Mesoamerican Art
This civilization is known for massive stone heads carved from basalt and detailed calendar stones.
Who were The Aztecs? (Mexica)
This codex was compiled by Bernardino de Sahagún after the Spanish conquest.
What is The Florentine Codex?
This Aztec goddess is known as “She of the Serpent Skirt.”
Who was Coatlicue?
These natural sinkholes were important water sources for the Maya.
What are the Cenotes?
This devastating epidemic spread through the Andes before the Spanish fully arrived, weakening the Inca Empire.
What was smallpox disease?
This civilization created highly detailed stelae that recorded rulers, dates, and historical events.
Who were The Maya?
This codex is pre-Columbian and focuses heavily on rituals and the religious calendar.
What is The Codex Borgia?
According to legend, Coatlicue miraculously became pregnant after this fell from the sky.
What is a ball of feathers?
The Maya believed cenotes were portals to this sacred place.
What is the underworld? (Xibalba)
These two sons of Wayna Qhapaq fought a damaging civil war for control of the Inca throne.
Who were Huascar and Atahualpa?
This Andean civilization mastered stone masonry so precisely that their buildings did not require mortar.
Who were The Inca?
The Florentine Codex is especially valuable because it includes perspectives from these people.
Who were the Indigenous Nahua informants?
This warrior god was born fully grown and armed to defend his mother.
Who was Huitzilopochtli?
Aluxes are described as small supernatural beings in this culture.
What is the Maya culture?
The Inca road system helped unify the empire by facilitating this key state function.
What is communication and administrative control?
Featherwork, turquoise mosaics, and ceremonial shields were elite artistic forms in this empire.
What was The Aztec (Mexica) Empire?
The Codex Borgia is primarily associated with this cultural region.
What is Central Mexico? (Mesoamerica)
The myth of Coatlicue symbolically represents this recurring cosmic struggle.
What is the struggle between order and chaos / life and death?
Farmers would build small houses for Aluxes to ensure protection of these.
What are crops / fields?
After two failed expeditions in 1523 and 1524, this conquistador received official permission from the Spanish Crown in 1531 to conquer Peru and become its governor.
Who was Francisco Pizzarro?
This civilization used art not only decoratively, but as a political tool to legitimize divine kingship through monuments and temple carvings.
Who were The Maya?
Unlike the Borgia Codex, the Florentine Codex was created during this historical period.
What is the Early Colonial Period? (after Spanish conquest)
This daughter of Coatlicue attempted to kill her after learning of the mysterious pregnancy
Who is Coyolxauhqui?
The sacred cenote at Chichén Itzá was used for this ritual practice.
What are offerings and human sacrifices?
The death of this Inca ruler in 1528 triggered a succession crisis and civil war between his sons.
Who was Wayna Qhapaq?