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The Renaissance - that cultural, political, scientific and intellectual explosion in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries - represents perhaps the most profoundly important period in human development since the fall of Ancient Rome.

From its origins in 14th-century Florence, the Renaissance spread across Europe - the fluidity of its ideas changing and evolving to match local cultural thinking and conditions, although always remaining true to its ideals.

It coincided with a boom in exploration, trade, marriage and diplomatic excursions... and even war. As with the Ancient Greeks and Romans (from whom the Renaissance took so much inspiration), a conquering army could bring not only a regime change but also a cultural overhaul.

The Renaissance changed the world in just about every way one could think of. It had a kind of snowball effect: each new intellectual advance paved the way for further advancements.

Italy in the 14th century was fertile ground for a cultural revolution. The Black Death had wiped out millions of people in Europe - by some estimates killing as many as one in three between 1346 and 1353.

By the simplest laws of economics, it meant that those who survived were left with proportionally greater wealth: either from fewer people inheriting more, or simply by virtue of supply and demand - with fewer workers available, wages naturally rose.

At the top of Italian society was a new breed of rulers, keen to demonstrate their wealth in a way that set them apart. Families such as the Medici of Florence looked to the Ancient Roman and Greek civilisations for inspiration - and so did those artists who relied on their patronage.

Italy was flooded with "lost" classics from the ancient world, and artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello took their tales, heroes and gods as a starting point to creating extraordinary art.

Renaissance art did not limit itself to simply looking pretty, however. Behind it was a new intellectual discipline: perspective was developed, light and shadow were studied, and the human anatomy was pored over - all in pursuit of a new realism and a desire to capture the beauty of the world as it really was.

If the Renaissance was about rediscovering the intellectual ambition of the Classical civilisations, it was also about pushing the boundaries of what we know - and what we could achieve.

Even as the artists were creating a bold new realism, scientists were engaged in a revolution of their own. Copernicus and Galileo had developed an unprecedented understanding of our planet's place in the cosmos, proving that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

Advances in chemistry led to the rise of gunpowder, while a new model of mathematics stimulated new financial trading systems and made it easier than ever to navigate across the world.

And navigate the Renaissance men did. Columbus discovered America, Ferdinand Magellan led an expedition to circumnavigate the globe.

Even as our world shrank in size and significance when placed in the context of our new understanding of the universe, so it grew in physical terms, as new continents were found, new lands colonised, new cultures discovered whose own beliefs and understandings were added to the great intellectual firestorm raging across Europe.

Radical thinkers such as the Protestant Luther and the humanist Erasmus expounded a new way of looking at the world that owed less to blind subservience to the Catholic Church and more to the possibilities inherent in the human mind.

Never before (or since) had there been such a coming together of art, science and philosophy. And never before had there been such an opportunity for it to be so widely disseminated.

The very same scientific advances that the Renaissance was developing also contributed to one of its great legacies: the printing press.

In 1440, Gutenberg introduced the printing press to the world - meaning that for the first time, books could be mass-produced. A single press could churn out 3,600 pages a day, resulting in an explosion of literature and ideas unprecedented in history.

By 1500, printing presses in Western Europe had produced more than 20 million volumes. And by 1600, that had risen to 200 million.

Luther and Erasmus became bestsellers - and later so did poets, dramatists and novelists. The new ideas of free-thinkers, mathematicians and scientists all became accessible to the masses, and art and science became, for the first time in human history, truly democratic.

The seeds of the modern world were sown and grown in the Renaissance. From circumnavigating the world to the discovery of the solar system, from the beauty of Michelangelo's David to the perfection of Leonardo's Mona Lisa, from the genius of Shakespeare to the daring of Luther and Erasmus, and via breathtaking advances in science and mathematics, man achieved new heights in this tumultuous period.

The Renaissance changed the world. You might even say it created all of what we now know as modern life.

Find out more

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The Renaissance - why it changed the world

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The Renaissance - that cultural, political, scientific and intellectual explosion in Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries - represents perhaps the most profoundly important period in human development since the fall of Ancient Rome.

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Scroll to the bottom of this site to find much more information about life in Europe before 1500.

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Kids learn about daily life in the Middle Ages and Medieval times including food, clothing, school, housing, city life, and country life.

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Scroll to the bottom of this site to find much more information about different African Empires.

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Kids learn about the history of the Empire of Ancient Mali including location, history, the gold trade, founding, Sundiata, Mansa Musa, facts, culture, and fall of Mali.

