Deck 12: An Explosion of Complexity: Mesoamerica

Question 1

K'inich Janaab Pacal, also referred to as "Pacal the Great," was:

A) Tutankhamun's father
B) a ruler of the Maya city of Palenque
C) the first Egyptian pharaoh
D) the ruler of ancient Ur

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Pacal's tomb was situated:

A) on the top of an artificial mountain
B) adjacent to that of his son, Tutankhamun
C) in the center of a series of sacrificed servants
D) under his pyramid monument

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Like Tutankhamun in Egypt and Ying Zheng in China, Pacal:

A) ascended to the throne when he was just a child
B) died when still in his teens
C) married his mother
D) all of the above

Answer 3

A

Question 4

We know the details of the Pacal line of kinship because:

A) the Spanish conquistadors who captured him extracted the information from him
B) a detailed account of it was inscribed in the halls of his burial temple
C) it is detailed in the Egyptian Book of the Dead
D) it is in the Bible

Question 5

Pacal ruled the city of Palenque for how many years?

A) 5
B) 13
C) 41
D) 67

Question 6

At its peak, the Maya civilization of competing and sometimes warring city states encompassed and area of about:

A) 324,000 square kilometers (125,000 square miles)
B) 259,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles)
C) 182,000 square kilometers (70,000 square miles)
D) 52,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles)

Question 7

At its peak, the Maya civilization of competing and sometimes warring city states encompassed and area about the size of which modern US state:

A) Connecticut
B) Delaware
C) Florida
D) New Mexico

Question 8

Today, about how many people speak the Maya language:

A) 5,000,000
B) 1,000,000
C) 100,000
D) none; the Maya language is extinct

Question 9

The earliest glimmerings of what would culminate in the flowering of the Maya civilization can be traced back to about how many years ago:

A) 1,000 years ago
B) 1,750 years ago
C) 2,225 years ago
D) 3,000 years ago

Question 10

The first Maya site that exhibits all of the typical features of a Maya ceremonial center is:

A) Ceibal
B) Tikal
C) Teotihuacan
D) Mordor

Question 11

The first Maya pyramids are about how old:

A) 10,000 years
B) 5,000 years
C) 3,000 years
D) 1,800 years

Question 12

Communally built, large-scale civic structures are first seen at the Maya sites of Nakbe, El Mirador, Tikal, and Dzibichaltun during what period of Maya history:

A) Early Preclassic
B) Middle Preclassic
C) Late Preclassic
D) Early Classic

Question 13

The first civic structures built by the Maya were:

A) fully formed pyramids
B) mastabas
C) aqueducts
D) stepped platforms

Question 14

Early central places of the Maya with evidence of public architecture are:

A) Cuicuilco, Teotihuacán, and Jalisco
B) Nakbe, Komchén, El Mirador, and Dzilbichaltún
C) Los Cerros, La Venta, and San Lorenzo
D) Moche, Huari, and Tiwanaku

Question 15

The sites of El Mirador, Lamanai, and Cerros are all:

A) part of a secondary tier of settlements; important, but smaller than Tres Zapotes, San Lorenzo, and La Venta
B) names given to the temple/palaces of the ancient Khmer civilization
C) large Maya cites at the time of the Spanish conquest
D) early Maya villages that exhibit the first evidence of public architecture

Question 16

The public architecture of the Maya including elaborate stone platforms topped with buildings are associated with:

A) the merchant elite
B) the military
C) religion
D) all of the above

Question 17

Some of the early Maya ceremonial centers became densely populated urban settlements by about:

A) 3,500 years ago
B) 2,500 years ago
C) 1,500 years ago
D) 850 years ago

Question 18

The airborne technology recently applied to map out the urban Maya settlement of Tikal is called:

A) Lidar
B) thermoluminescence
C) optically stimulated luminescence
D) thermidor

Question 19

The latest airborne technology applied to the Maya site of Tikal indicates the existence of about how many structures at the site?

