Unit 1 Topic 1.4-1.

5 : State-building in The America and Africa (1200-1450)

- America (North America)
o The first large-scale civilization in North Americawas the Mississippian Culture
o They built these huge, monumental mounds for religious, ceremonial, or sometimes
elite residential purposes.
o The most significant of these folk are the Cahokia who were in what is now southern
Illinoi.
 The Cahokia had a rigid class system. Each town had a Great sun under them
was the priests and nobles, then the farmers, hunters, merchants and artisans.
 The Cahokia enjoyed vibrant culture, but sometimes around 1450 the whole
Cahokia settlement was abandoned, and historians think it was because of
environmental disaster like a flood.
o The Chaco and Mesa Verde civilizations
 These fols scratched out a living in a very arid and treeless portion of our fair
land. They had no wood to build homes
 Both groups had thriving civilizations for a good time, but by 1300 the climate
got drier and both groups went extinct.
o The Aztecs (Mexicans)
 In 1325 they founded a magnificent capital city called Tenochtitlan located in
modern day Mexico City.
 This city was magnificent with its ziggurats and bustling marketplaces.
 The Aztecs controlled their subjects by means of a tribute system administered
by a local governor.
 The tribute system was essentially a payment that conquered people
had to make to the Aztecs for the privilege or remaining conquered.
 The tribute collected could be money, land, military services or goods
and services.
 This arrangement allowed the Aztecs to exercise political dominance
over distant lands without being directly and locally involved.
- Africa
o By 1000 most of the sub-Saharan Africans had adopted agriculture but they did not form
centralized governments.
 Rather they organized themselves in kin-based networks
 Each network was led by chief
 Groups of villages that were geographically clustered were connected in
loose federations. And the chiefs form those regional federations
formed councils to solve the regions problems.
o Hausa Kingdon
 Before 100 the Hausa formed seven stated which were connected by kinship
ties
 The states located in the plains had the land and climate for farming I
they were the agriculturalists
  The westernmost states specialized in military tactics and therefore
provided defense for the other states.
 The Hausa kingdom benefited tremendously form the trans-Saharan trades
system.
 Those trade routes brought Muslims into West Africa and by the 1300s
the Hausa kingdom had largely become Muslim
o The men were usually found doing the jobs that requires skilled labor like blacksmithing.
o The women often oversaw the farming and domestic duties of the home
o On of the most significant members of any African society was the griot and griottes.
 They were the storytellers who housed within themselves the history and
narratives and lineage of the tribe to which they belonged.