West African Empires Vocabulary

open grassland with scattered trees

• rainforest

• overgraze

• savannah

• surplus

West Africa's semi-desert vegetation zone

• savannah

• sahel

• silent barter

• animism

Africa south of the Sahara Desert

• Mansa Musa

• sahel

• matrilineal

• Sub Saharan Africa

spoken record of past events

• overgraze

• oral history

• griots

• rifts

West African storytellers

• griots

• rifts

• ancestor worship

• polytheism

belief in more than one God

• savannah

• oral history

• animism

• polytheism

an excess supply of something

• surplus

• sahel

• silent barter

• immediate family

one of Mali's most famous leaders who made Timbuktu into an important city

• matrilineal

• Sub Saharan Desert

• Mansa Musa

• griots

moist, densely wooded areas

• rain forests

• Sub Saharan Africa

• savannah

• overgraze

long, deep valleys formed by the movement of the Earth's crust

• sahel

• rain forests

• Mansa Musa

• rifts