ChAPTER 13 African Civilizations and the Spread

• The map shown above depicts the trip more than 50 years later.
• Mansa Musa is depicted at the bottom right with a golden scepter and crown, symbolizing his royal power, and an enormous gold Nugget, symbolizing his country's wealth.

• None of the caravans that made the trek across the desert were as magnificent as the ones that came after.

• West African gold was already well known in the world economy and Africa was already involved in contacts of vaious kinds with other areas of the world, even though Mansa Musa's caravan symbolized the wealthy potential of Africa.

• Muslims in Cairo, Damascus, and Fez were fascinated by the kingdom of this great lord.
• The kingdom of ghana was a state between the desert and the forests of west Africa.
• Its rise was due to its access to gold and control of the caravan routes, as well as the creation of an empire that extended over much of the savannah.
• The trade routes that linked it to the Mediterranean and the Middle east were the reason why the African kingdom of Malian became an extension of the islamic world.

• Africa below the Sahara was never completely isolated from the centers of civilization in Egypt, west Asia, or the Mediterranean, but for long periods the contacts were difficult and intermittent.
• The increasing impact of a growing inter national network on Africa will be examined in this chapter.
• The arrival of Islam changed many aspects of life in some African societies and brought them through trade, politics, and cultural exchange into increasing contact.
• African societies influenced by Islam often maintained their own traditions and other African societies remained little touched by Islam.

• African civilizations built less clearly than other postclassical ones.
• The Bantu migration and the formation of large states in the western Sudan were some of the earlier themes.
• The setting of sub-Saharan Africa was varied and distinctive, but it retained a certain isolation or cultural autonomy, even as it was drawn into new contacts with the world network.
• The spread of uni versal faiths like Islam and Christianity was an important aspect of African history in this period, but much of central and southern Africa still flourished unaffected by these outside influences.

• Africa's lack of political unity was caused by differences in geography, language, religion, politics, and other aspects of life universalistic faiths penetrated.
• The history of sub-Saharan Africa was not characterized by universal states or universal religions.
• Universal religions, first Christianity and later Islam, found followers in Nubia and Africa and contributed to the creation of large states and empires.

• Sometimes the stateless societies were larger than the neighboring states.

• Stateless societies didn't have much concentration of author ity, and it affected a small part of the people's lives.
• Government was rarely a full-time occupation and there was no political class in these societies.
• The societies were often more equal.

• There were other alternatives to government.
• In the west African forest, secret societies of men and women were able to limit the authority of rulers.
• There were secret societies that cut across the divisions of the family.
• Members' loyalty to these groups is not limited to their family ties.
• Village disputes were settled by secret societies.
• They acted to maintain stability in the community, and they were an alternative to the authority of state institutions.

• Many stateless societies thrived because of internal social pressures and the fact that dissidents could leave and start a new life in Africa.
• It was difficult for stateless societies to resist external pres sures, organize large building projects, or create stable conditions for long-distance trade with other peoples.
• The needs and goals contributed to the creation of states in Africa.

• State-building was done under a variety of conditions.
• West Africa experienced both the cultural influence of Islam and its own internal developments.
• The formation of some power ful states, such as Songhay, depended more on military power than on ethnic or cultural unity.
• Africa played a part in the development of western Europe.
• There were differences in the way these societies developed because of the tech nologies and ideologies of Europeans and Africans.
• The arrival of Europeans in the 15th century drew Africans into the world economy in ways that transformed African development in the following centuries.

• Despite the diversity of African cultures, there are similarities in language, thought, and religion.
• The spread of the Bantu-speaking peoples provided a linguistic base across much of Africa, so that even though specific languages differed, structure and vocabulary allowed some mutual understanding between neighboring Bantu speakers.

• Much of Africa was characterized by animistic religion.
• It was believed from the beginning that a soul or spirit existed in every object.

• In a future state, this soul or spirit would be part of an immaterial soul.
• The spirit was thought to be universal.
• Europeans and Africans believed that witches were to blame for disasters and illnesses.
• The power of evil and the elimination of witches were fought by specialists.

• Many societies had a class of diviners or priests who helped protect the community.
• African religion provided a guide to ethics and behavior, as well as a view of how the universe worked.

• The founding ancestors of the group shared an underlying belief in a creator deity whose power and action were expressed through spirits or lesser gods.
• The first settlers were often viewed as the "owners" of the land or the local resources.

