Government & Power
Society & Identity
Religion & Belief
Work, Trade & Settlement
Thinking Like a Historian
100

A system of government led by a king, queen, or emperor.

What is a monarchy?

100

A system that ranks people or groups from highest to lowest according to power, wealth, or social status.

What is a hierarchy?

100

Belief in the existence of one God.

What is monotheism?

100

The buying, selling, and exchange of goods and services.

What is commerce?

100

The persistence of a custom, institution, idea, or social pattern over time.

What is continuity?

200

A government in which political power is controlled by a small, privileged group.

What is an oligarchy?

200

A farmer or agricultural worker who traditionally held relatively low social and economic status.

What is a peasant?

200

The belief that animals, plants, places, and forces of nature possess spirits or spiritual power.

What is animism?

200

An organization of merchants or craftspeople created to regulate a trade and protect its members.

What is a guild?

200

The ancient past, especially the period associated with early civilizations, Greece, and Rome.

What is antiquity?

300

A sudden and usually illegal seizure of government power by a small group, often military officers.

What is a coup?

300

A small and privileged group possessing greater wealth, education, power, or influence than most people.

What is an elite?

300

The blending of beliefs or traditions from different cultures into a new or combined form.

What is syncretism?

300

This word describes a society or economy based primarily on farming and land cultivation.

What is agrarian?

300

The everyday language spoken by ordinary people rather than an official, scholarly, or sacred language.

What is the vernacular?

400

A system of government administration organized through departments, officials, rules, and levels of authority.

What is a bureaucracy?

400

A line of family descent that connects people to a common ancestor.

What is a lineage?

400

The practice of giving up physical comforts, possessions, or pleasures in pursuit of religious or spiritual discipline.

What is asceticism?

400

Related to the sea, shipping, naval activity, or trade conducted by water.

What is maritime?

400

The art of using spoken or written language effectively to persuade an audience.

What is rhetoric?

500

This type of government seeks extensive control over politics, education, communication, culture, and even citizens’ private lives.

What is totalitarian government?

500

The dispersal of a cultural, ethnic, religious, or national group from its homeland, as well as the communities formed elsewhere.

What is a diaspora?

500

A system in which political authority is believed to come from a divine source and religious leaders or laws play a central role in government.

What is a theocracy?

500

Roads, bridges, water systems, ports, communication networks, and other basic systems that allow a society to function.

What is infrastructure?

500

The historical method of checking a claim by comparing it with additional independent evidence.

What is corroboration?