SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
This word names the field devoted to studying how the past has been recorded, interpreted, and retold across different eras.
What is historiography?
This peninsula, spanning parts of modern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, was home to the Maya civilization.
What is the Yucatán Peninsula?
This is the name the people history calls the "Aztecs" actually used for themselves.
What is Mexica?
Before it grew into an empire, this civilization began as a single city-state: the Kingdom of Cusco.
What is the Inca Empire?
Rather than one unified empire, the Maya spent most of their history organized into independent versions of this kind of political unit, each ruled by a king claiming a divine connection.
What is a city-state?
A historian who explains a war's outcome mainly through one general's brilliant decisions is writing in this tradition, which centers the actions of powerful individuals.
What is Great Man History?
Lacking pack animals for overland routes, the Maya relied on this method of transport to move goods along their waterways.
What is canoe travel?
According to legend, the Mexica founded Tenochtitlan at the exact spot where they witnessed this omen.
What is an eagle perched on a cactus, eating a snake?
This is the Inca Empire's size ranking among every state that ever existed in the pre-Columbian Americas.
What is the largest (empire in the pre-Columbian Americas)?
Found east of the Mississippi River, this culture is known for massive earthen mounds and a matrilineal social structure.
What is Mississippian culture?
Rather than focusing on rulers, this school of thought studies the everyday lives of ordinary people through large-scale patterns and data.
What is Social History?
Maya writing combined phonetic symbols with these picture-based signs, which scholars are still working to fully decipher.
What are glyphs?
Tenochtitlan, Tlacopan, and Texcoco together completed the Aztec bloc/coalition known as the ________ _________ — name it.
What is the Triple Alliance?
Young male relay runners called chasquis could carry a message across the Inca road system at roughly this pace.
What is 250 miles per day?
Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde both adapted to this type of climate, using stone construction and water storage systems to survive it.
What is a dry/arid climate?
When a long-accepted account of an event is overturned by new evidence or a previously ignored perspective, that's an example of this kind of history.
What is revisionist history?
Best known for carving colossal stone heads, this Mesoamerican civilization also produced the Western Hemisphere's earliest writing system.
Who/what are the Olmec?
Rather than direct labor duties, the Aztec Empire extracted wealth through this system, layered on top of a market economy that used cacao beans and cloth as currency.
What is tribute (the tributary system)?
This Inca practice of ritual sacrifice could involve the sacrifice of children, women, animals, or objects.
What is qhapaq hucha?
Painted nearly four centuries after the event it depicts, Francisco Pradilla's famous 1492 surrender scene shows that this shapes a portrayal of history just as much as the available evidence does.
What is bias/perspective (the artist's point of view)?
Zooming in on one overlooked letter, object, or minor event to reveal something larger about an entire era is the signature move of this historical approach.
What is micro-history?
This mathematical placeholder, alongside a calendar system, was an Olmec innovation later adopted by both the Maya and the Aztec.
What is the concept of zero?
The Mexica founded their capital city, Tenochtitlan, in this year — traditionally tied to the eagle-on-a-cactus omen.
What is 1325?
Under Spanish colonial rule, the once-reciprocal Inca mit'a labor system was redirected toward exploitative demands like silver mining at this famous mountain site.
What is Potosí?
Drought, warfare among city-states, logging, and overpopulation combined to help bring about the decline of this Mesoamerican civilization.
What are the Maya?