• The fertility of the land, game, people, and herds could be ensured through them.
• The land had a meaning beyond its economic usefulness for some groups.

• Religion, economics, and history were all intertwined.
• The clan around which many African societies were organized had an important role to play in dealing with the gods.
• A direct link between dead ancestors and spirit world can be found.

• The ancestors and gods were part of the same belief system.
• The system was linked to places and people.
• It showed resilience even in the face of monotheistic religions.

• The economies of Africa are hard to describe in general terms.
• North Africa is fully involved in the Mediterranean and Arab economic world.
• There were different regions in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• During the post classical period, skilled ironwork and settled agriculture had been established in many areas.
• The basis for many lively markets and the many large cities that grew in both the structured states and the outlying areas were encouraged by Specialization.

• African society was built on the bustle and gaiety of market life.
• In many cases, professional merchants control trade.
• The Islamic world and often through Arab traders, increased participation in international trade in this period.

• The size and dynamics of their populations are one of the least known aspects of early African societies.
• This is also true in much of the world.
• Archeological evidence, travelers' reports, and educated guesses are used to estimate the population of early African societies, but our knowledge of how Africa fits into the general trends of the world population is very slight.

• Africa may have had 30 to 60 million inhabitants by 1500.

• The Arrival of islam in North Africa Africa north of the Sahara was part of the world of classical antiquity, where Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Vandals traded, settled, built, battled, and destroyed.

• The Vandals and the Byzantines fought in north Africa in the 5th and 6th century BC, but Christianity took a firm hold in Mediterranean Africa.
• The coastal cities were raided by the people of the Sahara.
• As we have seen with Egypt, north Africa was connected to the rest of Africa in many ways.
• The ties became even closer with the rise of Islam.

• The armies of Arab and Berber crossed into Spain by 711.

• The Muslim advance in the West was halted by their defeat in France by Charles Martel.
• The populations of north Africa were receptive to the message of Islam.
• Within the political unity provided by the Abbasid dynasty, conversion took place quickly.
• North Africa was divided into several separate states and competing groups as a result of this unity breaking down.

• The peoples of the desert formed states of their own at places such as Fez in Morocco and Sijilimasa, the old city of the trans-Saharan caravan trade, in opposition to the Arab rulers.
• The Almoravids, a puritanical movement, grew among the desert Berbers of the western Sahara under pressure from the new Muslim invaders.
• The penetration of Islam into sub-Saharan Africa was made possible by the north African and Spanish developments.

• Islam offered many attractions in Africa.
• All Muslims are equal in sub-Saharan Africa.

• The Islamic tradition of unifying the powers of the state and religion in the person of the ruler appealed to some African kings.
• The concept that all of the umma, or community of believers, were equal put the newly converted Berbers and later Africans on an equal footing with the Arabs, at least in law.
• Practices differed considerably at local levels despite the egalitarian and utopian ideas within Islam.
• Ethnic distinctions also divided the believers in Islamicized societies.
• The fine for killing a man was twice as much as for killing a woman.
• Sometimes utopian reform movements were caused by the disparity between law and practice.
• The Almohadis are a group that is dedicated to purifying society by returning to the original teachings of Muhammad.

• The Christian Kingdoms: Nubia and ethiopia Islam were not the first universalistic religion to take root in Africa, and the wave of Arab conquests across northern Africa had left behind it islands of Christianity.
• The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity happened in the 4th century.
• Christian communities flourished in Egypt and Nubia, further up the Nile.
• The Christians of Egypt, the Copts, developed a rich tradition in contact with Byzantium, which resulted in the translation of religious literature from Greek to Coptic, their own tongue, which was based on the language of ancient Egypt.
• They split from the Byzantine connection on political issues.
• When Egypt was conquered by Arab armies, the Copts were able to maintain their faith, even though Muslim rulers recognized them as followers of a revealed religion.
• The Nile was spread into Nubia by the Coptic influence.
• The Christian descendants of ancient Kush were left as independent Christian kingdoms until the 13th century after Muslim attempts to penetrate Nubia were met with stiff resistance.

• The most important African Christian outpost was the kingdom of Ethiopia.
• The Christian kingdom turned inward after the Muslim conquest of Egypt and the Red Sea coast.
• Its people lived in fortified towns and supported themselves with agriculture on terraced hillsides.
• King Lalibela sponsored a remarkable building project in which 11 great churches were sculpted from the rock in the town that bore his name.