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West Africa is home to many of Africa's oldest kingdoms. These kingdoms played an important role in the development of trade and economic growth of the region. As old kingdoms came to be replaced by new smaller ones many changes were experienced. The transformations were influenced by conquest and warfare along with patterns of trade. West African societies were shaped by competition for wealth and the search for independence from more powerful kingdoms.

The earliest African civilizations south of the Sahara desert were in West Africa. These civilisations developed at a time when most of Europe was experiencing the Dark Age, after the fall of the Western half of the Roman Empire around 476 A.D. the people of West Africa could already smelt iron ore to make tools for warfare and agriculture. Iron farming tools made agricultural methods far more efficient. This led to improvements in agriculture and greater productivity of the land, as prosperity grew the population expanded giving rise to larger towns. Broad rivers linked people in these larger towns by way of canoe travel. These rivers also maintained the fertility of the soil all year round.

At the same time kingdoms were developing in this region. One of the earliest kingdoms to emerge here was ancient Ghana to the far West. By the year 300 A.D, this kingdom had been ruled by about 40 kings, showing that its political administration was well developed to allow new kings to take office without destroying the kingdom by fighting destructive civil wars. The economy of Ghana was based on iron and gold mining along with agriculture. Products were traded with Berber societies north of the Sahara desert. At the same time (1230-1300) the Mali kingdom of the Mande people, to the east of Ghana, was growing and increasing its control of trade in the region. This brought the two kingdoms into conflict. Finally, the Ghana kingdom was taken over by the Mali kingdom. The Mali kingdom was able to establish its influence with ease due to the surrounding savannah terrain. This enabled the easy and speedy dispatch of soldiers across the region to conquer neighbours. The adoption of the Islamic faith by the Mali people in about the 1500s during the rule of Kankan Musa, created a point of unity for this kingdom.

Quarrels over who should succeed the throne and rebellion by the Fulani people in Senegambia and the Songhai people in Gao led to the collapse of the Mali kingdom in the 16th century. Songhai became independent of Mali, and rivalled it as the leading power in West Africa.
Culture, Religion and Monarchy
The Songhai had settled on both banks of the middle Niger River. They established a state in the 15th century, which unified a large part of the western Sudan and developed into a brilliant civilisation. It was ruled by the dynasty or royal family of Sonni from the thirteenth century to the late fifteenth century. The capital was at Gao, a city surrounded by a wall. It was a great cosmopolitan market place where kola nuts, gold, ivory, slaves, spices, palm oil and precious woods were traded in exchange for salt, cloth, arms, horses and copper.

Islam had been introduced to the royal court of Songhai in 1019, but most people remained faithful to their traditional religion.

Sonni Ali reorganised the army, which was equipped with a fleet on the Niger River. The commander of the fleet was known as the 'Master of the Water'. Foot soldiers captured the best men of the defeated armies. An elite cavalry was fast and tough. They wore iron breastplates underneath their battle tunics.

The foot soldiers were armed with spears, arrows and leather or copper shields. Military music as produced by a group of trumpeters. The total army comprised 30 000 infantry and 10 000 horsemen. The Songhai defence system was the largest organised force in the western Sudan; not only was a political instrument, but also an economic weapon by virtue of the booty it brought in. They conquered the cities of Timbuktu and Jenne.

Muslim scholars at Timbuktu called Sonni Ali 'tyrannical, cruel and impious'. The Sonni's were driven from power by the Muslim Askiya dynasty.

The new monarchy based at Gao had centralised and absolute and sacred power. It was possible to approach him only in a prostate position. He sat on a raised platform surrounded by 700 eunuchs. People paid taxes to the king in return for internal and external security. The royal court was responsible for the administration and the army. Large estates belonged to nobles. They were worked by servile labour that did the fishing, animal raising for milk, meat and skins, and the agricultural work.

