Significant Terms
Spanish monarchs in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that united their country and sponsored the exploration of the New World by Christopher Columbus.
Who are Ferdinand and Isabella?
a series of expeditions European made to regain control of Christian holy sites in the Middle East from the 1000s-1200s A.D.
What are the crusades?
To travel completely around something, usually by water.
A Spanish explorer.
What is a conquistador?
A large farm.
What is a plantation?
The transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World of Europe and Africa and the New World of the Americas.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
Journey to a holy place.
What is pilgrimage?
An instrument that shows the direction of magnetic north.
What is the compass?
A Spanish fort.
What is presidio?
A section of coastal western Africa along the Gulf of Guinea roughly corresponding to present-day Ghana.
What is the Gold Coast of Africa?
Agreement in 1494 between Spain and Portugal aimed at settling conflicts over the Western Hemisphere.
What is the Treaty of Tordesillas?
A religious community that farmed and converted Native Americans to Christianity.
What is a mission?
The flagship captained by Columbus on his first voyage to the Americas.
What is the Santa Maria?
A town in Spanish ruled lands.
What is a pueblo?
A kingdom that developed in the Andes region of South America and gradually grew larger through the military strength and diplomacy of their emperors.
What is the Inca Empire?
This term represents centuries of effort to find a route westward from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic Archipelago of what became Canada.
What is the Northwest Passage?
The 16th century religious movement rejecting or changing some Roman Catholic teachings and establishing Protestant churches.
What is the Reformation?
What is a caravel?
The last of the great Mesoamerican cultures before the Europeans arrived. They built impressive temple-pyramids, used sophisticated techniques of agriculture, their eagle warriors built a great empire, and they made human sacrifices to their gods.
What is the Aztec Empire?
The world's largest and deepest body of water that was named by Magellan because the it was calm and pleasant when his fleet reached it.
What is the Pacific Ocean?
Legal code that included the prohibition of enslavement of the Indians and provided for gradual abolition of the encomienda system in America by forbidding it to be inherited by descendants.
What are the New Laws of 1542?
A Muslim house of worship.
What is a mosque?
An instrument used to plan a course of travel using the stars.
What is an astrolabe?
A legend about a fabled province called Cibola, which had cities made entirely of aurum.
What is Seven Cities of Gold?
A period in European history that was marked by a revival of Classical learning and wisdom.
What is the Renaissance?