• The biblical marriage of Solomon and Sheba led to the emergence of an Ethiopia Christian state in the 13th and 14th centuries.

• It was cut out of the bedrock to be dedicated to St. George.
• Although it is surrounded by walls and can only be reached through an underground tunnel, it is still used for worship today.

• The history of the region is shaped by the struggle between the Christian state in the Ethiopia highlands and the Muslim peoples in the Red Sea coast.
• In 1542, a Portuguese expedition arrived at Massawa on the Red Sea to turn the tide in favor of its Christian allies after one of the Muslim states threatened the Ethiopia kingdom.
• Ethiopia remained isolated, Christian, and fiercely independent after Portuguese attempts to bring Christianity into the Roman Catholic church failed.

• Merchants and travelers trod the dusty and ancient caravan kingdoms of Mali and Songhay to get to the savanna.
• Africa had three important "coasts" of contact: the Atlantic, the Indian and the Hausa states, and the savanna on the southern rim of the Sahara.

• The introduction of camels from Asia to the Sahara between the 1st and 5th centuries c.e.
• improved the possibilities of trade, but they could not live in the humid forest zones because of disease.
• The sahel, the extensive grassland belt at the southern edge of the Sahara, became a point of exchange between the forests to the south and north Africa--an active border area where ideas, trade, and people from the Sahara and beyond arrived in increasing numbers.
• Several African states developed between the trading cities, which gave them an advantage in the trade.
• Their location on the open plains of the dry sahel meant that they were prone to attack and periodic droughts.

• The salt and gold that was exchanged within the borders of the country was taxed.
• By the 10th century, its rulers had converted to Islam and it was at the top of its power.
• When William the Conqueror invaded England, Muslim accounts said he could muster 5000 troops, but the king of Ghana could field many times that.
• The armies of Almoravid invaded from north Africa.
• The power of the kingdom declined.
• By the beginning of the 13th century, new states rose in the savanna to take over the leadership of the country.

• Takrur is on the west of the Senegal River and Gao is on the east of the Niger River.
• It is useful to review some of the elements that the states had in common before we deal with the most important kingdoms.

• The Sudanic states had a council of elders of a particular family or group of lineages as their leaders.
• These formed small partnerships to carry were conquest states, which drew on the taxes, tribute, and military support of the subordinate areas.
• Empires are defined by the control of subordinate societies and the legal or informal control of their sovereignty.

• Islam became something of a royal cult after the 10th cen States tury because it was used to reinforce indigenous ideas of kingship.
• The Islamicized ruling families used their traditional powers to fortify their rule, even though most of the population never converted.

• There were several savanna states in the Sudan.

• The king was supported by Equator.
• Agriculture was the economic basis of society in the 4th-11th centuries.

• Small partnerships and groups were formed to carry out trade.

• The New Faith and New Commerce empire died in 1260.

• He was beloved of God because he was the last of the great conquerors and he was great among kings.

• After a difficult childhood, Sundiata emerged from a period of inter family and regional fighting to create a unified state.
• He is believed to have created the basic rules and relationships of Malinke society and the outline of the government of the empire of Malian.
• He became the mansa.
• It was said that he was the originator of social arrangements.
• The 16 clans of free people were entitled to bear arms and carry the bow and quiver of arrows as a symbol of their status, five of them were devoted to religious duties, and four of them were specialists such as blacksmiths and griots.
• The clan arrangements were traditional among the peoples of the savanna and had existed in the past.
• He stationed garrisons to maintain loyalty and security despite the fact that he created political institutions of rule that allowed for great regional and ethnic differences.
• The cultures in his travel records were related to the security of travelers and their goods.

• After Sundiata died, his successors expanded the borders of the country until they controlled most of the valley.
• A large number of traders were hosted in the sumptuous court.
• From the trade, the country grew wealthy.
• The pilgrimage to Mecca by Mansa Kankan Musa brought attention to the Muslim world, as was described in the beginning of this chapter.
• There were other consequences to Mansa Musa's trip.
• Ishak al-Sahili came from Muslim Spain and was brought back from Mecca.
• A distinctive form of Sudanic architecture was developed after the architect directed the building of several important mosques.
• This can be seen in the mosque.

• The cities of the western Sudan began to resemble those of north Africa, but with a distinctive local architectural style.
• Craft specialists and a foreign merchant community were included in the towns.
• The commercial success of states such as Songhay was due to the power of the state.
• Merchants and scholars were attracted to the power and protection of Malian.
• The traders used their position as a broker.

• The port city is located on the great bend of the river.
• By the 14th century, Timbuktu was said to have a population of 50,000, just off the flood plain, and it had a library and university.
• It was said that the book trade in Timbuktu was the most lucrative in the world.

• This was a hard life.
• The savanna's soils were sandy and shallow.

• Timbuktu Plows were rarely used.
• The people of the hoe looked to the sky in the spring for the first rains to start planting.
• The basis of daily life in the village was provided by rice in the river valleys, millet, sorghums, some wheat, fruits, and vegetables.
• Most farms were much smaller than 10 acres.
• The snake, man's enemy, is not long-lived, yet the serpent shared stories of a family or people, but in many west African that lives hidden will die old.
• Djata was strong enough to face his enemies.
• The stateliness of the lion and the strength of the buffalo made him a master of oral traditions.

• Although today's griots are professional musicians and voice carries authority, his eyes were live coals, his arm was iron, and historically they held important places at the courts of he was the husband of power.

• The epic of Sundiata, the great ruler of Moussa Tounkara, the king of Mema, has been passed down for hundreds of years.
• excerpts from a version collected among the Malinke people of follow Sundiata in the great adventure came forward of their own free will.
• The iron squadron formed by the cavalry of Mema was created by the African scholar D. T. Niane.

• Sundiata, dressed in the Muslim style of Mema, left the town at the head of his army.
• The life of Sundiata is coming to the great moments.

• The exile will come to an end.
• Manding Bory is the brother of Sundiata.
• Griots was at his side and he knew the history of kings and kingdoms.
• The best counsellors of kings are the horsemen of Mema.
• Every king has a bristling iron squadron.
• The king of Mema advised the troop to have a singer to perpetuate his memory, for Djata did not have enough troops to confront griot who rescues the memories of kings from oblivion.
• Half the men of the king, Soumaba, and seers who probe the future know it, if you go to Wagadou.
• They have Cisse.
• The king of knowledge of the future came out in person to meet Sundiata and his troops, whereas we griots are depositories of Wagadou.

• He blessed the weapons after giving Sundiata half of his cavalry.

• Writing lacks enough fibers to tie up a man, so they don't feel the past anymore.
• The warmth of the human voice is what numbers mean.
• Everyone thinks it is worth it.
• Learning should be a secret, but I will clear myself with my cavalry.

• They would head south.
• It is concealed in Soumaoro's kingdom.

• Tabon, an iron-gated town in the midst of the mountains, was promised by Sundiata that he would pass it before returning to his homeland.

• The preparation for a major companion became king in the following excerpt.
• Singbin Mara Cisse and Mandjan the Sossos, who are also known as Berete, took control of Mali after a forced march and battle fought by Sundiata against the forces of Soumaoro.
• The celebra Alexander, the king of gold and silver, was one of the heroes who preferred the presence of aspects of Muslim and animist religion.
• He wanted to outdo his prototype both in the high value placed on the cavalry and in the wealth of his treasury.

• A man with two wives and several unmarried sons could work more land than a man with one wife and a smaller family.
• Polygamy, the practice of having multiple wives, was common in the region.

• The farmers of the Sudanic states were able to use irrigation in places such as Timbuktu because of the difficulties of the soil and the limitations of technology.
• The common people of the savanna states used the bow and hoe.

• A successor state from within the old empire was beginning to emerge as the power of Malian waned.

• Songhay was formed as an independent kingdom in the 7th century as a result of a Berber dynasty.
• The capital of the popula dynasty was established under the rule of a Berber, but the majority of the rulers became Muslims.
• As new sources of gold from the west African forests began, Songhay was able to reestablish its imperial status under Sunni Ali in the 1370s.

• A foreign merchant community and several mosques made Gao a large city.
• The empire of Songhay was forged under the leadership of Sunni Ali.

• Sunni Ali was a great leader.
• The borders of Timbuktu and Jenne were expanded by his cavalry.
• He developed a system of provincial administration to mobilize recruits for the army and rule the far- flung conquests.
• He met any chal enge to his authority even when it came from the Muslim scholars of Timbuktu.