The Songhai kingdom was the last major one in the region. Its fall did not bring an end to kingdoms in West Africa. Kingdoms that survived were Guinea, Benin in Nigeria, Ashanti in present day Ghana and Dahomey, north of Benin. These kingdoms continued the Trans Saharan trade with the Arab states in North Africa. The Trans Saharan trade was complex. It was not limited to trade and the exchange of gold, copper, iron, kola nuts, cloth, and salt. It was also about close co-operation and interdependence between kingdoms south of the Sahara and kingdoms north of the Sahara. Salt from the Sahara desert was just as important to the economies and kingdoms south of the Sahara as gold was for those in the north. Therefore, the exchange of these commodities was vital for the economic and political stability of the region.
Travel and trade in Songhai
Trade significantly influenced the course of history in West Africa. The wealth made through trade was used to build larger kingdoms and empires. To protect their trade interests, these kingdoms built strong armies. Kingdoms that desired more control of the trade also developed strong armies to expand their kingdoms and protect them from competition.

Long distance trade helped the local economy and supported internal trade. Merchants travelling between towns across the Sahara needed places to rest and stock up with food for the journey across the Sahara desert. Food would be provided by local markets that relied on local farms for supplies. This practice allowed merchants to plan long trips knowing that local markets would provide food and shelter. For this reason, many kingdoms in West Africa encouraged agricultural improvements to meet this need. Often this meant uniting smaller farmers, traders and societies into stronger trading blocs. For example, the Kuba kingdom in present day Congo brought together different cultures under a single authority and used the Congo River as a main transport link to other distant kingdoms. As a result, smaller traders joined with each other like the Chokwe and Lunda kingdoms under a single broad-based trade. This led to the increase of ivory and rubber trade between these kingdoms and with Portuguese traders.

The slave trade was also important for the economic development of West Africa. For a very long time, West African kingdoms had relied on slaves to carry out heavy work. The Songhai kingdom under the rule of Askia Mohammed used slaves as soldiers. Slaves were trusted not to overthrow their rulers. Slaves were also given important positions as royal advisers. Songhai rulers believed that slaves could be trusted to provide unbiased advice unlike other citizens who held a personal stake in the outcome of decisions. Another group of slaves was known as palace slaves or the Arbi. The Arbi slaves served mainly as craftspersons, potters, woodworkers, and musician. Slaves also worked on village farms to help produce enough food to supply the growing population in towns.

The Asante kingdom of the Akan people grew in about the 15th and 16th century into a powerful kingdom in the most southern parts of West Africa, present day Ghana. This growth was made possible by the rich gold mines found in the kingdom. The Akan people used their gold to buy slaves from the Portuguese. Since 1482, the Portuguese who were interested in obtaining Asante gold, had opened a trading port at El Mina. As a result, their first slave trade in West Africa was with the Akan people. The Portuguese bought the slaves from the kingdom of Benin, near the Niger Delta in Nigeria. Slave labour made it easy for the Akan people to shift from small scale agriculture to large scale agriculture (Giblin 1992). The shift transformed the Asante kingdom and it developed a wealthy agricultural and mining economy.

The Akan people needed slaves to work their gold mines and farms. Passing traders and a growing population in the Asante towns demanded increasing supplies of food. The slave trade with the Portuguese continued until the early 1700s. The Akan people supplied the Portuguese with slaves to work on sugar plantations in Brazil. A small number of slaves were kept in the Asante kingdom. However, by this period, the Atlantic slave trade dominated trade with West Africa. Kingdoms like the Asante and Dahomey used their power to raid societies like the Bambara, Mende, and Fulanis for slaves. The kingdom of Benin is the only known kingdom in West Africa to abolish slave trading in Benin. The slave trade ban was succesful and forced the Portuguese to search for slaves elsewhere in West Africa. However, Dutch traders took over the role. From the 1600s the Dutch dominated the West african and Atlantic Slave trade.

The Portuguese and Dutch governments were unable to colonise West African kingdoms because they were too strong and well organised. As a result, the slave and ivory, rubber and gold trades remained under the control of Asante, Fon, and Kongo kingdoms. In 1807, the British government abolished the slave trade. Because West African kingdoms did not co-operate with the British, the slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean continued. However, the slave trade declined in areas where the British had influence, for example the Gold Coast.

Industrial development in Britain led to increasing trade with West Africa in agricultural products like palm oil, rubber, and cocoa. To supply Britain with these products, the Asante kingdom kept the slaves they had captured for the Atlantic slave trade and used them as farm workers instead. This led to the growth of slavery in West Africa because each kingdom wanted to profit from this new trade. West African slavery came to a slow end towards the end of the 19th century when many of these kingdoms were colonised by the French and British. Former slaves became the landless lower classes.
Kingdoms
The states of the Niger Delta extend for about three hundred miles along the Gulf of Guinea from the Benin River on the West to the Cross River on the East. Due to the many rivers, which cross over each other, the main source of transport was by canoe. Societies found in this area include the Ibo, Ijaw, Jekiri Efik and Calabari.

