Linked by long roads, Chaco Canyon in present-day New Mexico was a religious and trading center for Ancestral Pueblo peoples by about 1050 CE.
Missing Word
Chaco
Chaco Canyon held large multistory great houses and was connected to outlying communities by roads. Drought likely led people to leave it about a century later, and the Hopi and Zuni are among the descendants of its builders.
Category: Native North America
Question 2
The Inca empire stretched along the Andes, the mountain range running down the western side of South America.
Missing Word
Andes
The Andes are the long mountain range along South America's west coast. The Inca built cities at high altitude there and linked them with stepped roads and rope bridges.
Category: Andean Civilization
Question 3
Mesoamerica is the cultural region that stretched from central Mexico south into Central America and was home to the Olmec, Maya, and Mexica.
Missing Word
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica names a region whose peoples, though diverse, shared maize farming, polytheistic religion, calendars, and long-distance trade. It is a cultural term rather than a modern country.
Category: Mesoamerican Civilizations
Question 4
The Renaissance, the period after the Middle Ages when renewed interest in the art and learning of ancient Greece and Rome spread outward from the city-states of Italy, produced artists such as Leonardo da Vinci.
Missing Word
Renaissance
The Renaissance revived the study of classical Greek and Roman learning and art, beginning in the Italian city-states and then spreading across Europe. Wealth from trade helped pay for the artists and scholars it produced.
Category: Medieval Europe
Question 5
The medieval Church collected a tax called the tithe, equal to one-tenth of a person's earnings.
Missing Word
tithe
A tithe is a payment of one-tenth of income to the Church. Along with land rents, tithes made the Church one of the wealthiest institutions in Europe.
Category: Medieval Europe
Question 6
Even kings feared excommunication, the Church's penalty that cut a person off from its sacraments.
Missing Word
excommunication
Excommunication expelled a person from the Church community and its sacraments, which medieval Christians believed endangered their salvation. This gave the Church power even over monarchs.
Category: Medieval Europe
Question 7
Venice, an Italian port city at the head of the Adriatic Sea, grew rich through trade with Muslim merchants who brought silk and spices from Asia.
Missing Word
Venice
Venice controlled much of the trade between Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, and Venetian merchants such as Marco Polo traveled as far as China. Its wealth showed other Europeans how profitable trade with Asia could be.
Category: Crusades and Trade
Question 8
Christians called their centuries-long campaign to retake the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rulers by the Spanish name Reconquista.
Missing Word
Reconquista
The Reconquista lasted for centuries and ended in 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada. Its religious zeal carried over into Spain's overseas expansion.
Category: Iberian Exploration
Question 9
With the pope's approval, Ferdinand and Isabella set up an Inquisition in Spain, a church court under royal control that targeted converted Jews and Muslims suspected of secretly keeping their old faiths, as well as other heretics.
Missing Word
Inquisition
The Spanish Inquisition investigated and punished people accused of heresy. It was part of the monarchs' effort to enforce religious uniformity in their kingdoms.
Category: Iberian Exploration
Question 10
The caravel, a small, light ship with triangular sails, let Portuguese sailors explore the coast of West Africa.
Missing Word
caravel
A caravel was a nimble sailing ship whose triangular sails let it sail closer to the wind. Columbus also used caravels on his first voyage.
Category: Iberian Exploration
Question 11
Christopher Columbus was a sailor from Genoa, an Italian port city, who won Spanish backing for a westward voyage to Asia.
Missing Word
Genoa
Genoa was a major Italian trading city. Columbus first sought backing from the king of Portugal, who refused, before Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to fund his voyage.
Category: Iberian Exploration
Question 12
After the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632, the religion of Islam spread rapidly across North Africa.
Missing Word
Islam
Islam spread through conversion and conquest and brought a shared faith, law, and political structure. Muslim traders went on to dominate the trans-Saharan trade with West Africa.
Category: West African Empires
Question 13
Under Sundiata Keita, the empire of Mali replaced Ghana as the leading power of West Africa.
Missing Word
Mali
Mali rose in the 1200s, controlled rich gold fields and trade routes, and its rulers converted to Islam. Its wealth made it famous far beyond Africa.
Category: West African Empires
Question 14
Ghana's rulers grew rich by taxing a trade that exchanged gold from the south for salt mined in the Sahara.
Missing Word
salt
Salt was essential for preserving food and for health, and the Sahara held rich deposits. Its exchange for West African gold drove trans-Saharan trade.
Category: West African Empires
Question 15
Under chattel slavery, an enslaved person was treated as property that an owner could buy, sell, or pass on to heirs.
Missing Word
chattel
Chattel means movable personal property. Chattel slavery treated enslaved people as property for life and passed that status to their children, and it became the form of slavery practiced in the Americas.
Category: Slavery and Labor