• The fusion of pagan and Islamic populations continued.

• Songhay ruled the region until the end of the 16th century.

• The political and cultural tradition of western Sudan was not affected by the demise of the Songhay imperial structure.
• The ruler of Kano took control of the city in the late 14th century and turned it into a center of Muslim learning.
• In the Hausa cities of the region, an urbanized royal court in a fortified capital ruled over the majority of the population in animistic villages.

• Many of the social, political, and religious forms of the great empires of the grassland were reproduced by the later Islamicized African states.

• There were different forms of Muslim penetration beyond the Sudan.
• Most of the major trading cities had merchants, and religious communities developed in each of them.
• Merchants and groups of pastoralists established outposts in the area of Guinea as networks of trade and contact were established throughout the region.
• Muslim people, herders, warriors, and religious leaders became important minorities in African societies that were composed of elite families, occupational groups, free people, and slaves.
• By the 18th century Muslim minorities were scattered throughout west Africa, even in areas where no Islamic state had arisen, because families of specialists in Muslim law spread widely through the region.

• We can use these descriptions to understand the nature of the Sudanic states.
• Many aspects of life in the savanna continued to be organized by the village communities, clans, and various ethnic groups.
• The various groups and communities were owed an overarching structure by the development of unified states.
• The large states represented the aims and power of a particular group and often of a dominant family.
• The movement and fusion of populations were a constant feature in the Sudan, and many states pointed to the immigrant origins of the ruling families.
• The interests of many groups were served by the universalistic faith of Islam.
• The merchants who lived in the cities and whose caravans brought goods to and from the savanna relied on common religion and law.
• Traditional ideas of kingship were reinforced by the idea of a ruler who united civil and religious authority.
• In Africa, as elsewhere in the world, the formation of states made the societies more patriarchal.

• Islam was fused with the traditions and beliefs of the Sudanic states.
• The traditional basis of their rule was based on the ability to intercede with local spirits, and although Sunni Ali was a nominally Muslim, they did not ignore it.
• In the early stages of Islam in the Sudan, pagan practices and beliefs were accommodated.

• Many of the populations of Songhay and Malian never converted to Islam, and those who did did retain many of the old beliefs.

• In the position of women, we can see this fusion of traditions.
• African visitors to the Sudan were shocked by the easy familiarity between men and women and the patrilineal nature of islamic freedom enjoyed by women.

• Slavery and the slave trade between black Africa and the rest of the Islamic world had a major impact on women and children.
• Slavery and dependent labor existed in Africa before Islam.
• Slavery in central Africa was a marginal aspect of the Sudanic states.
• Africans had been enslaved by others before, but with the Muslim conquests of north Africa and commercial penetration to the south, slavery became a more widespread phenomenon, and a slave trade in Africans developed on a new scale.

• Muslims viewed slavery as a stage in the process of conversion, but in reality, conversion did not guarantee freedom.
• Slaves were used as domestic servants and laborers in the Islamic world, but they were also used as soldiers and administrators who were dependent on their masters.
• The emphasis was on enslaving women and children, because slaves were also used as eunuchs and concubines.
• Slave trade routes from the African interior to the east African coast were developed as a result of the trade caravans from the sahel across the Sahara.

• The children of slave mothers were integrated into Muslim society.

• The custom meant a constant demand for more slaves to replace those freed.
• There are differing estimates of the volume of the trans-Saharan slave trade.
• One scholar puts the total at over five million, with another two million sent to the Muslim ports on the Indian Ocean coast.
• The trade extended over 700 years and affected a large area.
• It was another way in which Islamic civilization changed Africa.

• The architecture of Faith was created by Mansa Musa and later the center of a university, reflecting mercial, and cultural bonds.

• The architectural styles of west African mosques differ from the wood beams used in the Middle east, with a classic models of the Middle east.

• There are domes in the skyline of Yazd, iran.

• Africa's Indian Ocean coast was islamicized as another center of Islamic civilization was developing on the seaboard and offshore islands.
• A string of Islamicized trading cities developed along that coast that reflected their cosmopolitan contacts with trading partners from Arabia, Persia, India, and China.
• Islam limited the residents of these towns to a universal set of ethics and beliefs that made their maritime contacts to the coast.

