Mighty Maya
This crop was the main food crop of the Maya.
What is corn?
The Aztec built this great capital city on an island in a lake.
What is Tenochtitlán?
This South American animal was used by the Inca as a pack animal.
What is a llama?
The Maya were among the first people in the world to develop this important mathematical concept.
What is zero?
This European country sent the conquistadors who defeated the Aztec and Inca.
What is Spain?
Maya cities were located in this region that includes parts of Mexico and Central America.
What is Mesoamerica?
These raised roads connected Tenochtitlán to the mainland.
What are causeways?
The Inca Empire was centered in this South American mountain range.
What are the Andes Mountains?
Maya priests carefully studied the sun, stars, planets, and other objects in space—a science called this.
What is astronomy?
Archaeologists still do not know for certain why the people of this civilization abandoned many of their great cities.
Who are the Maya?
These picture-like symbols were carved on Maya buildings and monuments to record information.
What are hieroglyphs?
Most people sacrificed by the Aztec were these people captured during warfare.
Who were enemy/foreign soldiers?
This title was given to the ruler of the Inca Empire.
Who was the Sapa Inca?
The Inca built this type of bridge using heavy strands of rope to cross deep gorges.
What is a suspension bridge?
This conquistador led about 160 men in search of the wealthy Inca Empire.
Who was Francisco Pizarro?
The Maya built some temples so that the sun would create special effects on these twice-yearly days when daytime and nighttime are about equal.
What are equinoxes?
The Aztec believed human sacrifices helped give this god enough strength to continue his daily journey.
Who is the sun god?
Unlike many builders, the Inca fitted their stones together without using this cement-like building material.
What is mortar?
The Inca constructed an enormous network of these to link the different parts of their empire.
What are roads?
After the Sapa Inca died, two of his sons fought one of these for control of the empire.
What is a civil war?
Archaeologists know something dramatically changed in Maya civilization because around the 900s they stopped carving these two kinds of information on their monuments.
What are names and dates/historical records?
Tenochtitlán had perhaps this many inhabitants when Europeans encountered it.
What is about 200,000 people?
This Inca ruler had won a civil war shortly before Pizarro arrived, only to be captured and later executed by the Spaniards.
Who was Atahualpa?
The Inca Royal Road acted like the “spine” of their transportation network, while these were compared to nerves branching from it.
What are the east-west crossroads/roads?
Name at least two possible reasons historians believe the Mayan cities may have been abandoned.
What are warfare, disease, drought, famine, earthquakes, trade disruptions, and possible invasions.?