Forms of Society
In this type of society, most people move with their herds and rely on animals rather than crop fields for food and resources.
What is a pastoral society?
These two West African kingdoms grew rich by controlling gold mines and trade routes.
What are Ghana and Mali?
Maya rulers claimed descent from the gods and combined political, military, and religious authority in a system known by this phrase.
What is divine kingship?
This leader united many Mongol tribes in the early 1200s and began conquering huge areas across Asia.
Who is Genghis Khan?
Historians use this term for the catastrophic loss of Indigenous peoples in the Americas after European contact.
What is the Great Dying?
These societies are especially likely to develop feudalism because control of farmland becomes the key to power.
What are agrarian societies?
This religion reached much of North and West Africa through trans‑Saharan trade routes over many centuries.
What is Islam?
Unlike religions with a single holy book, Maya religion did not have a central, fixed scripture like a Bible because it lacked this process of formally organizing beliefs into a rulebook.
What is codification (being codified)?
Instead of one unbroken empire, Islamic rule took the form of these successive political units—such as the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid—linked by a common religious and cultural identity.
What are different caliphates and dynasties?
These special warriors of medieval Europe fought on horseback, wore heavy armor, and served lords or kings.
Who are knights?
Both monarchy and oligarchy keep power in the hands of the few, but this form has a single ruler whose authority is often hereditary.
What is a monarchy?
The belief that all natural objects, including inanimate ones, possess souls or spirits, fostering a deep connection to the natural world.
What is Animism
Tenochtitlan was linked to the mainland by these stone structures that allowed people and goods to cross the lake.
What are causeways and bridges?
These powerful feudal lords controlled large estates in Japan and kept private armies of samurai to protect their lands.
Who are the daimyo?
This term describes the long‑lasting swap of plants, animals, diseases, people, and ideas between the Old World and New World after 1492.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
These two systems are similar because lower‑status groups must provide goods, service, or loyalty to more powerful groups above them in the hierarchy.
What are feudalism and the tributary system?
A Swahili “storefront” that sells both inland African goods and imported Asian luxuries is evidence for this kind of trade.
What is long‑distance trade across the Indian Ocean?
The Inca Empire stretched across parts of what are now Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina on this South American mountain range.
What are the Andes Mountains?
In Song China, government officials were expected to follow this belief system, which shaped schools, laws, and family life.
What is Neo‑Confucianism?
During the Middle Ages many classical ideas were forgotten, but in the Renaissance Europeans began studying these again—old books, statues, buildings, and philosophies from which two ancient cultures?
What are Greece and Rome?
This form of rule gives most political power to nobles or upper‑class families, even if there is a king or queen above them.
What is an aristocracy?
This great West African empire collapsed after a 1591 invasion by Morocco, whose soldiers used gunpowder weapons like arquebuses and cannons to defeat its traditional army at the Battle of Tondibi.
What is the Songhai Empire?
This title was given to the Inca emperor, who was treated like a god‑king ruling over all parts of the empire.
Who is the Sapa Inca?
This empire asked Western Europe for military help when the Seljuk Turks threatened its lands, leading to the First Crusade.
What is the Byzantine Empire?
A big change in the Christian Church that happened in the 1500s. At that time, almost everyone in western and central Europe belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, which by that time was very powerful and rich.
What is the Reformation?