Africa Vocabulary Assignments
Early West African Societies Illustrated Dictionary 3/4/15
- Sahara-large, hot desert in North Africa that covers about 3.5 million square miles
- Sahel- a zone of semi-desert, south of the Sahara, where short grasses, small bushes, and a few trees grow
- savanna- a vegetation zone of tall grasses and scattered trees, with a long rainy season
- Niger River- the longest river in West Africa, which was a kind of trading highway in ancient times
- Nok- a people living in West Africa in the 500s B.C.E. who mastered iron-making
- artifact- an item left by an earlier culture
- smelting- the process of melting ore to produce iron or other metals from it
- Jenne-jeno- an ancient West African city built along the Niger River, which existed for 1600 years
- tribute- payment made by one ruler or country to another for protection or as a sign of submission
Ghana Word Pyramids or Sentences 3/10/15
- Ghana- a medieval civilization and empire in Western Africa that became wealthy by taxing trade
- matrilineal- a family line traced through the mother
- trans-Saharan trade- trade between peoples north and south of the Sahara
Islam's Influence on Africa Your Choice of Vocabulary Activity
- Mali-a West African empire ruled by the Mande that became a major crossroads of the Islamic world
- Mansa Masu- the first West African ruler to practice Islam devoutly
- Songhai- a people who broke away from the empire of Mali and eventually built their own vast empire in West Africa
- patrilineal- descent from the father or the males in a family
- textile- a woven cloth
Many of the visuals, work sheets and text from this unit are not the work of this teacher, but are from: TCI's History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond. These materials are for educational use only.