• The result was a compromise between the indigenous and the new faith.

• People were moving to the African coast.

• The 2nd century b.c.e.
• was when contact across the Indian Ocean began.
• They were widely adopted along the coast and into central Africa.

• There were ports along the coast.

• Long-distance commerce was promoted by the Islamic influence in these towns.

• 500 miles of mosques and palaces were started in 1231.

• The New Faith and New Commerce towns were farther south during the Postclassical Period.
• These cities had institutions and forms of the Muslim world.
• The majority of the population on the east African coast, and perhaps even in the towns themselves, retained their previous beliefs and culture.

• The African culture was strong.
• Many of the Arabic words used in the Swahili language were not used until the 16th century.
• The language was written in an Arabic script before the 13th century and the ruling families could converse in Arabic.
• The hunters, pastoralists, and farmers did not see Islam in the interior.
• The coast remained largely unaffected.
• In the towns, the mud and thatch houses of the non-Muslim common peoples surrounded the stone and coral buildings of the Muslim elite.
• Islamization was based on class.
• The culture fused Islamic and traditional elements.
• Ancestors were traced through the maternal and paternal lines, as well as through the traditional African practice of controlling property.
• The Swahili people spread their language and culture along the coast of east Africa.

• The Portuguese arrived on this coast around 1500 and spread the Swahili culture.
• The focus of trade has shifted from Kilwa to Malindi and Mombasa, but the commerce continues across the Indian Ocean.
• The Portuguese tried to take control of trade.
• Much of the gold trade was in their hands.
• The Portuguese were never able to control the trade on the northern Swahili coast, even though they built a major outpost at Fort Jesus.
• The east African patterns persisted even more than those of the Sudanic kingdoms.
• Islam became a dominant cultural force in some areas.

• The Kongo of the other African peoples in the continent's interior and in the forests of west Africa were following their own trajectory of development.
• African societies were diverse.
• By 1000 c.e., most of these societies were based on a variety of agriculture, often combined with herding and authority, and often used iron tools and weapons.
• In small village communities, many were still organized.

• Problems of creation of powerful states began to be solved by some of them.

• Many sub Saharan African societies were preliterate and transmitted their knowledge, skills, and traditions by oral methods and direct instruction, unlike Egypt, Kush, and Ethiopia, which had developed writing and other areas borrowed the Arabic script.
• African societies made great strides in the arts, building, and statecraft, sometimes in the context of highly urbanized settings, without a system of writing.

• terra-cotta objects of a realistic and highly stylized form have been discovered near the vil age of Nok in the forests of central Nigeria.
• The inhabitants of ancient Nok practiced agriculture and used iron tools.
• It appears that their artistic traditions spread through the forest areas and influenced other people.
• There is a gap in the historical and archeological record between the Nok sculptures and the renewed flourishing of artistic traditions in the region after about 1000 c.e.

• The city of Ile-Ife produced terra-cotta and bronze portrait heads of past rulers.

• The artists of Ile-Ife used wood and ivory.
• The authority of kingship is associated with a lot of the art.
• Ile-Ife seems to have been an agricultural society supported by a peasantry and dominated by a ruling family and aristocracy.
• Ile-Ife was thought to be the original cultural center by many people in the region, and many of them traced their own beginnings to it.

• The origins of the Yoruba people are not well known.
• Ile-Ife was seen as the place of birth for the Yoruba.
• The royal historians maintained that the son of the king of Mecca migrated from the east and settled in the south.
• Modern historians believe that the real origin of the world was in the south of the Sahara.
• The Yoruba spoke a non-Bantu language of the west African Kwa family and recognized a certain affinity between themselves and neighboring peoples, such as the Hausa, who spoke Afro-Asian languages.

• Each of the small city-states of the Yoruba had their own control over a 50 mile area.
• Many of the town's inhabitants farmed in the surrounding countryside.
• These city-states were developed by regional kings who were considered divine.
• His rule wasn't absolute.
• The example of the Yoruba state of Oyo, which emerged by the 14th century, can be used.
• The king of the alafin, cotta as well as bronze and produced controlled subject peoples through "princes" in the provinces, who were skilled individual portraits like this one.

