First History quiz

Tribute: Payments in the form of goods (such as gold, textiles, or food) and labor demanded by powerful empires like the Aztecs and Incas from subject peoples.

Matriarchy: A social system where power and inheritance are passed through female lines. This was a defining feature of Iroquois society.

Animism: The belief that the natural world—including animals, plants, wind, and stones—is suffused with spiritual power. This worldview was common among Native Americans, Africans, and early Europeans.

Patriarchy: A social system where property and social identity descend through male lines, and men govern families. This was the traditional structure of European society.

Primogeniture: The European practice of fathers bestowing all their land on their eldest son, often forcing younger children into poverty or the ranks of the "roaming poor".

Peasants: Rural farmworkers in Europe who lived in small villages and farmed cooperatively. They made up the majority of the European population in 1450.

Republic: A state with no king or prince, governed instead by coalitions of merchants. Many Italian city-states, such as Venice, operated as republics.

Civic Humanism: An ideology that emerged in the Italian republics, praising public virtue and service to the state.

Renaissance: A period of cultural transformation in Europe (c. 1300–1450) characterized by a flowering of arts and learning, largely funded by wealthy merchant elites.

Guilds: Artisan organizations that regulated trades. Monarchs often granted them privileges to encourage domestic manufacturing and foreign trade.

Christianity: A monotheistic religion that became the official religion of the Roman Empire in A.D. 312 and served as the unifying institution in Western Europe for centuries.

Heresy: Doctrines or beliefs that were inconsistent with the official teachings of the Catholic Church.

Islam: A religion founded by the prophet Muhammad that spread from North Africa into sub-Saharan Africa, India, and parts of Europe, eventually competing with Christianity for dominance.

Crusades: A series of Christian military campaigns (A.D. 1096–1291) intended to reverse Muslim advances in Europe and win back the "holy lands" in the Middle East.

Predestination: A core doctrine of John Calvin which held that God chooses certain people for salvation before they are born and condemns the rest to eternal damnation.

Protestant Reformation: The 16th-century religious movement that challenged the Catholic Church and led to the creation of various Protestant denominations.

Counter-Reformation: The Catholic Church’s internal reform movement in response to the Protestant Reformation, which created new missionary orders like the Jesuits.

Trans-Saharan Trade: The primary trade network for West Africans, moving gold, copper, salt, and slaves across the desert to North Africa in exchange for textiles and other goods.

Reconquista: The centuries-long military campaign by Spanish Catholics to drive Muslim Arabs from the European mainland, which was completed in 1492 with the capture of Granada.