AP World History Chapter 7 – Flashcards

• Both Meroë and Axum traded extensively with neighboring civilizations. Meroë's wealth and military power were in part derived from this trade. The formation of a substantial state in Axum was at least in part stimulated by Axum's participation in Red Sea and Indian Ocean commerce and the taxes that flowed from this commerce. • Both Meroë and Axum developed their own distinct writing scripts. A Meroitic script eventually took the place of Egyptian-style writing, while Axum's script, Geez, was derived from South Arabian models. • Axum adopted Christianity from the Roman world in the fourth century C.E., primarily through Egyptian influence, and the region once controlled by Meroë also adopted Christianity in the 340s C.E. following Meroë's decline.

• The Niger River region witnessed the creation of large cities with the apparent absence of a corresponding state structure. These cities were not like the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia, nor were they encompassed within some larger imperial system. • Instead, they resemble most closely the early cities of the Indus Valley civilization, where complex urban centers also apparently operated without the coercive authority of a centralized state.

• The Bantu-speaking peoples brought agriculture to regions of Africa south of the equator, enabling larger numbers of people to live in a smaller area than was possible before their arrival. • They brought parasitic and infectious diseases, to which the gathering and hunting peoples had little immunity. • They also brought iron. • Many Bantu languages of southern Africa retain to this day distinctive "clicks" in their local dialects that they adopted from the now vanished gathering and hunting peoples that preceded them in the region. • Bantu-speaking peoples participated in networks of exchange with forest-dwelling Batwa (Pygmy) peoples. The Batwa adopted Bantu languages, while maintaining a nonagricultural lifestyle and a separate identity. The Bantu farmers regarded their Batwa neighbors as first-comers to the region and therefore closest to the ancestral and territorial spirits that determined the fertility of the land and the people. As forest-dwelling Bantu peoples grew in numbers and created chiefdoms, those chiefs appropriated the Batwa title of "owners of the land" for themselves, claimed Batwa ancestry, and portrayed the Batwa as the original "civilizers" of the earth. • Bantu farmers in East Africa increasingly adopted grains as well as domesticated sheep and cattle from the already-established people of the region. • They also acquired a variety of food crops from Southeast Asia, including coconuts, sugarcane, and especially bananas, which were brought to East Africa by Indonesian sailors and immigrants early in the first millennium C.E.

• Because of its fragmented political structure, classical Maya civilization more closely resembled the competing city-states of Mesopotamia or classical Greece than the imperial structures of Rome, Persia, or China.