U.S. Geography & The Global Grid
This imaginary line circles the Earth at 0° latitude, dividing our planet into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
What is the Equator?
The seasonal movement of early people or animals from one region to another, such as migrating from Siberia into the Americas, is known by this term.
What is migration?
The Western Dakotas of the Great Plains considered this animal sacred because it supplied almost everything they needed: meat for food, hides for tepees, and horn for tools.
What is the bison (buffalo)?
European navigators relied on this tool with a magnetized needle that always pointed north to keep their heading in dense fog or darkness.
What is a magnetic compass?
Sailing under the Spanish flag in 1492, this Italian explorer made landfall in the Caribbean and mistakenly named the Indigenous people "Indians"
Who is Christopher Columbus?
When pinpointing an absolute location using coordinates like 30° N, 90° W, this measurement is always read and written first.
What is latitude?
Hopi and Pueblo peoples gathered in this circular, underground chamber to tell sacred origin stories and perform spiritual ceremonies.
What is a kiva?
Kwakiutl and Tlingit artisans of the rainy Northwest Coast carved tall cedar poles with animal and spirit figures for this main purpose.
What is to record family history and display social status?
Sailors held this brass ring by a loop and lined up a rotating bar with the sun or the North Star to calculate their ship's latitude at sea.
What is an astrolabe?
This Spanish conquistador marched inland to Tenochtitlán in 1519, took Montezuma II prisoner, and conquered the Aztec Empire for Spain.
Who is Hernán Cortés?
Because water provides critical transportation, trade access, and food, 43 of the 50 U.S. state capitals are located next to one of these two physical features.
What are rivers (riverbanks) or ocean coasts?
To protect their eyes from the blinding glare of the sun reflecting off vast fields of snow and ice, the Inuit carved these from bone or driftwood.
What are snow goggles?
Seminoles in the humid Florida Everglades built chickees on 3-foot wooden platforms without walls for these two practical reasons.
What are avoiding swamp water/flooding and allowing cooling breezes to blow through?
European monarchs originally funded westward expeditions because they desperately wanted direct, profitable trade routes to Asia to buy these two luxury goods.
What are spices and silks?
Jacques Cartier and Henry Hudson sailed through cold northern waters searching for this mythical, shortcut water route through North America to Asia.
What is the Northwest Passage?
Stretching roughly 3,000 miles from northwestern Canada down into New Mexico, this is the largest mountain range in western North America.
What are the Rocky Mountains?
The Inuit inflated the skins of this marine animal with air to create floating buoys attached to harpoons while hunting whales and walruses.
What is a seal (sealskin float)?
Because large trees were scarce in their arid environment, tribes like the Hopi built multi-story apartment dwellings called pueblos using stone and this sun-dried clay mixture.
What is adobe?
Native Americans used this tall, leafy plant in peacemaking rituals, but Europeans turned it into a highly addictive, lucrative cash crop grown on large plantations.
What is tobacco?
In 1682, this French explorer canoed all the way down the Mississippi River to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the river valley and naming it Louisiana.
Who is Robert de La Salle?
Unlike a "physical feature," which includes both water and land, this specific vocabulary term describes a natural shape found solely on the land surface, like a mountain, valley, or plain.
What is a landform?
Most scientists agree that Siberian big-game hunters first entered North America thousands of years ago during the Ice Age by crossing this strip of land.
What is the Bering land bridge (Beringia)?
Coastal Pomos of California broke and shaped clamshells into beads, stringing them into necklaces that served this economic role.
What is money (currency)?
After costly wars in Europe, Spanish monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella demanded their explorers bring back these two precious metals to refill Spain’s treasury.
What are gold and silver?
Carried unintentionally across the Atlantic by European explorers, this single factor killed up to 90 percent of native populations who had no biological immunity.
What are contagious diseases (such as smallpox)?