Exploring the Americas
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- What impact did technology have on history?
- Advances in technology prepared the way for European voyages of exploration. Advances in technology included the invention of movable type and the printing press in the 1450s. Advances also included improving ships with more cargo space for food and weapons.
- Name at least one African kingdom that was power in trade.
- Ghana; Mali; Songhai
- What was the renaissance?
- The renaissance was a period of intellectual and artistic creativity. The word comes from French and means to "re-birth."
- What was the name of the Portuguese explorer who encouraged mariners to explore the coast of West Africa?
- Prince Henry the Navigator
- What year did Columbus first sail to the "West Indies"?
- 1492
- As far as we know, who were the first European people to land in the Americas? The English, the Vikings or the Spanish?
- The Vikings
- What country was Bartholomeu Dias from?
- Portugal
- Threat of pirates prompted the Spanish galleons to carry what in their cargo?
- Weapons
- True or false - Columbus knew that he had NOT reached India.
- False
- In 1493, Pope Alexander VI worked out an agreement between Spain and Portugal that established the line of demarcation. What part of the world did each country receive?
- Portugal - the Eastern Hemisphere and Brazil. Spain - the Western Hemisphere.
- Who was the first person to circumnavigate (sail around) the world?
- Ferdinand Magellan
- Name a Spanish conquistador and the country he conquered.
- Hernan Cortez, Mexico. Francisco Pizarro, Peru.
- Who was the Aztec ruler when Hernan Cortes arrived in what is now called Mexico?
- Montezuma (Moctezuma)
- Why did Spain succeed in conquering the Americas?
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1. The Spanish arrived with strange weapons.
2. Many Native Americans hated their Aztec overlords and assisted the conquerors in overthrowing them.
3. Native Americans were not immune to the diseases that the Spaniards brought with them. - What was Juan Ponce de Leon looking for in Florida?
- Ponce de Leon was looing for the legendary fountain of youth, "a spring of running water of much marvelous virtue" that drinking it "makes old men young again."
- Hernando de Soto explored what river in the Americas?
- Mississippi River
- Name the social classes in Spain's empire in the Americas.
-
Peninsulares
Creoles
Mestizos - Which Spanish priest claimed that millions of Native Americans had died because the Spanish "made gold their ultimate aim, seeking to load themselves with riches in the shortest possible time"?
- Barolome de las Casas
- Spain finally decided not to turn the Native Americans into slaves. Instead they imported slaves from which continent?
- Africa
- What was the Columbian Exchange?
- The exchange of plants, animals, and diseases that altered life on both sides of the Atlantic
- Who was Martin Luther?
- A German priest who, in 1517, nailed a list of complaints about the Catholic Church on the door of a local church. Luther believed that it was faith, not good works, that was the way to salvation. His protests resulted in the Prostestant Reformation.
- Why did King Henry VIII of England leave the Catholic Church?
- He wanted a divorce and the Pope would not allow it.