Key Terms
Complex societies with highly developed culture and technology.
What is a civilization?
Including both Protestants and Catholics, this was the major religion in Europe during the middle ages.
What is Christianity?
Now the most widely grown crop in the world, this plant was domesticated in the America's, where it was often held sacred.
What is maize?
Major religion of West Africa in the middle ages.
What is Islam?
Social system in which humans take complete control over other human beings.
What is slavery?
Exchange of crops and diseases between the "Old World" and the "New World."
What is the Columbian Exchange?
System that channels water to crops.
What is irrigation?
These followers of the reformation split from the Catholic church.
Who are Protestants?
Together, this trio of corn, beans, and squash, was an important part of many Native American nations farming techniques, diet, and religion.
What is the Three Sisters?
Taxes on gold and salt traded in the 9th century led to this kingdom, the first of three powerful empires in West Africa.
What is the Kingdom of Ghana?
These large farms required a huge labor force to grow crops such as sugar cane.
What is a plantation?
Religious settlements where Native Americans were forced to live to learn and adopt Christianity and Spanish culture.
What are missions?
Important historical sources written during and about the time period studied.
What is a primary source?
This social and political system developed in Europe during the middle ages. A strict social hierarchy kept most people at the bottom, with a king at the top. A political and social system in which a vassal receives protection from a lord in exchange for obedience and service.
What is feudalism?
This ancient city, with a population rivaling London's, was once one of the greatest cities in North America. They left behind giant mounds in the present day midwest.
What is Cahokia?
This kingdom conquered and absorbed Ghana in the 1200's.
What is the Kingdom of Mali?
The harrowing journey that stolen Africans were forced on by Europeans as they sailed from Africa to the Americas.
The Middle Passage
A country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country
What is a colony?
The physical characteristics of a region, such as soil, bodies of water, and the climate.
What is physical geography?
Split from the Catholic church in the early 16th century, led by Martin Luther.
What is the Reformation?
Powerful alliance of matrilineal nations in the northeast who followed a government based on peace, unity, and cooperation. We call their constitution the Great Law of Peace.
What is the Iroquois Confederacy?
In the late 14th century this kingdom rose to power after taking over the Kingdom of Mali.
What is the Kingdom of Songhai?
This brutal, lifelong, and generational form of slavery developed in the Americas. Enslaved people were classified as goods with no human rights.
What is chattel slavery?
Although Europeans brought many diseases to the Americas, this disease caused the most devastation.
What is smallpox?
How people and their cultures are affected by physical geography and how human activities affect their environment.
What is human geography?
This movement with humanist roots began in Italy and spread throughout Europe and saw a revival of art and architecture, especially influenced by historic Greeks and Romans.
What is the Renaissance?
With access to plentiful wild plants or animals, some nations would practice game management or work to take care of the natural environment instead becoming farmers. Although this was a more sophisticated system than term can imply, we often describe them as this.
What are hunter-gatherers?
During his Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, he had such a large entourage and passed out so much gold and other luxurious goods, that news of him and his wealth spread to Asia and Europe and encouraged both regions to pursue trade with the Kingdom of Mali.
Who is Mansa Musa?
Trade of goods and enslaved African people between Europe, Africa, the Americas that developed as Europe colonized the Americas.
What is triangular trade?
Europeans thought they would find this faster route slicing through the Americas and taking them to Asia.
What is the Northwest Passage?