Unlike other West African states, Niger ones were different in character. They were small states that maintained contact through war, trade and migrations. The Atlantic trade brought about great prosperity in this region. These states were known for their skill in politics and for their "middleman" skills in commerce. Their long history of internal trade had brought these small states together and led to economic growth of Bonny (also known as Igbani) and Warri states.

The Kingdom of Dahomey (also known as the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey) was the southern part of the Republic of Benin, a country that divides the dense forest of Nigeria from those of modern Ghana. Dahomey was the most prominent coastal state in the region. It was ruled by a king on the authority of the queen mother who held the power to appoint an heir. The king and queen mother ruled Dahomey from their capital Abomey. Dahomey began emerging as a great power in the early 18th century because of the slave trade. It also managed to overtake other coastal states competing for control of both the slave and inland trade. The Fon army was unusual in West Africa because its soldiers were women feared by other neighbouring coastal states.

In about 1650 there was a great demand from the West Indies sugar plantations for African slaves. The Fon people used their position as sea-merchants to ensure that they held a monopoly of the slave trade. The Dahomey kingdom also relied on its strong military to dominate weaker inland states and to conquer coastal states. States looking to trade in the region were expected to pay a fixed amount of tax and fixed prices for slaves. Custom duties were paid in respect of each ship as well.

By the 18th century the Fon king had absolute power and under his rule Dahomey became strong enough to capture neighbouring coastal states. The Fon were still paying tribute to the Oyo kingdom and this meant that they had to appease the Oyo with guns and other goods each year. In 1725, Dahomey conquered the Oyo kingdom, and three years later they pushed south to Savi and Whyad, Jakin was taken in 1732 but it was only in 1740 that the Fon won complete control when Whydah became a Fon colony. This ushered in control of the coast and even visiting Europeans had to gain prior permission to go ashore.
Atlantic System, Contact with Europeans
The arrival of the Portuguese in the 15th century in search of new trading opportunities changed the trade networks in West Africa. An important change was the new direction of the slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Sahara desert. This increased the power of small West African kingdoms like the Asante and Dahomey kingdoms. It also contributed to the fall of the Songhai Empire, because the slave and gold trade were no longer going through the Songhai kingdom. As a result, the Songhai rulers could not claim tribute and taxes from these kingdoms.

The other change came from the growing slave trade. African slaves were captured from Africa to work as slaves in the Americas in the early 1500's. Portugal, Spain, France and Britain were the key players in this slave trade, which lasted for more than 400 years. Because Portugal was the first to establish itself in the region and to enter treaties with West African kingdoms, it had the monopoly on the slave and gold trade. As a result, Portugal was responsible for transporting over 4.5 million Africans, approximately 40 percent of the slaves taken from the continent before the 1700s. During the 18th century however, Britain was responsible for almost 2.5 million of the 6 million African slaves traded. Due to expanding market opportunities in Europe and the Mediterranean, they increased trade across the Sahara and later gained access to the interior using the Senegal and Gambia River, which bisected long-standing trans-Saharan routes. The Portuguese brought in copper ware, cloth, tools, wine and horses and later included guns, in exchange for gold, pepper, slaves, and ivory. The growing trade across the Atlantic came to be called the triangular trade system.
The Triangular Trade System
The Atlantic Slave Trade (also known as the triangular trade) was a system of trade that revolved around three areas. The first point of the triangle would begin in Africa, where large shipments of people were taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas (The Caribbean, North and South America) to be sold to work in colonies on plantations as slaves. Once the slaves were offloaded in the Americas, the same ships would then load products from plantations such as sugar, cotton and tobacco. These products would be sold in Europe. From Europe the ships would carry manufactured goods such as cloth, iron, rum and guns, which they would use in exchange for slaves and gold.

Most captured slaves were taken between 1450 and 1500, from the West African interior with the co-operation of African kings and merchants. There were occasional military campaigns organised by Europeans to capture slaves, especially by the Portuguese in what is now Angola. This accounts for only a small percentage of the total. In return, the African kings and merchants received various trade goods including beads, cowry shells (used as money), textiles, brandy, horses, and perhaps most importantly, guns. These guns became a very important trade commodity when West African kingdoms were increasingly organising their militaries into professional armies. During this period England sold close to 100 000 muskets a year to West African kingdoms.