A) 600
B) 6,000
C) 60,000
D) 600,000

Question 20

Maya subsistence included:

A) slash-and-burn agriculture
B) the use of ridged fields to increase agricultural productivity
C) kitchen gardens and tree-cropping
D) all of the above

Question 21

The Maya system of record keeping was:

A) the first writing system in the New World
B) a hieroglyphic system with a number of astonishing similarities to that of ancient Egypt
C) not a writing system at all, but one based on knotted strings
D) derived from the older Olmec system of writing

Question 22

The so-called Classic Maya period began:

A) 3,250 B.P.
B) 2,650 B.P.
C) 1,650 B.P
D) 650 B.P.

Question 23

Large Maya urban sites dating to the Classic Period include:

A) Cerros, Lamanai, and Dzibichaltún
B) La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and San Lorenzo
C) Mayapán, Chichén Itzá, and Tenochtitlán
D) Palenque, Tikal, and Uaxactún

Question 24

The Maya civilization can be best characterized as:

A) a single, unified nation like ancient Egypt
B) as series of more or less independent city-states with ever-changing alliances
C) the world's first democracy, even before the ancient Greeks
D) ephemeral, lasting barely two centuries

Question 25

Maya "codices" were:

A) a series of laws or codes inscribed on upright slabs of stone
B) king lists inscribed on the tombs of rulers that served to legitimize their position of power
C) inscriptions that detailed the rules of the Maya ball game
D) screenfold books

Question 26

The vast majority of Maya codices:

A) are housed in the National Museum of Maya Culture in Guatemala
B) have been translated and serve as the basis for our current understanding of the kingly lineages at most Maya sites
C) are missing, having been taken by Aztec invaders of the Yucatan sometime in the late fifteenth century
D) were destroyed upon the order of the Spanish Bishop of the Yucatan

Question 27

About how many surviving hieroglyphic inscriptions have been found on Maya buildings, monuments, and stelae:

A) 15,000
B) 8,000
C) 350
D) 3

Question 28

How many Maya codices have survived into the present:

A) 400
B) 40
C) 4
D) no Maya codices have survived into the present

Question 29

Upright stone slabs bearing Maya hieroglyphs are called

A) codices
B) obelisks
C) stelae
D) mastabas

Question 30

Most Maya hieroglyphs found on stelae concern:

A) economic transactions; essentially, most represent the equivalent of invoices
B) warfare, ritual, marriages, births, and deaths
C) philosophy
D) the results of highly ritualized Maya ball games

Question 31

Archaeological evidence shows that the Maya:

A) were a people who fought bloody wars waged over trade and agricultural land
B) live in a peaceful society with a greater interest in the cosmos than in the mundane aspects of life
C) never attained a state-level society
D) lived in harmony with nature

Question 32

The basic elements of Maya civilization included:

A) a socially stratified society with an elite social class headed by a powerful great king
B) monumental temples with stone altars and palaces with corbelled arches
C) human sacrifice, a hieroglyphic written language, and a base 20-number system
D) all of the above

Question 33

The Classic Period of Maya civilization dates to:

A) 4,500-3,000 years ago
B) A.D. 250 to A.D. 800
C) A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1250
D) A.D. 1250 to A.D. 1519 (the arrival of the Spanish)

Question 34

The term that best describes the central places of the Classic Maya is:

A) village
B) megalopolis
C) core
D) regal-ritual city

Question 35

At their peak, the Maya had about how many regal-ritual cities:

A) 10-15
B) 15-25
C) 25-40
D) 40-50

Question 36

The population of even the largest Maya regal-ritual city did not exceed:

A) 60,000
B) 25,000
C) 15,000
D) 5,000

Question 37

Mayanist David Webster estimates that about what percentage of the Maya population were food producers:

A) 90%
B) 75% (about the same as Egypt)
C) 66%
D) 50%

Question 38

When the Spanish invaded Mesoamerica, they found:

A) a decentralized Maya with a scattered population no longer building great monuments
B) the Maya civilization at its peak, though the lack of a centralized Maya military led to their easy defeat by the Spanish conquistadors
C) the Maya locked in a bloody war with the Aztecs, making both of these Mesoamerican civilizations an easy target for the Spanish military
D) nothing but ruins; the Maya people were gone, creating one of the greatest archaeological mysteries facing modern scholars

Question 39

The hieroglyphic inscription unearthed at the site of Dos Pilas:

