Nile, Congo, Niger, Zambezi

honoring ancestors through rituals, such as offering food and wine to the dead

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

an important trading capital from the first to the eighth centuries A.D. in what is now Ethiopia; it flourished due to its location near the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean

A member of a North African, primarily Muslim people living in settled or nomadic tribes from Morocco to Egypt.

valuable product

movement of individuals out of a population

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.

a precious yellow metallic element.

-West Africans trade gold resources for North African salt; dietary necessity

a member of a class of traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history in parts of West Africa.

Influenced government, education, architecture, and religion practiced

Trade made the kingdoms wealthy

(1304-1369) Morrocan 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. His writings gave a glimpse into the world of that time period.

Movement of individuals into a population

The kingdom in West Africa that followed the Kingdom of Ghana; its wealth is also based on trans-Saharan trade; this kingdom encouraged the spread of Islam.

king

Emperor of the kingdom of Mali in Africa. He made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca and established trade routes to the Middle East.

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

the longest river in West Africa, and a kind of trading highway in early times

The world's longest river, which flows northward through East Africa into the Mediterranean Sea

West Africa's earliest known culture: lived in what is now Nigeria, between 500 B.C. and A.D. 200, fashioned iron into tools for farming and weapons for hunting

Literature that passes by word of mouth from one generation to the next.

to allow livestock to strip areas so bare that plants cannot grow back

a forest region located in the Tropical Zone with a heavy concentration of different species of broadleaf trees.

A deep valley that forms where two plates move apart

largest desert in the world, covering almost all of North Africa

Belt south of the Sahara where it transitions into savanna across central Africa. It means literally 'coastland' in Arabic.

Traded for Gold.

a grassy plain in tropical and subtropical regions, with few trees.

Limited quantities of resources to meet unlimited wants

a process in which people exchange goods without contacting each other directly

a West African empire that conquered Mali and controlled trade from the 1400s to 1591

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

Geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara

Bantu language with Arabic loanwords spoken in coastal regions of East Africa.

Baked earth; hard, brownish-red pottery

Mali trading city that became a center of wealth and learning

Route across the Sahara desert. Major trade route that traded for gold and salt, created caravan routes, economic benefit for controlling the dessert, camels played a huge role in the trading.

early kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhai