13.1 F&C

Since there was no written language, the job of passing historical information down from generation to generation fell to singers and to a special class of storytellers called

• Swahili.
• griots.
• grandmothers.
• dancers.

Ancestors were a key element in African religion because people believed that

• ancestors became gods after death.
• ancestors were closer to the gods.
• ancestors controlled the weather for their lineage group.
• ancestors could return to fight as warriors for a lineage group.

Music and storytelling were

• common only in northern and western Africa.
• considered holy acts in which only priests and priestesses were allowed to engage.
• disregarded as unworthy occupations south of the Sahara.
• used to pass along a community’s history.

One reason that Islam was adopted more slowly in East Africa than in the north was that

• the powerful Ethiopian city of Axum had already adopted Christianity.
• the Muslims did not care whether East Africans converted or not.
• East Africans refused to interact with the Muslim traders who were spreading the new religion.
• East Africans were more reluctant to give up their traditional beliefs than other Africans.

Early African wood carvers made masks and statues that most often represented

• gods, spirits, and ancestors.
• griots.
• birds.
• inanimate objects.

The rituals used to communicate with the gods were usually carried out by _____, who were believed to have the power to summon supernatural forces and foretell the future.

• Yoruba
• founding ancestors
• griots
• diviners

In many African societies, the family lineage is based on the mother, which means that African societies were

• patrilineal.
• communal.
• matrilineal.
• agnatic.

Western Africa is largely covered by

• deserts and occasional oases.
• grasslands and jungles.
• mountains and plateaus.
• river delta.

In typical African villages, children of less than six years old

• raised by adults in either a “house of the women” or a “house of the men”
• raised by the grandparents of the village in a common children’s home.
• raised by their mothers at home.
• raised by their fathers in the grandparents’ home.

Which polytheistic religion in West Africa believed spirits reside in all natural living things?

• Hinduism

• Zoroastrianism

• Animism

• Islam