Axum Center of the marine trading power known as the Aksumite Kingdom.
Bantu Expansion
Gradual migration of the Bantu peoples from their homeland.
Their ironworking and agriculture techniques gave them an advantage over the gathering and hunting peoples the encountered.
Chaco Phenomenon Name given to a major process of settlement and societal organization among the peoples or Chaco Canyon.
Chavin
Andean town that was the center of a large Peruvian religious movement. Meroe City in southern Nubia that was the center of Nubian civilization.
Moche
An important regional civilization of Peru, governed by warrior priests.
Mound Builders Members of a number of cultures that developed along the Mississippi that built large mounds.
Cahokia
Dominant center of an important Mississippi valley culture.
Maya
Mesoamerican civilization known for the only known fully developed written language of the Pre­Columbian Americas.
Niger Valley civilizations
City­based civilization in the Niger valley. Noted for its lack of centralized state structures.
Teotihuacan
Largest city of pre­ Columbian America that governed and/or influenced much of the surrounding region. Translates to "City of the Gods"

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 Egyptian­style 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 city­states 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 Bantu­speaking 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. Bantu­speaking peoples participated in networks of exchange with forest­dwelling 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 first­comers to the region and therefore closest to the ancestral and territorial spirits that determined the fertility of the land and the people. As forest­dwelling 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 already­established 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