Incas, Aztecs, and Maya

Unit Review Sheet

Facts and Definitions

Lesson 1: Incas, Aztecs, and Maya History and Geography

• An empire is made up of multiple lands with the same ruler.
• A civilization is a society that shares the same way of life.
• Mesoamerica is a historic region that refers to the land that contains modern-day Mexico and Central America.

Lesson 2: Daily Life of the Incas, Aztecs, and Maya

• The villages, homes, and foods of Mayan and Aztec people were similar in many ways.
• Most Mesoamerican people ate a nearly vegetarian diet based on corn, beans, fruits, and vegetables. Meat and fish were consumed, but grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables made up the main diet of most people.
• The men and women farmed in these societies, and each culture had a unique way of farming the land.
• Children in Mayan, Aztec, and Incan communities were trained to do the jobs their parents did.
• We continue to enjoy most of the foods the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan societies consumed.

Lesson 3: Three Cities

• Ancient civilization cities were centers of trade, religious ceremonies, politics, and recreation.
• In the ancient Mesoamerica and Andes cities, you would have found markets, squares, streets, homes, and temples.
• Between 1440 and 1469, Moctezuma Ilhuicamina ruled the Aztec civilization and expanded their territory far beyond the Valley of Mexico, turning it into a powerful empire.

Lesson 4: Sharing Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations

• Both the Maya and Aztecs used systems of picture writing. The Maya used glyphs- drawn symbols, to represent ideas and things in their writing.
• A codex is a folded book read from top to bottom and left to right. Scribes created thousands of codices.
• The Mayan system of writing numbers used three symbols — a shell-shaped symbol for zero, dots (representing one), and lines (representing 5) — arranged in specific ways to represent larger numbers.
• Mesoamericans created sophisticated calendars to keep track of the days of the year.

Lesson 5: Religion and Celebration

• Religion was an essential part of Mesoamerican culture.
• Both the Mayans and the Aztecs had religious systems that involved several nature gods. Mesoamerican people believed that these gods directly influenced human lives and that the gods would look on the people favorably if they offered the gods gifts and sacrifices.
• The Incans told myths about their gods.

Lesson 6: Warfare and Gold

• War was a part of life for ancient civilizations who first lived in the Americas.
• The people of these civilizations had to create their own weapons from the resources they had available.
• Gold was a sacred resource in early civilization society. It signified wealth and power.
• The gold of the ancient civilizations of the Americas attracted the attention of Spanish conquistadors, who eventually conquered their empires.

Lesson 7: The Incas

• The Incan social system had a strict hierarchy — rulers, nobility, and peasants all had specific roles within the social system.
• Artisans were trained to create arts and crafts for a job.
• Incas freeze dried the surplus of food they produced, so they would not starve during war or famine.
• The Incas made quipus, which included knotted ropes and strings of different colors and thicknesses that could be used to keep track of numerical data.

Lesson 8: The Maya and the Aztecs

• The Aztec children were educated in schools with similarities to our own public education system.
• Music played an important role in ancient Mesoamerican cultures.

Lesson 9: History and Archaeology

• An artifact is an item used by humans in the past.
• An archaeologist is a scientist who studies human history by examining sites where humans lived in the past and artifacts were discovered.
• Hernan Cortes, hoping to find the vast amounts of gold that Columbus had reported, led the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica in 1519.
• Colonization of the New World by Spain was driven by gold, glory, and God.

Final Project: Time Machine

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