Historical Terms – IX

The Emerging Cultures
KEY TERMS
Sahara: desert running across northern Africa; separates the Mediterranean region from the rest of Africa.
Sahel: lands lying between the Sahara to the north and the Sudan to the south; a region of climatic, cultural and economic transition.
Tsetse fly: carries sleeping sickness that severely limits pastoralism in western and central Africa.
Transhumant: used of societies that move animals seasonally from one area of pasturage to another.
Nok: African culture, in northern Nigeria, known for its iron-working and sculpture.
Yoruba: African people of modern Togo, Benin and southwest Nigeria.
Bantu: a language family that originated in eastern Nigeria; migrated into central, eastern, and southern Africa; an agricultural people.
Pygmies: several different groups in forested regions of central Africa; one of the few peoples to continue a hunting way of life.
Axum: a state in the Ethiopian highlands; received influences from the Arabian peninsula; converted to Christianity.
Ghana: sub-Saharan state of the Soninke people; by the 9th century C.E. a major source of gold for the Mediterranean world.
Kumbi Saleh: capital of Ghana; divided into two adjoining cities – one for the ruler, court, and people, the other for foreign merchants, scholars, and religious leaders.
Almoravids: Islamic people of the Sahara; conquered Ghana in 1076.
Mali: the kingdom that succeeded to Ghana in the Sudan.
Pastoral nomads: any of the many peoples, from the steppes of Asia that herded animals; transhumant migrants.
Celts: early migrants into western Europe; organized into small regional kingdoms; had mixed agricultural and hunting economies.
Germans: peoples from beyond the northern borders of the Roman Empire; had mixed
agricultural and pastoral economies; moved into the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries C.E.
Slavs: Indo-European peoples who ultimately dominated much of eastern Europe; formed regional kingdoms by the 5th century C.E.
Jomon culture: created by migrants to Japan after 3000 B.C.E.; a hunting-and-gathering people; produced distinctive pottery.
Yayoi epoch: flourished in Japan during the last centuries B.C.E.; introduced wet-rice cultivation and iron working; produced wheel-turned pottery and sophisticated bronzeware.
Shinto : religion of the early Japanese court; included the worship of numerous gods and spirits associated with the natural world. Amaterasu, the sun goddess, was a central figure.
Yamato: Japanese clan that gained increasing dominance during the 4th and 5th centuries C.E.;created an imperial cult around Shinto beliefs; brought most of the lowland plains of the
southern islands under its control.
Austronesian: family of related languages found in the Philippines, Indonesia, and southeast Asia; peoples of this group migrated throughout the Pacific.
Polynesia: islands contained in a rough triangle with its points at Hawaii, New Zealand,and Easter Island.
Pahi: double canoes used for long-distance voyaging; carried a platform between canoes for passengers and cargo.
Kamehameha I: Hawaiian monarch who united the Hawaiian islands under his rule in 1810.
Mana: the sacred power, derived from their ancestry, that was gave authority to Hawaiian chiefs.
Ali’i: high chiefs of Hawaiian society who claimed descent from the gods; rested their claims on the ability to recite their lineage in great detail.
Kapu: complex set of social regulations in Hawaii which forbade certain activities and regulated social discourse.
Maoris: indigenous people of New Zealand; their ancestors migrated from the Society Islands region as early as the 8th century C.E.
Hapu: important societal subgroups among the Maori.