Bantu migrations
African people who originally lived in the area of present day Nigeria. Around 200B.C.E they began a centuries-long migration that took them to most of sub-Saharan Africa. Influential linguistically
Stateless society
Societies such as those of sub-Saharan Africa after the Bantu migrations that featured decentralized rule through family and kinship groups instead of strongly centralized hierarchies
Sundiata
founder of the Mali empire
Mansa Musa
A Mali king who brought Mali to its peak of power and wealth from 1312 the 1337; he was the most powerful king in West Africa.
Ibn Battuta
Moroccan Muslim scholar, the most widely traveled individual of his time. He wrote a detailed account of his visits to Islamic lands from China to Spain and the western Sudan.
Kinship groups
groups Early agricultural and technological development (about 8000 BCE to 3500 BCE) - Small groups of settlers grew into kinship-based villages that practiced both crop cultivation and domestication of animals. Tools and inventions helped villages to stabilize and eventually grow.
Age groups
Bantu institution in which individuals of roughly the same age carried out communal tasks appropriate for that age
Creator god
A single dominate God from the early days of sudanic agriculture
Swahili
East African city-state society that dominated the coast from Mogadishu to kilwa and was active in trade
Kilwa
One of the busiest city-states on the East African coast. Had many stone buildings and mosques.
Great Zimbabwe
Former colony of southern Rhodesia that gained independence
Axum
African kingdom centered in Ethiopia that became an early and lasting center of Coptic christianity
Sugar cane
Zane slaves labored under extremely difficult conditions in southern mesopotamia where they worked on plantations