• In the capital, a council of state made up of nobles from the seven city districts advised the ruler and limited his power, and the secret society of religious and political leaders reviewed decisions of the king and the council.
• The basis of power was the union of civil and supernatural powers in the ruler.
• The city-states of medieval Italy and Germany have similar characteristics to the highly urbanized nature of Yoruba society and the flourishing of artisan traditions.

• The present-day Nigeria which came Great was under the control of Benin.

• The oba, or ruler, lived in a large royal compound surrounded by a large group of people and his authority was supported by ritual and ceremony.

• Two transitions in the History of World Population Africa and the ancient Americas are difficult to understand because they are two regions that make of a population.
• Most nations conduct periodic censuses to assess the present amount of available resources and to plan for the future.
• When census-taking became a regular population size, hunting techniques were used as rough guesses.
• Historians believe that the question is important because the results are often inadequate or controversial.

• Unless we know the archeological evidence and estimates of productive capacity of size, density, age structure, health, and reproductive capacity agricultural practices and technology are used.
• The life expectancy was usually less than 35 years.

• There are two basic many children in the history of human population.
• Improvements in medicine, hygiene, diet, and the periods: a long era--almost all of human history--of very slow general standard of living contributed to a decrease in mortality growth and a very short period in the 18th century.
• This allowed populations to grow quickly.
• The population grew slowly in most of western Europe by the 19th century.
• The hunting-and-gathering economies were developed before the decline in fertility brought about by contraception.
• If modern two transitions took place at the same time, population studies of such populations can be used as a guide.
• It was limited after about growth.
• When plants and animals were domesticated, there was a decline in fertility, so there was a first demographic transition as population began to increase period of rapid population growth.
• The growth of agriculture in western Europe and the United States was more secure and larger than in the rest of the world, but population concentration may have made people more susceptible to countries.
• The situation has changed recently.

• demographers believe that demographic transition is the result of the settled agricultural life leading to intensified warfare and increasing social to an industrial, urbanized one and that the improvements in stratification within societies.

• The demographic structure was what it was.

• The world population may have been related to economic growth.
• The assumption is that there are 300 million people.
• It went up between 1 and 2 c.e.
• During this world to another because of economic conditions and cultural period of general increase, there were always areas that suffered attitudes about proper family size.

• According to historical conditions, the decline of American Indian popula transition can vary greatly.

• Europe solved the problem of social disruption in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• The effect of the slave trade on population growth is still debated.
• Population changes to the Americas, Australia, and various colonies resulted in profound social and cultural adjustments.

• The scholars argue that the slave trade had an impact on the social fabric of Africa, despite the new waves of migration in the global and political patterns.

• Between the 17th and 18th centuries, a demographic transition has begun.
• In the developing world of Latin America, Africa, and based on new food resources, this transition is associated with Asia.
• Modern medical technology and the Industrial Revolution have led to an increase in life expectancy.

• The mortality rate was highest in the countries that were most affected.
• Between 1945 and 1952 the world grew at a rate of more than 4% a year to more malarial mosquitoes because of the elimination of population.
• In a billion people, fertility has declined.
• By the mid-20th century, Asia and Latin America, but in Africa, where children continue rate had tripled, and world population had risen to more to have an important economic and social role in the extended than 7 billion.

• It is still more typical of the developed world.
• Balance population's growth against the society's ability to feed and between the annual number of births and deaths is a problem that most countries are faced with.

• The world's population is growing because of population pressure in industrialized nations and a high rate of growth in the developing countries, which will lead to political and social conditions that are high in the developing countries.
• The rate of growth for 2 percent demographic questions must always be set in political, economic, and social contexts because it is 100 times greater than it had been for most human and social contexts.

• The world's population would be increased by 1000 every 350 years.
• The growth would be a disaster.

• The artistic output in ivory and cast bronze was magnificent.

• Ile-Ife was sent to introduce the techniques of making bronze sculptures.

• The first Europeans, the Portuguese, visited in the late 19th century.

• The artists of Benin were impressed with the Portuguese and began to include representations of Portuguese soldiers and other themes in their bronzes and ivories.

• South of the rain forest lies a large expanse of savanna and plain that is cut by several large rivers.
• From their original home in Nigeria, the Bantu peoples spread into the southern reaches of the rainforest, then onto the southern savannas, and finally to the east coast.
• By the 13th century, Bantu farmers and fishers were approaching the southern end of the continent.
• Many of the central African peoples had begun their own process of state formation by about 1000 c.e., replacing the pattern of kinship-based societies with forms of political authority based on kingship.

