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What allowed Vikings to navigate the most treacherous waters on Earth?
From Scandinavia, warriors storm through ________, raiding, settling, founding new cities, ___________ the northern world.
Who were the first Europeans known to land in the Americas?
Thorvald Eriksson. Legendary __________. A hero whose exploits are remembers in ________ legend.
This land belongs to the Innu, descendants of the first ________ who cam into America ________ years before.
How many Native Americans live in the Americas?
The Innu are expert _________, armed with stone-tipped arrows. Swift. Silently. _________.
What is the Viking weapon of choice?
Thorvald Eriksson. The first European to _______ on American soil. It will be _______ years before another European sets foot in the New World.
In the Americas, no _____ tools or horses. No wheeled vehicles. Yet America's people engineered great ____________ thousands of years before the Egyptians. They mapped the ________ with as much accuracy as any astronomer in Europe.
True or False. Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, was larger than London, Paris, or Rome.
What was the Aztec civilization dedicated to? __________ ____________
At its heart, a stone ______ 100 feet high, where sky, ________, and underworld meet.
To keep the _________ in balance, the Aztecs believe they owe a debt of ________ to their gods.
Aztec men are trained to ________ from puberty. The fiercest become Jaguar ______. Their weapons, not metal, but obsidian, volcanic _______. So sharp, some surgeons today __________ it over steel.
What was Tlahuicole's weapon?
True or False. Tlahuicole was a captive warrior in Tenochtitlan fighting for his life.
The Aztecs have created one of the most sophisticated ____________ on the planet. A great city with laws against drunkenness, ________, and adultery. Compulsory __________ three and a half centuries before the United Stated. A city of philosophers, _________, mathematicians.
What do the Aztecs believe their gods need?
The warrior who cuts (Tlahuicole) down will get to wear his flayed _______ for twenty days. His family will eat his _______, giving them the status of gods.
True or False. Aztec priests only sacrifice a small number of adults per year during one of their most important ceremonies.
Tlahuicole's beating _______ offered to the god of sun and war, Huitzilopochtli, guardian of the _________. In return, the Aztecs believe, his blood will guarantee a bountiful __________.
What crop do the Aztecs grow that will become key to mankind's future?
True or False. Constantinople, eastern capital of the Christian world, was founded by Rome's first Muslim emperor, Constantine.
Hagia Sophia was the largest what of its day?
True or False. In 1453, Constantinople its under siege by an army of 70,000 Ottoman Turks, led by Sultan Mehmet the second.
If Mehmet can take Constantinople, he will _________ routes between the east and west, and the city's vast trade in _________.
What dried berry makes up two-thirds of the spice trade in Europe?
What major obstacle does the Sultan face as he tries to capture Constantinople as the jewel of a new Islamic Empire?
What is the key to the future of war?
If the ________ of Constantinople fall under bombardment by the Turks, the world will _______ be the same again. _________ cannons. Dedicated ______ working in shifts. Cool. Clean. Reload. _______. Each cannon packed up with ______ stone balls...Pounding the city, round the clock for ______ days.
True or False. Mehmet captures Constantinople, renames Istanbul, and because he is hostile to the west, forces Europeans to search for a new route to the riches of the east.
True or False. Diaz was a wealthy nobleman searching for a new route to Africa around the southern tip of India.
What has Diaz been using to navigate?
Caught in a _________ off the coast of Africa, searching for a new _____ ________ to the east, Diaz has two options: risk death on the ______, or head out into the __________ Ocean and the unknown.
What becomes key to a new of exploration?
Out of sight of land for _____ days. No idea what lies ahead. His ______ are useless. Lost at sea. His fate now turns on a powerful force of nature ________ the waves. An ocean gyre, a vast circular _________ caused by prevailing winds working against the rotation of the _______, creating a conveyor belt of water ________ times more powerful than the Mississippi River.
Diaz claims the land in the name of ______ and country. It will become knows as the Cape of _____ _____. The key to a new ______ route to the east, bypassing Constantinople. A direct passage to ______. Within 50 years, it becomes one of the busiest _________ lanes in the world.
October 12, _____. A date seared onto the hard drive of humanity. ___________ sailors discover land. Leading them, an Italian: ___________ ______________.
Christopher Columbus underestimated the distance to travel to China from Spain by how many miles?
Monarchs from what country finance Columbus's expedition?
After five weeks at sea, Columbus finally reaches land that he believes to be Japan, but which is in fact where?
True or False. The Bahamas are home to the Taino people.
Living in a different _________ for thousands of years, the people of the Americas have no immunity to a deadly threat: _________
What is Columbus on the search for?
Columbus returns to Spain in a ______. His journeys open floodgates. All of _________ wants a piece of the Americas.
28 years after Columbus, the lust for _______ is about to change the destiny of the New World, through the ambitions of one man: ______ ________.
How many European adventures did Cortes lead?
True or False. Aztec emperor Montezuma is the richest most powerful man in the Americas and rules over 25 million people.
True or False. Montezuma turn Cortes away from his palace.
What was Cortes's plan?
What are Montezuma's treasuries filled with?
True or False. The people of Tenochtitlan try to rescue their emperor from Cortes.
True or False. Montezuma was murdered by his own people, but Cortes escaped.
What lethal time bomb did the Spanish leave behind?
11 months after his _________, Cortes returns, his victory complete. He's hijacked the mighty _______ Empire. An empire of _____ million brought down by just _____ men.
