Societies and Empires of Africa Vocab Quiz

A huge desert stretching across most of North Africa

• Sahara

• Gobi

• Mojave

Group claiming a common ancestor

• lineage

• Matrilineal

• Patrilineal

a group of independent villages organized into clans and led by a local ruler or clan head without any central government

• city-state

• state

• stateless society

relating to a social system in which family descent and inheritance rights are traced through the FATHER

• Matrilineal

• Patrilineal

Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life

• Animism

• Griots

• Islam

• Christianity

Professional oral historians who served as keepers of traditions and advisors to kings within the Mali Empire

• Grandmothers

• Grandfathers

• Griots

• Ancestors

permanent move to a new location.

• migration

• refugee

• push factor

• pull factor

First known kingdom in sub-Saharan West Africa between the sixth and thirteenth centuries C.E. Also the modern West African country once known as the Gold Coast. gold and salt trade.

• Askum

• Mali

• Songhai

• Ghana

Ruler of Mali (r. 1312-1337). His extravagant pilgrimage through Egypt to Mecca in 1324-1325 established the empire's reputation for wealth in the Mediterranean world.

• Mansa Musa

• Ibn Battuta

• Sundiata

A powerful state in the African interior that apparently emerged from the growing trade in gold to the East African coast

• Ghana

• Mali

• Songhai

• Great Zimbabwe