• Whether the idea of kingship developed in one place and was spread elsewhere or had multiple origins is unknown, but the older system based on seniority within the kinship group was replaced with rule based on control of territory and parallel development of rituals that reinforced the ruler's power.
• Several important kingdoms were developed.
• The ruler and his relatives were thought to have a special power that ensured fertility of people and crops, which is why the Luba peoples changed the system of village headmen to a form of divine kinship.
• A sort of bureaucracy grew to administer the state, but it was hereditary, so that brothers or male children succeeded to the position.
• The system provided a way to integrate large numbers of people in a political unit, but it was a half step away from more modern concepts of bureaucracy.

• The lower Congo River was the site of another kingdom that began in the 13th century.
• Its people are also a monarchy.

• Men and women were working in different ways.
• Men were responsible for clearing the forest and scrub, producing palm oil and palm wine, building houses, hunting and long-distance trade.

• The care of domestic animals and household duties were taken care of by women.
• The women collected the seashells that were used as currency in the Kongo kingdom.
• There were small family-based villages and towns with the population.
• The area around the capital had a population of up to 100,000 by the early 16th century.

• The Kongo's kingship was hereditary but local chieftainships were not, giving the central authority power to control subordinates.
• The Kongo kingdom was a confederation of smaller states brought under the control of the manikongo, or king, and by the 15th century it was divided into eight major provinces.

• There is a confederation of Bantu peoples in the east of the country.
• Migrants from the west began to build royal courts in stone in the 9th century.
• The center of the kingdom was associated with the bird of God, an eagle that was a link between the world and the spirits.
• The ruins of Great Zimbabwe are where the symbol of the bird of God is found.
• The African rulers included several structures, some with negotiated with the Portuguese on equal terms and incorporated them strong stone walls 15 feet thick and 30 feet high, a large conical tower, into local political and commercial networks.
• Observers in the 19th century suspected each side of the main figure's head.

• Bantu began construction in stone in the 11th century.

• After controlling a large portion of the interior of southeast Africa all the way to the Indian Ocean, the rivers were developed.

• It had a great advan of the gold sources in the interior.

• Archeologists at Great Zimbabwe found evidence of a trade in glass beads and porcelain.

• By the 16th century, internal divisions and rebellion had split the kingdom apart, and perhaps an emphasis on cattle as a symbol of wealth led to soil exhaustion.
• The gold fields provided a source of power and trade.
• Europeans were impressed by the fine iron weapons and regal bearing of the representatives of the Mwene Mutapa who called at the east coast ports to buy Indian textiles.
• As late as the 19th century, the smaller kingdom of Mwene Mutapa provided some leadership against European encroachment, but pastoralism had come to play a central role in the lives of the people who descended from the great tradition.

• At different times, it was the royal court of the kingdom.

• The Sudanic states and the Swahili Great Zimbabwe and the Kongo kingdom were the focus of this chapter because of their impact on Islam and the development of Bantu concepts of kingship.
• Africa had never been to Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Similar processes and accomplishments can be found in the Mediterranean world and among the people of west Africa.
• The spread of Islam brought large areas of Ethiopia, east Africa, and the eastern Sudan, as well as the impact of Africa into more intensive contact with the global community.
• The fusion of Islamic and indigenous African cultures created a synthesis and peoples outside of Africa and the processes of development that restructured the life of many Africans.
• Sudanic kingdoms were a major theme in Africa's history.

• Several contacts were heavily involved in the growing integration of other regions during the postclassical period.
• They showed the parts of Africa with global trade.

• The Postclassical Period, 600-1450: New Faith and New Commerce expanded trade and cultural contacts with other civilization in the parts of Africa that had come under the influence of Islam centers.

• Africa had become part of the tively.
• They were a vital part of the expansion of general cultural trends.
• The spread of world religions and the gional trade in ivory, slaves, and especially gold from Africa drew a great theme of the period.

• The arrival of Europeans in sub Portuguese in the late 15th century began to bring them to the west and east coast of Africa, where they found well-developed, powerful kingdoms that cultural and commercial contacts became even greater.
• African societies faced new and profound challenges.

• One of the great chronicles was translated by Joseph Vogel.

• The products of Africa attracted international 3.