Ap World vocab 1.5-1.6

Kin-based network

A decentralized system of political and social organization where communities are structured around extended families (kinship) and clans. Essentially, families governed themselves.

• Social and political structures where families govern themselves, with relationships based on blood, marriage, or adoption

Metallurgy

The science and technology of extracting and processing metal ores to create useful and valuable items like tools, weapons, and currency.

Mortar-less walls

Constructions built by carefully interlocking stones without any binding agent, like mortar or cement.

Griots

A West African oral historian, storyteller, musician, and poet who preserves and transmits a community's history, culture, genealogies, and traditions through song and spoken word.

• Revered West African storytellers, poets, musicians, and oral historians who preserve and transmit cultural knowledge, genealogies, and history through performances

Caravanserai

An inn or rest stop for travelers and merchants along trade routes, particularly prominent during the era of the Silk Roads. These facilities provided lodging, food, and services to caravans.

• A fortified roadside inn along trade routes, such as the Silk Road, that provided shelter, food, and security for travelers and their caravans

Chattel Slavery

Absolute legal ownership of another person, including the right to buy or sell that person.

Feudalism

The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.

• A medieval European system where land (fiefs) was exchanged for loyalty and service, creating a strict social hierarchy: kings granted land to nobles (vassals), who provided military aid; nobles, in turn, got labor and produce from peasants (serfs) who worked the land in exchange for protection and a place to live. It was a web of reciprocal duties defining political power, social status, and economic life, centered on land ownership and military obligation

Serfs

Peasants in medieval Europe who were legally bound to the land owned by a lord or landowner, providing labor and a portion of their crops in exchange for protection and the right to cultivate some land for their own sustenance.

Peasants

A pre-industrial agricultural laborer, or a small-scale farmer with limited land and low social status.

• A serf was a legally bound, unfree peasant obligated to work on a lord's land, while a peasant is a broader term for an agricultural laborer

Monarchs

A form of government where a hereditary ruler, like a king or queen, serves as the head of state for life.

• Hereditary rulers (kings, queens, emperors) who serve as heads of state for life, wielding sovereign power, often justified by divine right, and playing key roles in state-building, exploration (like Ferdinand & Isabella), warfare (Hundred Years' War), and sponsoring arts/sciences

Parliament

A legislative body of elected representatives with the power to make laws and oversee the government. Historically established to represent the interests of the people and limit the powers of the monarchy.

Magna Carta

The 1215 English document that limited the power of the king and established principles of due process and the rule of law by asserting that the king was not above the law and could not act arbitrarily, especially concerning taxation and property rights.

• A 1215 charter that limited the English king's power and established the principle that the monarch was not above the law

Three-field system

A rotational system for agriculture in which arable land was divided into three parts: one field grows grain, one grows legumes, and one lies fallow.

• A medieval European agricultural innovation where land was divided into three fields, rotating crops (winter grain, spring crop/legumes, fallow) to boost food production, improve soil health, diversify diets (beans/peas), and support population growth

Crusades

A series of military expeditions in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries by Western European Christians to reclaim control of the Holy Lands, particularly Jerusalem, from the Muslims.

Bourgeois/burghers

Members of a medieval urban middle class of merchants, craftspeople, shopkeepers, and professionals living in a "bourg" or town.

• The rising middle class of merchants, bankers, manufacturers, and professionals who gained wealth and influence outside the traditional nobility/peasantry during the late Middle Ages and especially the Industrial Revolution, owning capital and promoting capitalism, individualism, and challenges to old power structures

Great Schism

In 1054 this severing of relations divided medieval Christianity into the already distinct Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches, which later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, respectively. Relations between East and West had long been embittered by political and ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes.

Renaissance

A European cultural movement and historical period (14th-16th centuries) characterized by a "rebirth" of interest and and revival of classical Greco-Roman art, learning, and philosophy.

• A transformative "rebirth" of classical Greco-Roman art, learning, and culture, originating in Italian city-states due to trade wealth, shifting focus to human potential (Humanism), individualism, and secularism, fostering innovations in art (perspective, realism), science, and politics (Machiavelli), and bridging the Middle Ages with the Modern Era. 

Black Death/Bubonic Plague

A deadly infectious disease that killed between one-third and two-thirds of the population in less than five years. The epidemic spanned from China to England to North Africa, transmitted along the Silk Road and other trade routes (through rats with fleas).

Little Ice Age

Temporary but significant cooling period between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries, accompanied by wide temperature fluctuations, droughts, and storms, causing famines and dislocation. Primarily affected the Northern Hemisphere, with significant cooling, crop failures, and increased glacial activity

• A period of cooler temperatures, roughly from the 14th to the mid-19th century, which caused harsher winters, shorter growing seasons, and decreased agricultural productivity in the Northern Hemisphere

Antisemitism

hostility to or prejudice against Jews.