Geography
This is the world's largest desert, located in northern Africa, and it was a major barrier to trade.
Sahara
Multiple extended families who trace their ancestry back to a common ancestor formed this basic building block of African society.
lineage group
This was the FIRST great trading kingdom to emerge in West Africa, around 500 C.E.
Ghana
This belief system assigned a different god or spirit to each part of nature — sun, rain, wind, death, and fertility.
Animism
West African kings grew wealthy by collecting these on all goods that entered or left their kingdoms.
Taxes
Africa is the _____ largest continent in the world.
Second largest
The oldest or most respected members of a lineage group, they served as leaders and decision makers
Elders
As the Bantu people migrated across Africa, they spread this important technology that allowed people to make better tools and weapons.
iron-smelting
These West African oral historians preserved their community's history, legends, and genealogy through storytelling and song.
Griots
These two resources were the most valuable trade goods in West Africa and drove the rise of powerful kingdoms.
Gold & Salt
This dry, semi-arid belt of land separates the Sahara from the grasslands to the south.
Sahel
In these societies, descent and inheritance are traced through the mother's side of the family.
Matrilineal societies
This southern African kingdom built massive stone walls without mortar and controlled the gold trade between the interior and the coast
Great Zimbabwe
Islam spread to West Africa mainly through this activity, not through military conquest
Trade
This animal was essential for trans-Saharan trade because it could carry heavy loads and travel long distances without water.
Camels
This dramatic feature of eastern Africa is known for its deep canyons, tall mountains, and lakes.
Great Rift Valley
Groups of similarly aged young people who learned skills together and moved through life stages as a unit.
Age Grades
This East African kingdom near the Red Sea was a major trading power and was one of the first African kingdoms to convert to Christianity.
Axum
The kingdom of Axum, in what is now Ethiopia, converted to this religion in the fourth century C.E.
Christianity
This blended African-Arabian language developed along the East African coast as a result of trade between Arab and Bantu-speaking peoples.
Swahili
East African coastal cities like Kilwa and Mogadishu grew wealthy because of their location on this ocean's trade routes.
Indian Ocean
This gift, presented by a groom to his bride's family, was a common custom in African kinship groups.
Bridewealth
In beginning in early Africa, most enslaved people came from one of these three groups.
prisoners of war, debtors, or criminals
Ritual ceremonies were dedicated to these family members, who were believed to have the power to influence the lives of the living
Ancestors
Mansa Musa's pilgrimage distributed so much of this metal in Cairo that its value crashed and stayed low for over ten years.
Gold