A) is the earliest version of the Popul Vuh, the Maya creation myth
B) bears a remarkable resemblance in its form to Egyptian hieroglyphics
C) provides a list of the names of Maya kings
D) relates the story of a war between the cities of Tikal and Calakmul

Question 40

The constellation of Maya cultural practices-construction of large monuments, leaving hieroglyphic messages on stelae, controlling vast trading networks-declined dramatically after:

A) A.D. 1000
B) A.D. 800
C) A.D. 400
D) A.D. 250

Question 41

The period of decline in Maya civilization corresponds to what environmental occurrence:

A) major volcanic eruptions throughout Mesoamerica
B) a mini-ice age
C) a prolonged drought
D) El Niño

Question 42

During and following the Terminal Classic Period of Maya history, Maya culture:

A) disappeared
B) expanded into the Mexican highlands
C) was reconfigured, with large regal-ritual centers constructed to the north
D) expanded north, into what is now the southeastern United States

Question 43

The Maya centers of Uxmal and Chichen Itza date to the:

A) Preclassic Period
B) Classic Period
C) Postclassic Period
D) Postcontact Period

Question 44

Did the Maya calendar predict the end of the world on December 21, 2012:

A) no
B) absolutely not
C) of course not
D) all of the above

Question 45

The capital of the Zapotec empire was:

A) Teotihuacan
B) Uxmal
C) Monte Alban
D) Tikal

Question 46

Teotihuacán was Mesoamerica's:

A) earliest chiefdom
B) first agricultural society
C) first urban civilization
D) all of the above

Question 47

At its peak, the population of Teotihuacán may have been as much as:

A) 250,000
B) about 75,000
C) about 50,000
D) just under 25,000

Question 48

The city's name, Teotihuacán, was given by the Aztecs. It means:

A) Ancient Enemies
B) Heaven
C) Where the Gods Are Made
D) Land of the Giants

Question 49

Cuicuilco, Teotihuacán's most serious rival in the Basin of Mexico:

A) was destroyed after a protracted war between the two cities
B) was destroyed by a cataclysmic volcanic eruption
C) simply did not grow as fast or as big and became a secondary capital in Teotihuacán's empire
D) was decimated by an epidemic, clearing the way for Teotihuacán's dominance

Question 50

Teotihuacán's rise to dominance in the Basin of Mexico occurred largely as a result of:

A) its rich agricultural soil
B) its location along a natural trade route
C) its location near an important source of obsidian
D) all of the above

Question 51

The name given to the characteristic form of the pyramids and platforms of Teotihuacán is called:

A) talud/tablero
B) wattle and daub
C) riser/stringer
D) tetrahedron

Question 52

Teotihuacán appears to have grown:

A) in a piecemeal fashion, according to no particular plan
B) following a consistent, fixed city grid
C) according to a plan to maintain an appearance similar to the regal-ritual centers of the Maya
D) to its largest size only after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors

Question 53

About how many substantially scaled, multifamily apartment compounds have been found at Teotihuacán:

A) 500
B) 1,000
C) 2,000
D) 10,000

Question 54

The apartments of various residents of Teotihuacán exhibit:

A) no diversity at all but seem to reflect an egalitarian element of Teotihuacán society
B) tremendous diversity, from the enormous and palatial homes of the elites to the tiny, poorly made homes of the vast population of Teotihuacán's poor
C) some but not an enormous level of social and economic inequality, and there is little evidence of abject poverty
D) evidence for the presence of two major religions at the site

Question 55

Fire Is Born was:

A) a military ruler from Teotihuacán who inspired the Maya growth and expansion
B) the primary Maya deity
C) the name the Maya gave to Cortes, the Spanish conquistador, because of the firearms employed by the invaders in their war against the Maya
D) the first ruler of Palenque

Question 56

What wild animal species did the people of Teotihuacán raise in captivity to facilitate their use in sacrifices?

A) maccaws
B) spider monkeys
C) wolves
D) jaguars

Question 57

On what basis were the animals mentioned in the previous question determined to have been held in capitivity?

A) the existence of caged habitats
B) the discovery of collars around the neck bones
C) a chemical analysis of the animals' diet
D) DNA

Question 58

Teotihuacán ceased being the dominant political entity in Mexico by about:

A) A.D. 1000
B) A.D. 700
C) A.D. 100
D) A.D. 1519, upon the arrival of the Spanish

Question 59

In A. D. 1521, Spanish conquistadors entered Tenochtitlán, which was:

A) the highland valley where maize had first been domesticated
B) a ceremonial center in the Bolivian highlands
C) the capital of the Aztec empire
D) the ruins of an ancient city northeast of the modern city of Mexico City

Question 60

The sixteenth-century population of Tenochtitlán is estimated to have been:

A) 2,000
B) 20,000
C) 200,000
D) 2 million

Question 61

The Aztecs were:

A) the so-called mother culture of Mesoamerican civilization
B) a fourteen-century central Mesoamerican civilization
C) the native people encountered by Pizzarro when he conquered South America
D) the ancestors of the Maya

Question 62

The Aztec leader Motecuhzoma directly ruled over a population of about how many people:

A) 125,000
B) 250,000
C) 500,000
D, 1,000,000

Question 63

Aztec chinampas were part of a:

A) system of intensive agriculture
B) trading network
C) system of labor taxation that supplied workers to the Aztec ruler
D) pattern by which the Aztecs incorporated vanquished enemies into their society

Question 64

Archaeologist Michael Smith has focused his research on:

A) the burial chambers of Aztec nobility
B) the construction of Mesoamerican pyramids
C) rural villages within the Aztec realm
D) the nature of culture contact between the Aztecs and ancient Egyptians

Question 65

The Aztec villages excavated by archaeologist Michael Smith were:

A) Capilco and Cuexcomate
B) Tenochtitlán and Teotihuacán
C) Chichén Itzá and Uxmal
D) Chavín de Huántar and Kotosh

Question 66

The economic condition of the Aztec villagers who resided in the rural hamlets excavated by Michael Smith can be characterized as:

A) grinding poverty
B) great wealth
C) they did fairly well for themselves
D) they had nothing of their own, but they were provided for by the Aztec government

Question 67

The primary goal of Aztec military excursions was:

A) land
B) slaves
C) water
D) wealth

Question 68

Archaeologist David Webster ascribes the collapse of the Maya to:

A) an invasion
B) a change in climate
C) a volcanic eruption
D) an ecological trap of their own making

Question 69

The Aztec tzompantli are best described as:

A) irrigation canals
B) the royal family
C) skull rack

Question 70

The population of the Maya regal-ritual city of Copán is estimated to have been about:

A) 10,000
B) 20,000
C) 40,000
D) 70,000

Question 71

Altar Q at Copán is important because:

A) it depicts the sequence of rulers of the city
B) it rationalizes the rule of Pacal
C) the inscription is written in Maya and Spanish, providing the equivalent of a Rosetta Stone for the Maya written language
D) all of the above

Question 72

Mayanist David Webster suggests that the collapse of the Maya civilization was the result of:

A) invasion by the Spanish
B) the invasion led by Fire Is Born from Teotihuacan
C) an ecological trap of their own making
D) El Niño

Question 73

Analysis of the strontium isotope ratios in the teeth of people buried at the Maya site of Copan has shown that:

A) many of the peasants suffered from malnutrition
B) maize was the most significant element of their diet
C) the Maya included fluoride rich foods in their diet
D) many of the rulers had not been born or raised in Copan

Question 74

Who was Pacal the Great? Describe his burial. How is his grave emblematic of civilization?

Question 75

Explain the following statement: "Monuments provided tangible evidence of the power of the elite (in ancient civilizations) further legitimizing their position of power."

Question 76

What was the role of a food surplus in the development of the Maya civilization?

Question 77

What are the key features of the "Classic Maya" civilization?

Question 78

Who was Fire Is Born? Where did he come from? What did he accomplish? What were the results of his actions?

Question 79

What was the story told on the Dos Pilas stairway? How does its tale refute or support the view that the Maya civilization was based on peaceful relations with their neighbors?

Question 80

What was Maya society like when the Spanish arrived? What seems to have happened between the florescence of Maya civilization around 1,650 A. D.?B. P. and the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century