NY Regents 9.8: Africa and the Americas (Pre-1600)

El Mirador, in the northern Petén rainforest of Guatemala, was one of the earliest and largest Maya cities, reaching its peak around 300–100 BCE. Its centrepiece, the La Danta pyramid complex, rises…

Yax Ehb Xook (roughly 'First-Step Shark') is identified from retrospective inscriptions as the dynastic founder of Tikal, one of the greatest Maya city-states, located in the Petén department of…

On January 16, 378 CE, a figure called Siyaj K'ak' ('Fire is Born') arrived at Tikal in the Petén rainforest of Guatemala, bearing the title 'kaloomte' of the west' on behalf of a ruler of…

On April 29, 562 CE, Caracol — a large Maya city on the Vaca Plateau in what is now the Cayo District of Belize — defeated Tikal in a 'star war,' a ritually significant battle timed to the appearance…

In 657 CE, Yuknoom Ch'een II — known as Yuknoom the Great — ruler of Calakmul, the 'Snake Kingdom' located in the dense jungles of Campeche, Mexico, led a star-war assault on Tikal, driving Tikal's…

This is Palenque, a Maya city in what is now the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, nestled where the highlands of Central America descend into the humid lowlands near the Gulf of Mexico coast. King…

The Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, in the modern state of Chiapas, Mexico, is the largest step-pyramid at the site and was built as the funerary monument for K'inich Janaab' Pakal — known as…

In 695 CE, Jasaw Chan K'awiil I — king of Tikal in the Petén department of Guatemala — led forces against Calakmul and won a decisive victory, capturing the city's patron deity effigy. The triumph…

On April 27, 738 CE, K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat (Cauac Sky), king of Quiriguá, captured and beheaded Uaxaclajuun Ub'aah K'awiil (Eighteen Rabbit), the greatest ruler of Copán — a far larger and more…

This is Tikal, in present-day Guatemala — deep in the Petén rainforest, on the limestone lowlands of Central America, far from any coast and far from the narrow land bridge that connects North and…

This is Palenque, a Maya city in what is now southern Mexico, nestled in the jungle foothills where the Sierra Madre highlands descend toward the Gulf coastal plain — exactly the lowland jungle zone…

The Bonampak murals, painted around 790–792 CE during the reign of Chan Muwan II, cover the interior walls of three rooms in a small building on the acropolis at Bonampak, in the Usumacinta region of…

These abandoned city-states — including Tikal in present-day Guatemala — sit in the southern lowland rainforests of the Yucatán Peninsula region, on the narrow land bridge connecting North and South…

This is Uxmal, a Maya city-state located in the Yucatán Peninsula of present-day Mexico, on the low limestone shelf that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea — exactly the peninsula…

El Caracol is a round observatory at Chichen Itza, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula — a flat limestone shelf of land separating the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest from the Caribbean Sea to the east…

Monument 101 at Toniná, a Maya city built on a steep hillside near present-day Ocosingo in Chiapas, Mexico, bears the Long Count date corresponding to January 15, 909 CE — the last known Long Count…

Around 900–1000 CE, Chichén Itzá on the northern Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico emerged as the dominant political and commercial centre of the Maya world after the collapse of the southern Classic…

This is Chaco Canyon, located in present-day New Mexico in the American Southwest — a high desert basin set within the Colorado Plateau, deep in the interior of North America far from any coast…

From around the 1220s to 1441 CE, Mayapán served as the political capital of a confederation of Maya city-states across the northern Yucatán Peninsula in what is now the state of Yucatán, Mexico. The…

This is Tenochtitlan, founded in 1325 on an island in Lake Texcoco — sitting in the high basin of central Mexico, exactly the highland plateau the title described, ringed by volcanic peaks. The…

This is Xochimilco, on the southern edge of what is now Mexico City, Mexico — a high-altitude lake basin ringed by volcanic mountains in the heart of North America. Around 1400, the Aztec…

This event unfolded in Cusco, Peru — a city perched high in the Andes mountains, deep in the interior of South America's western spine, thousands of metres above sea level. Around 1438 CE, the ruler…

This is Machu Picchu, perched on a mountain ridge in present-day Peru, high in the Andes range that runs like a spine down the western side of South America. Around 1450 CE, Inca builders constructed…

This is Cusco, Peru — a highland city sitting deep in the Andes mountain range, far inland from the Pacific coast on the western spine of South America. Around 1500, the Inca civilization used…

Ollantaytambo, in present-day Peru, sits high in the Andes of western South America — exactly where the mountain spine the title described runs through the heart of the continent, far from any coast…

This stone was carved in Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, located in the high Valley of Mexico on a plateau deep in the interior of North America, far south of the Rio Grande and…

This event unfolded in Tenochtitlan, the island capital of the Aztec Empire, built on a lake in the high Valley of Mexico — a volcanic plateau sitting at roughly 2,200 metres above sea level, almost…

This battle took place at Otumba, in present-day Mexico, on the high central plateau that sits between the Sierra Madre ranges and roughly 40 kilometres northeast of the great lake basin where the…

This event unfolded in Tenochtitlan — the island city at the heart of the Aztec empire, now buried beneath modern-day Mexico City, Mexico, on a high plateau ringed by volcanic peaks between the…

This is Tenochtitlan — today's Mexico City — built on an island in Lake Texcoco on the high central plateau of Mexico, exactly where North America's mountain spine narrows before reaching the land…

This is Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital built on an island in Lake Texcoco, located in the high Valley of Mexico on the central plateau of present-day Mexico — roughly midway between the Pacific and…

This event unfolded on Lake Texcoco, at the heart of the Valley of Mexico — a high basin ringed by volcanoes in the southern reaches of North America, roughly where the continent narrows toward the…

This event unfolded in Cusco, Peru — a city perched high in the Andes mountains along South America's western backbone, exactly the highland core the title clue pointed toward. Around 1529, following…

The pin lands at Cajamarca, Peru — a highland city sitting in a narrow Andean valley at roughly 2,750 metres above sea level, on the Pacific side of the continent and just south of the equator…

This event unfolded at Cajamarca, a city in the Andean highlands of modern-day Peru — set in a mountain basin deep within the Andes range, hundreds of kilometres inland from the Pacific coast of…

This is Cusco, Peru — a city set high in the Andes mountains, deep in the interior of South America, far from the Pacific coast but connected to it by the great mountain spine that runs the length of…

On July 12, 1562, Friar Diego de Landa, the leading Catholic authority in Yucatán, presided over an auto-da-fé in the central plaza of Maní — a town in the central Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico…