“Out of Africa” Theory: Homo Sapiens Sapiens move from Africa and replace other Hominids 100,000 years ago. Discovered by Louis and Mary Leakey.

SaharaDesert: The arid area of land that covers most of Northern Africa.

Splits Africa into North Africa (Islamic) and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Savanna: Area of land with tall grasses and few trees, lying between equatorial forests and deserts; for example, the savannas of Africa.

Smooth Coastline: Africa has few natural harbors. Bad for trade and cultural diffusion.

Great Rift Valley: East Africa-3000 miles of canyons. Limits cultural diffusion.

Nubia, Axum, Kush: Early African civilizations in N/E Africa. Trading empires that traded with Egypt and on the Red Sea.

Ghana: One of the west African Trading Kingdoms. They were rich in gold and established a vast trading network across the Sahara desert.

Mali: They were rich in gold and established a vast trading network across the Sahara desert. Greatest ruler was Mansa Musa. They were the center of the salt trade.

Mansa Musa: Emperor of the kingdom of Mali in Africa. He made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca and established trade routes to the Middle East. Made Timbuktu one of the wealthiest cities in the world and the center of Islamic culture in Africa.

Songhai: After Mali’s decline, Songhai created the largest empire in Africa.

Ibn Battuta: Great Islamic African traveler. Started on his travels when he was 20 years old in 1325. His main reason to travel was to go on a Hajj, but his traveling went on for about 29 years and he covered about 75,000 miles visiting the equivalent of 44 modern countries .

Bantu Migrations: In search of new food sources. Bantu people migrated and filled all of South Africa. Bringing Yams and Bananas with them.

Slash & Burn: Clearing forests andletting trees rot to provide growing land. Usually associated with subsistence agriculture in South America and Africa (until modern day slash and burn in Brazil).

East African Monsoon Trade: Cities like Great Zimbabwe and Mogadishu prospered by trading with India.

Animism: The oldest known type of belief system in the world. It is still practiced in a variety of forms in many traditional societies. Animists practice nature worship. They believe that everything in the universe has a spirit. This is exemplified by the practices of the Plains Indians in North America who would praise the spirit of the buffalo that they killed for giving its life to them so that they might survive. Animists also believed that ancestors watch over the living from the spirit world. This belief resulted in ancestor worship as a means of communicating with and showing respect to ancestors.

Colonialism: The taking of other lands by a nation for its economic and/or military use.

Colonization: The process of imperialism where a stronger nation overtakes another culture.

“White Man’s Burden”: Poem by Rudyard Kipling-It is the duty of Europe (US) to civilize and Christianize Africans.

Livingston-Missionary who explored the interior of Africa. Made accurate maps and cared for Africans (Congo).

Atlantic Slave Trade: Depopulated African and led to wars and instability on the continent; this leads to an African influence on Latin American culture. It also leads to the death of some 3 Million+ slaves in the Middle Passage.

Tribal Conflict: European slave trade and colonialism creates tribal rivalry which is still a problem.

Berlin Conference (1885): Europeans got together and divided africa into colonies for themselves (without regard to African tribes).

Zulu: A member of a Bantu people of southeast Africa. Organized under Shaka Zulu they were a military threat to colonial powers.

Boers: Whites in South Africa; the descendents of Dutch farmers.

The Great Trek: Journey Boers take North when forced out by British.

Rhodes, Cecil: (1853-1902) Englishman who promoted colonialism in Africa. Had a plan for England to control from “Capetown to Cairo.” Starts the Boer war to make it happen.

Boer War(s): Britain demands Boer territory. After a protracted guerilla war and English use of concentration camps Boers surrender. Eventually form the nation of South Africa.

Apartheid: The South African policy of legally segregating the black majority from the white minority population, including discrimination in job opportunities, pay, government representation, and educational opportunities.

Homelands System: Part of the apartheid system of South Africa. Blacks were assigned to one of 10 tribal homelands areas. Blacks were allowed to vote on issues only within those 10 areas. Most blacks did not live in those areas. This system prevented blacks from exercising any political power.

Pass Laws: Used in connection with the rule of apartheid in South Africa wherein blacks, though forming the majority of the population, were required to have identification passes wherever they traveled.

African National Congress: A Black African nationalist political movement in South Africa instrumental in the struggle to end the legal segregationist policy of apartheid that was enforced by the white minority.

Mandela, Nelson

Outspoken critic of South African's policy of apartheid and leader of the ANC, the African National Congress, that sought an open, representative government for the black majority and white minority peoples. In 1994, Mandela was elected the President of South Africa. Wins Nobel Prize.

de Klerk: The white South African president who ended Apartheid in the early 1990s. Won Nobel Prize.

Bishop Tutu: Anti Apartheid leader who speaks out worldwide against Apartheid. Wins Nobel Prize.

Sanctions: These were used around the world to help end Apartheid. No Trade or Aid to South Africa.

Nkrumah, Kwame: The leader of an independence movement in the western African country of Ghana during the late 1950s from British colonial rule. He advanced the idea of a powerful united Africa (Pan-Africanism). Initially westernizing his nation, he later moved toward personal dictatorship and supported Soviet-style communism.

Kenyatta, Jomo : Independence leader who help lead Kenya out of European imperialism after World War II. Turns to Western capitalism to develop Kenya.

Pan-Africanism: A desire for African unity arising from the spirit of African nationalism that moved some nations to become independent from European control in the 1960s.

Desertification: The slow spread of desert into grassland areas often due to poor animal husbandry (grazing animals who eat soil-retaining roots), accompanied by drought.

Problems in Somalia: Warlords running the country begin hoarding UN food. There is a UN effort to intervene that leads to violence (Black Hawk Down). Somalia is a haven for Pirates, Warlords and Islamic terrorists.

Genocide in Rwanda: The Hutu began a brutal campaign of genocide against the Tutsis, killing at least 500,000. When Tutsi rebels gained control, millions of Hutus fled the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC). The Tutsi then invaded the DRC, creating a civil war in which 3.5-6 million people died.

Genocide in Darfur:In Sudan, Arab militants attacked African tribal groups with support of the Arab-led governments. Despite a truce in May 2006, fighting continues. Some 400,000 dead and millions displaced.