the largest mound-building culture in early North America?

Cahokia

a series of military expeditions made by Christian Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries

Crusades

Which Mesoamerican people had the most highly developed and complex society?

Inca

Which culture developed a road system rivaling that of the Romans?

Inca

a campaign by the Catholic Church to root out heresy, especially among converted Jews and Muslims

Inquisition

In 1492, the Spanish forced these two religious groups to either convert or leave.

Jews and Muslims

the sacred book of Islam, written by the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century

Koran

Which European's travels first provoked the Western European curiosity for exploration and expansion?

Marco Polo

Which culture developed the only writing system in the Western Hemisphere?

Maya

Which Mesoamerican people perfected the calendar?

Mayans

Spain's nearly eight-hundred-year holy war against Islam, which ended in 1492

Reconquista

Which crop became popular with Europeans after slaves brought it from Africa and began growing it on southern plantations?

Rice

From where did the first migrants to North America originate?

Siberia

The excavations of the Hopewell peoples' burial sites in the Midwestern United States and the objects discovered within have indicated which of the following?

The Hopewell had a wide trade network.

What was a consequence of the fact that the early people of the Americas did not have horses or oxen?

They never developed wheeled vehicles

Why were West Africans preferred over the native people of the Americas for enslaved labor?

They were able to resist diseases that had affected the native peoples.

The city of ________ became a leading center for Muslim scholarship and trade.

Timbuktu

The Olmec were the "mother" of Mesoamerican culture.

True

_______ became wealthy trading with the East.

Venice

Which of the following does not describe a form of slavery traditionally practiced in Africa?

a system in which people are enslaved permanently on account of their race

What was the driving force behind the Europeans' desire to find an oceanic route to Asia?

being able to circumvent Arabic merchants

Mesoamericans

believed in many gods

Which of the following most strongly characterized Mesoamerican life?

building permanent settlements

How did the first people to migrate to North America reach it?

by crossing the Bering Strait from the west

The Hohokam people of modern-day Arizona were best known for which of the following?

canal construction

Incan relay runners used to send messages over great distances

chasquis

a system of servitude in which people are treated as personal property to be bought and sold

chattel slavery

floating Aztec gardens consisting of a large barge woven from reeds, filled with dirt and floating on the water, allowing for irrigation

chinampas

a social arrangement in which serfs and knights provided labor and military service to noble lords, receiving protection and land use in return

feudal society

The first migrants to North America reached it from which direction?

from the west

Native American society was a ____________ society; European society was _____________.

matriarcal; patriarchal

a society in which women have political power

matriarchy

the Incan labor tax, with each family donating time and work to communal projects

mita

the practice of taking more than one wife

polygyny

an ancient Incan device for recording information, consisting of variously colored threads knotted in different ways

quipu

a peasant tied to the land and its lord

serf

Which Southwestern tribe was first to build multi-room and -story dwellings from adobe?

the Anasazi

On which modern-day location did Christopher Columbus's fleet first land in the New World?

the Bahamas

The series of attempts by Christian armies to retake the Holy Lands from Muslims was known as

the Crusades

Evidence of a turquoise trade indicates that the Aztec people probably migrated to central Mexico from what area?

the Southwest