Slaves crossing the Atlantic Ocean endured inhumane conditions aboard the ships transporting them. They would travel naked and cramped into the hold of the ship chained together at the ankles and packed together side-by-side in holds which were about 1.5 m high with hardly any light and fresh air. They were provided with buckets, which they had to use as toilets. This resulted in many slaves becoming sick and dying. Cases of fevers and small pox were common during the voyages. The health of slaves on board was made worse by the lack of medical attention. Slaves would be regularly hosed down with water each morning and those that had died overnight, would be thrown overboard.

The slave trade was abolished in 1807 by the British government. The French only abolished their slave trade in 1848. The continued Atlantic slave trade forced the British government to take responsibility to end slave trading. They captured European ships and released slaves on board. This was made more difficult by the unwillingness of West african kingdoms to give up the slave trade. The British government tried to influence the Asante rulers to stop practising slavery in their kingdom with no success. As a result, from the 1870s, the British government began to colonise the Asante people in order to prevent the use of slave labour, but also as an excuse to take control of the rich gold mines of the Asante and to protect British commercial interests against French expansion in the region. Click here to read a lesson about colonial rule and African responses.

The foot soldiers were armed with spears, arrows and leather or copper shields. Military music as produced by a group of trumpeters. The total army comprised 30 000 infantry and 10 000 horsemen. The Songhai defence systemwas the largest organised force in the western Sudan; Not only was a political instrument, but also an economic weapon by virtue of the booty it brought in. They conquered the cities of Timbuktu and Jenne.

Muslim scholars at Timbuktu called Sonni Ali 'tyrannical, cruel and impious'. The Sonni's were driven from power by the Muslim Askiya dynasty.

The new monarchy based at Gao had centralised and absolute and sacred power.

It was possible to approach him only in a prostate position. He sat on a raised platform surrounded by 700 eunuchs. People paid taxes to the king in return for internal and external security. The royal court was responsible for the administration and the army. Large estates belonged to nobles. They were worked by servile labour that did the fishing, animal raising for milk, meat and skins, and the agricultural work.

The following information will still be developed for this topic:
- Travel and trade in Songhai at the height of its power ( Arab, Italian and Jewish merchants at Timbuktu)
- Learning and culture
- Fall of the Empire: Moroccan invasion of 1591.
- Women in Songha
- Contact with Europeans Please contribute activities and content for this section by clicking on the 'contribute' button.

Timeline
800 - Gao was established
1110 - Timbuktu was established
1290 - Empire of Mali established and conquered Timbuktu and Gao
1375 - Timbuktu appeared for the first time on a European map
1400 - Gold trade flourished - from west Africa, through Timbuktu and Gao, to Europe
1450 - Large settlement of scholars and traders in Timbuktu
1468 - Songhay Empire established by Sunni Ali. Took over Timbuktu and Gao
1493 - Muhammed Ture, a Muslim, founded the Askia dynasty and took over Songhay Empire.
1530 - Portuguese came to Timbuktu in search of wealth. Only one man survived.
1591 - Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire conquered by Moroccans.

Activity Put these events up on the board in the wrong order. Students should try to recall the correct order in their note books.

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Songhai, African Empire, 15-16th Century

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West Africa is home to many of Africa's oldest kingdoms. These kingdoms played an important role in the development of trade and economic growth of the region. As old kingdoms came to be replaced by new smaller ones many changes were experienced. The transformations were influenced by conquest and warfare along with patterns of trade.

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Find the piece of the chapter that is about America

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Find the piece of the chapter that is about Europe.

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Find the piece of the chapter that is about Africa.

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View the video, then select other sections on the left side of the screen.

