| A | B |
|---|
| abandon | to desert |
| ancestry | family descent - family tree |
| Chichen Itza | c.800BC to AD1224 - Maya city - "The opening of the well of the Itza" |
| accession | the act of attaining a throne or coming into power |
| reign | a period of rule; royal power |
| unique | very unusual |
| architecture | a style of design and construction |
| cenote | underground limestone sinkhole |
| erosion | a gradual wearing away |
| brocade | to weave a raised design into cloth |
| John Lloyd Stephens and Fredrick Catherwood | two explorers that discovered Maya ruins at Copan in 1839. |
| decipher | decode; to make out the meaning of something |
| translate | to put into the words of a different language |
| bilingual | ability to speak two languages |
| Chiapas | a state located in southwestern Mexico |
| dynasty | descendants of a long family line |
| empire | a group of states or territories under one ruler |
| Kukulkan | the Itza name for the Mexican god, Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent |
| Solar Calendar | Maya calendar fo 365 days |
| Ritual or Sacred Calendar | Maya calendar of 260 days - used to fortell the future and avoid bad luck |
| Long Count | Maya way of counting years |
| inscribe | to mark or engrave words on a surface |
| Maya | c300BC to AD1541 - for over 500 years this civilization flourished in the highlands of Guatemala; rainforests of northern Guatelmala; and the Yucatan peninsula |
| astrology | a nonscientific claim that the moon, sun, and stars affect human affairs and can be used to fortell the future |
| astronomy | the science that deals with the origin, size, motion etc. of the stars and planets |
| monument | something set up to keep alive the memory of a person or event, as a tablet or statue |
