This document defines key vocabulary terms about the Maya and Aztec civilizations, including: 1) Peten, a flat forested region in Guatemala with sinkholes connecting underground rivers. 2) Mayan city-states had organized culture, government, and cooperation between rulers who provided leadership and military forces, though city-states often fought each other. 3) The Aztecs founded their capital city of Tenochtitlan at a place symbolizing a prickly pear cactus, and their kings claimed descent from gods.

1. Section 2
Vocabulary

2. 1. Peten
 Means flat region
 Located in Guatemala
 Dense forest nearly blocked out the sun
r sinkholes
 Areas where the earth has collapsed
 It connected the Mayas with a huge system of
underground rivers and streams
 Gave the Mayas a year-round supply of water

3. ¨ Mayan city-states
 They had built cities and organized culture and
government
 They had cooperation among the people
 They set up city-states
 Rulers supplied leadership and military force
 City-states often fought with each other

4. 1. Mayan city-state rulers
 Leadership passed from one king to the next
 Said they were decendents from the sun
 They taught their subjects how to please he gods
r human sacrifice
 They gave their captives to9 the gods as sacrafices

5. 0 Chac and Mayan
 The god of rain
S alliances
 Political agreement between people or states to
work together
e Mayan astronomy
 The priests believed that the gods revealed their
plans through the movement of the sun, moon
and stars, so they studied the heavens closely

6. Mayan math
 Invented a counting system based on 20
i Mayan written language: hieroglyphics
 Used to record numbers and dates
 Symbols represented sounds, words, or ideas
t Quetzalcoatl
 Sun god ( a feathered serpent)
 He promised that they would find their
promised land

7. 1. Aztec myth about their homeland
 They would know they had found this place when
an eagle” screams and spreads its wings, and
eats……. The serpent
e Tenochtitlan –
 Means “place of the prickly pear cactus”
 The Aztecs new city

8. 1 5.Aztec kings
 Claimed descendent from the gods
 Council warriors , priests
16. Aztec Commoners
 Formed the largest group
o Worked as farmers, warriors, artisans, traders
17. Aztec after life
• They saw death as honorable if you died in battle,
captives who gave their lives as sacrifices to the
gods, women who died during childbirth

9.  18. Huitzilopochtli and the Great Temple
 He spoke through the priests and vowed We shall conquer
all the people in the universe
 Temple rose 135 feet
 Had more than 100 steps
 1000’s of victims were taken to the top, where they were
sacrificed to the gods
19. Pachacamac
 Inca god that was blamed for creating earthquakes “Lord
of the Quakes”
When he lost his temper the Earth would Quake

10. 20. Pachacuti and his son Topa Inca