Origins & Migration
This era, beginning around 7000 BCE, saw retreating glaciers allow farming to develop and permanent settlements to rise across the Americas.
The Neolithic (Agricultural) Revolution / Retreating glaciers enabled tropical forests and farming.
The Maya grew this trio of crops together — maize, beans, and squash. What was this named?
'Three Sisters.'
The Aztec built their capital city Tenochtitlán — now Mexico City — on a human-made island in the middle of this lake.
Lake Texcoco
The Inca Empire was located in this South American mountain range, stretching from modern Colombia to central Chile.
Andes Mountains
The Olmec are called this because their calendar, ball game, and jaguar-god worship were later adopted by these two civilizations.
Mother Culture
According to this theory, the first Americans traveled by boat along the Pacific coastline, living off marine resources like kelp forest ecosystems.
What is the Kelp Highway theory?
During the spring and fall equinoxes, a shadow creates this creature's likeness descending the steps of El Castillo pyramid at Chichén Itzá.
a serpent (Representing the god Kukulcan)
According to Aztec legend, their god told them to build their capital where they saw this image:
What is an eagle eating a snake on a cactus? (The symbol now on the Mexican flag.)
The Inca capital city, located at 11,000 feet in the mountains of southern Peru, was called this.
Cuzco
The Olmec carved massive stone heads — 10 feet tall and up to 20 tons — using only these, because they possessed no metal tools.
Stone Tools
According to the Beringia Standstill hypothesis, people lived for thousands of years on this landmass — a lost continent between Asia and Alaska exposed during the last Ice Age.
The Bering Land Bridge)
The Maya used these dried seeds not only to make a popular beverage enjoyed by the elite, but also as a form of currency in trade.
cacao beans
These Aztec floating gardens — rectangular plots built up from the lakebed and crisscrossed by canals — allowed farming on the water.
Chinampas
The Inca kept records of census data, taxes, and history using this system of colored, knotted strings — without any written alphabet.
Quipu
The Olmec civilization arose around 1200 BCE in this geographic environment:
Gulf Coast lowlands (the hot, swampy lowlands along the Gulf of Mexico)
After crossing into the Americas, early peoples had no prior exposure to European illnesses. This is why diseases like smallpox proved so devastating — Indigenous peoples lacked this.
Immunity (They had no immunity to European diseases.)
The Maya independently invented this mathematical concept — used in their Long Count calendar — centuries before it appeared in Europe or Asia.
The concept of zero 0
In this type of empire, conquered peoples kept their local rulers but were required to send regular payments of goods, food, or labor to the Aztec.
Tributary Empire
This famous Inca city, built at 8,000 feet on a mountain peak above the Urubamba River, is one of the most recognized ruins in the world.
Machu Picchu
Both the Zapotec — builders of Monte Albán — and the Inca shared this key farming technique: cutting flat planting surfaces into steep mountain slopes.
Terrace Farming
Archaeologists study these four types of evidence to piece together how early peoples lived in the Americas before written records existed — the same categories of clues used to understand the Olmec, Maya, and other early societies." Name 2
Earthworks, irrigation canals, stone monuments, and artifacts
The Maya performed this ritual — offering their own blood — because they believed humans owed a sacred debt to the gods who sacrificed themselves to create humanity.
Bloodletting (To nourish and please the gods.)
The Aztec arranged these wars specifically NOT to kill enemies but to capture living warriors for religious sacrifice.
Flower Wars
The Inca economy relied on in which communities established colonies at different mountain elevations. This strategy allowed each settlement to specialize and then exchange goods — much like islands in an ocean.
Vertical Archipelagos
The Maya writing system — which used pictorial symbols to represent both sounds and ideas — shares its name with the writing system used by the Ancient Egyptians.
Hieroglyphics