Meso-America and Inca Notes!

Name: ______Period: ______

Section One: The Maya

  1. The place the Mayans got started is in modern-day ______. It is in Central America, or ______-America!
  2. Another name for corn is ______. It was an important crop of the Maya.
  3. Maya cities were ______; there were no empires, only cities ruled by kings…just like ancient Greeks!
  4. What is CACAO? ______
  5. One Mayan king, ______, ruled the city of ______. He built magnificent pyramid temples to the gods there!
  6. A popular sport played by the Maya was called ______. You could only use your hips, head and shoulders, and the losers got sacrificed to the gods!
  7. Mayan warriors used weapons made out of a special, dark black stone called ______. Their main weapon was called the ______, which is where our word for “machete” comes from!
  8. The Mayan holy book is called the ______.
  9. The Maya believed their gods could help of harm them, so they worshipped them by performing ______.
  10. Mayans also built ______to study the stars and made a very complex ______to show seasons and important dates.
  11. The Mayan writing system was similar to the Egyptians; they used ______.

Section Two: The Aztec

  1. The Aztecs would form an empire in the country we today call ______. They would build an island city in the middle of Lake ______, which they would name ______.
  2. The Aztecs and their rivals fought “wars for captives” called the “______Wars.”
  3. They fought fiercely, conquered people around them and demanded ______, or for conquered people to give them food and supplies. They soon controlled a huge trading network!
  4. Tenochtitlan was connected to the mainland by a road called a ______. To get around in the city, they built ______and went by boat! (Kind of like Venice!)
  5. They even did their faming on water, by planting crops on ______, or special floating islands!
  6. The Aztec ______was supreme in the Empire.
  7. Special Aztec warriors were called ______.
  8. The Aztecs’ bloodthirsty war god was called ______. Thousands of captured enemies would be sacrificed to him!!!
  9. The Aztecs were conquered by a group of men from Spain, called the ______. Their leader was a brutal yet smart man named ______. The Spanish captured and killed the Aztec emperor, ______, and destroyed the empire!

What are two things that enabled the Spanish to conquer the Aztecs?

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  1. What is SMALLPOX? What did it do to the Aztecs?
  1. How did it help the Spanish?

Section Three: The Inca

  1. The Inca stared off as a small tribe living in the ______Mountains in South America.
  2. Their capital was a town called ______, on the shores of Lake ______.
  3. Their early leader, a king named ______, expanded the Incan Empire until it stretched up and down the coast of South America. And in only a hundred years!
  4. The Inca name for “king” is ______.
  5. The official language of the Inca people is called ______.
  6. The Inca came up with a special kind of tax. Instead of paying money for taxes, you worked it off instead. This tax is called the ______.
  7. For wool and meat, the Inca used the goofy-looking ______.
  8. The Inca were known for their skill of ______, or stone-working. They made walls with bricks that were cut so perfectly that they didn’t need concrete!
  9. Incas kept records with knotted cords called ______.
  10. Just like the Aztecs, the ______would come along and conquer the Inca. The king of the Inca when the Spanish arrived was a man by the name of ______.
  11. The conquistador who murdered Atahualpa and conquered the Inca was a Spaniard named ______.