West African Empires
This first great West African empire grew wealthy by taxing the gold-salt trade before being succeeded by Mali.
Ghana
This language, a blend of Bantu and Arabic, reflects the multicultural trade heritage of the East African coast.
Swahili
This was the "Promised Land" the Aztecs eventually settled, despite being seen as "barbarian" outsiders by their neighbors.
Tenochtitlan
Historians must rely on this "unwritten" field of study, involving the excavation of physical remains, for societies without scripts.
Archaeology
For centuries, this massive geographic feature acted as both a barrier and a "highway" connecting West Africa to the Mediterranean.
The Sahara Desert
This religion played a key role in the administration of Mali and Songhai, linking them to the broader Mediterranean world.
This Indonesian kingdom dominated the vital Strait of Malacca, acting as a "choke point" for Indian Ocean trade.
Srivijaya
This civilization’s written records are difficult for Westerners to sync with modern history because their view of time was cyclical, not linear.
The Maya
This is the term for a foundational civilization (like the Olmecs) that sets the cultural and religious patterns for later groups.
The introduction of this animal from Central Asia revolutionized West African history by making long-distance desert travel possible.
The Camel
This Mali ruler allegedly abdicated his throne to launch a massive naval expedition across the Atlantic Ocean.
Mansa Abu Bakir
While West Africa relied on trans-Saharan "ships of the desert," East Africa’s economy was built on these seasonal wind patterns.
Monsoon Winds
Linguistic evidence shows the Aztecs spoke Nahuatl, which belongs to a family of languages found far to the north of this central valley.
Ute
Examining non-literate people often requires "triangulating" data from archaeology, linguistics, and this form of spoken history.
Oral Tradition
While West Africa traded across a desert, Srivijaya’s power was based on controlling this specific narrow body of water.
Strait of Malacca
He was the successor to Abu Bakir II, famous for his lavish Hajj that caused inflation in Egypt.
Mansa Musa
Unlike the centralized empires of the West, the East African coast was primarily organized into these independent political units.
City-States
The Maya used this many different overlapping calendar systems to track both solar years and ritual cycles.
The Long Count
One difficulty in studying non-written cultures is this—the tendency for outside observers (like colonizers) to project their own ____ onto the record.
Biases
West African gold was so essential that it eventually allowed European nations to move away from ____ and toward this "Standard."
Silver
This final great empire of the trio surpassed its predecessors in size, centering its power in the city of Gao.
Both East and West Africa were major exporters of this precious metal, which fueled the currencies of Europe and Asia.
Gold
The Aztecs claimed they migrated from this mythical ancestral homeland, likely located in Northwest Mexico or the US Southwest.
Aztlan
Understanding a "root culture" is helpful because it explains these—long-lasting cultural traits that persist even as empires rise and fall.
Cultural Continuities
The "Swahili Coast" is named after the Arabic word sawahil, which translates to this geographical feature.