Deck 16: Cultural Centers of the Americas

Question 1

At its peak, around 600 CE, the population of Teotihuacán is believed to have been about _________, making it one of the world's largest cities at the time.

A) 25,000
B) 200,000
C) 12,000,000
D) 20,000,000

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Machu Picchu is located in which present-day country?

A) Peru
B) Guatemala
C) Canada
D) Argentina

Answer 2

A

Question 3

In Puebloan culture, a kiva is:

A) a type of clay used for pottery.
B) a technique of glazing pottery.
C) a village built into the ledge of a mountain.
D) a large, circular room that served as a community center.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

What is the Popol Vuh?

A) the name of a painting by Diego Rivera
B) an Aztec stone effigy
C) the Council Book of the Maya people
D) a ball game played by the Maya

Question 5

Which of the following statements about the pyramid at Chichén Itzá is NOT true?

A) It has 9 levels, presumably related to the Mayan conception of the Underworld, which has 9 layers.
B) The four sides of the pyramid face the four points of the compass.
C) It predates the construction of the ancient Egyptian pyramids.
D) The number of steps on all sides of the structure adds up to 365.

Question 6

Which term refers to a person who communicates with spirits, and who may enter a trance state during religious rituals?

A) shaman
B) totem
C) moai
D) dualist

Question 7

What does the Bonampak mural, located in southeastern Mexico, portray?

A) the Olmec calendar
B) the offering of captives to a Maya lord for sacrifice to the gods
C) the god Quetzalcoatl
D) the Aztec goddess of fertility

Question 8

According to the text, which of the following functions did khipu NOT serve in Inkan culture?

A) recording inventories of grain
B) keeping track of debts
C) population censuses
D) serving as currency for trading with Spanish colonizers

Question 9

Which of the following date ranges correspond to the Classic period of Mesoamerican civilizations?

A) 2000 BCE-300 CE
B) 400-100 BCE
C) 300-900 CE
D) 900-1521 CE

Question 10

Which of the following peoples thrived in the coastal desert of what is now northern Peru?

A) Inuit
B) Kwakiutl
C) Pueblo
D) Moche

Question 11

Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec civilization, was built in the center of what is now ________.

A) Lima
B) Honduras
C) Texas
D) Mexico City

Question 12

What is the proper name for the Aztec Calendar (or Sun) Stone?

A) the Jalisco
B) the Cuauhxicalli Eagle Bowl
C) the Coatlicue
D) the Nazca Array

Question 13

What is the term for a sign, in a system of writing, that denotes a particular sound?

A) syllabogram
B) kiva
C) logogram
D) formoglyph

Question 14

Which of the following deities was worshipped by the people of Teotihuacán, the Maya, and the Aztecs?

A) Chan Muwan
B) Itzamná
C) Quetzalcoatl
D) Popol Vuh

Question 15

Who was Nezahualcoyotl?

A) the first Olmec ruler
B) the last leader of the Maya people
C) the Mayan god of rain, lightning, and thunder
D) an Aztec king who wrote poetry

Question 16

Which of the following gives an account of the Aztec perspective of the encounter between the Aztecs and Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés?

A) the Tenochtitlan register
B) the Sun Stone
C) the Florentine Codex
D) "Song of the Flight"

Question 17

What caused the Maya civilization to fall?

A) an epidemic of bubonic plague
B) conquest by the Aztec people
C) the violence and destruction of European colonizers
D) 20 years of continual flooding ruining crops and shelter

Question 18

What is the term for a large design produced on or in the ground, by positioning stones or scraping?

A) geoglyph
B) codex
C) khipu
D) syllabogram

Question 19

Which is Mesoamerica's earliest known civilization?

A) Inka
B) Maya
C) Aztec
D) Olmec

Question 20

What civilization was located in southern Mexico and Guatemala?

A) Aztec
B) Maya
C) Inka
D) Yupik

Question 21

What area did the Ancestral Puebloans inhabit?

A) Canada
B) the U.S. Southwest
C) Brazil
D) the U.S. Midwest

Question 22

Nahuatl was the language of which civilization?

A) Nazca
B) Moche
C) Olmec
D) Aztec

Question 23

Which is the Aztec goddess of fertility (portrayed in a statue shown in Ch. 16)?

A) Coatlicue
B) Huitzilopochtli
C) Popol
D) Chan Muwan

Question 24

Who created earth mounds in what is now the state of Ohio?

A) the Kwakiutl
B) the Puebloans
C) the Mississippian people
D) the Inuit

Question 25

In what painting did Frida Kahlo express her Mexican heritage? How did she do this?

Question 26

What do scholars believe was the significance and function of the Maya ball game?

Question 27

A codex is a:

A) document that provides a guide to decoding messages.
B) a form of paper used by Mesoamericans.
C) a bundle of manuscript pages stitched together.
D) a weapon used by European colonizers.

Question 28

What civilization did Francisco Pizarro invade and conquer?

A) the Moche
B) the Inka
C) the Aztecs
D) the Maya

Question 29

What term refers to a person of mixed European and Native American descent?

A) casta
B) shaman
C) gringo
D) mestizo

Question 30

According to the Florentine Codex , what was the Aztec leader Motecuhzoma's initial reaction when encountering Cortés and his crew?

A) He immediately launched an attack against the Europeans.
B) He ordered his people to hide inside several large pyramids.
C) He was suspicious and ordered his guards to put poison in the food he offered the Europeans.
D) He offered the Europeans gifts, as he believed Cortés was the god Quetzalcoatl.

Question 31

What kind of dwellings did the Ancestral Puebloans build? Why?

Question 32

Who painted the mural The History of Mexico in the National Palace in Mexico City?

A) Frida Kahlo
B) Diego Rivera
C) Pablo Picasso
D) David Alfaro Siqueiros

Question 33

Why did the Aztec people settle in central Mexico?

Question 34

Which civilization's writing system used logograms and syllabograms?

A) Nazca
B) Inka
C) Maya
D) Olmec

Question 35

What is notable about the construction of the Inkan estate Machu Picchu?

Question 36

What is a shaman?

A) a person who can communicate with good and evil spirits
B) a wooden figure thought to be imbued with supernatural powers
C) the uppermost figure on a totem pole
D) a mask worn during a Kwakiutl ritual

Question 37

Which of the following civilizations was NOT destroyed by European conquest?

A) Aztec
B) Inka
C) Maya
D) Moche

Question 38

Which of the following were European explorers seeking when they traveled to the Western hemisphere?

A) the Holy Grail
B) corn
C) gold
D) the city of Atlantis

Question 39

"Mesoamerica" does NOT refer to land in which of the following present-day countries?

A) Chile
B) Mexico
C) Guatemala
D) Honduras

Question 40

Inkan civilization suffered from which of the following?

A) a smallpox invasion brought by European colonizers
B) a meteor crashing into the middle of the Inkan capital
C) a brief but severe ice age in the Andes mountains
D) an inability to built stable housing in the mountains