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- [Instructor] Talk about in other videos, the Middle Ages refers to that roughly 1,000 year period of time in Europe from the end of the Western Roman empire in 476 until we get to about 1,000 years later with the emergence of the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration. And we associate it with knights in shining armor and their code of chivalry, with kings and castles surrounded by moats. And we also associate it with the feudal system, which is how most of Europe was governed during the Middle Ages. Now many of you are probably familiar with some of the key actors within the feudal system. At the top, you would have a king. Now, the king would rule over a kingdom. Now this is not so easy to govern, especially during the Middle Ages, and the king might owe many people things, especially people who helped the king come to power, helped him depose the previous king or to conquer this land. And so, in exchange for that, and to help govern, he might grant land or fiefs to other people. And the key currency in the Middle Ages under the feudal system is land and land in exchange for loyalty and service. So, this whole thing is a kingdom. Now, right over here, this is a duchy and a duchy will be controlled by a duke. I guess they didn't call it ducky because that just doesn't sound as serious. So, the king might grant a duchy, a duchy, to a duke, and in exchange, the duke would provide loyalty, pledge their fealty. If the kingdom is threatened, the duke will fight alongside the king, would provide their own troops. If the king wants to go conquer other territories, same thing, and also provide the king with taxes, which might be in the form of coinage, depending on what time and region we are in the Middle Ages or it might be in the form of a percentage of the agricultural production from this duchy. Now the terminology here is that the duke would be one of the king's vassals or would be vassal to the king. Now a duchy tends to be a fairly large amount of territory. In medieval England, a duke was the highest title of nobility. There was variations on duke. Now the duke might have his own manor or might even have multiple manors that he rules directly over that has his own serfs or free peasants working that land, providing output, which helps generate some of the tax revenue that goes to the king or provides some of the necessities for the duke's own household. But the rest of the duchy, they might subdivide further and they would be lord over their own vassals. So, for example, this piece of land right over here, this duke might provide it to someone else, let's say a count, in which case this would be called a county, and that is where we get our modern term, county. And this count would be vassal to the duke and the duke would be the lord of the count. And then the count can then be the lord of someone else, of their vassals. And this goes on and on and on, all the way until you get down to the level of the serfs and the peasants, who are actually doing the work. But the main idea here is that in exchange for land, the king gave his duke a duchy, or maybe the king's father gave this duke's father this duchy, and so this grant of land, this is called a fief, a critical term in the feudal system. This county here, this is a fief. In exchange for that, the vassal gives the lord resources, taxes, and loyalty. Now the way I drew it here, it seems quite organized and clean, but the reality of it, it isn't that clean. Sometimes, a kingdom might directly, some parts of it might be subdivided into duchies, some of it might be divided into a county that is independent of any duchy. You might have another duchy right over here that is not subdivided into counties. You might have one count that is more powerful than another count, or one count that might even be more powerful than a duke someplace else. So it can actually be quite chaotic and hard to keep track of. And this isn't all of the players. I mentioned some of the titles of nobility, like duke and count, and then below count you might have a baron. In England, the equivalent of count was an earl, who still presided over a county and their wife was a countess. And when I say preside, they had almost full control over it. They would even give justice over the people who happen to be within their fiefdom. Now, I started this video showing a picture of a knight on horseback and knights are probably one of the strongest association with medieval times, so many of you are probably thinking, where do knights fit into this? The knight refers to slightly different things, depending on what region you are in or what time period within the Middle Ages, but it generally refers to a mounted soldier, someone skilled in fighting, someone who might have knight's armor. But over time, it became a prestigious title that was given by a monarch or by a lord in exchange for service, oftentimes military service. You might have a knight who is granted a fief from, say, this count right over here, and say, they might be lord of their own manor. They might have their own serfs who are not quite slaves, but they're bonded laborers who cannot leave and don't have a lot of rights, working the field. You might have other knights who got the title but did not get the land. And to complicate things further, any of these characters can have multiple titles. For example, this duke might also be knighted. Now, it's worth noting that these titles of nobility, duke, count, baron, earl, these tended to be hereditary. You would pass it down from one generation to the next, as long as the next generation pledged fealty to their lord. The title knight, however, was given for service and did not tend to be passed down from generation to generation. And to be clear, these still aren't all the actors here. You also have the church, which during medieval times, was a very powerful institution. At the top of the church, you had the bishop of Rome, also known as the pope, and you had their bishops in significant regions. You also had monastic orders, where you might have an abbot, who is the head of a monastery, where you have monks, who, as part of that monastery, are praying. They might be farming, they might be copying texts. And there's also power dynamics between these. And as we're about to see, you can even have these non-religious figures pledging fealty to religious figures. So just to get a sense of what these pledges of fealty were like. You have a vassal. In this homage ceremony, homage, or sometimes said homage, it really comes from the French word, homme, which refers to man. So he is pledging to be his lord's man. So this would be the lord right over here. And this is an actual pledge given by Bernard Atton, Viscount of Carcassonne, in the year 1110 in France. "In the name of the Lord, I, Bernard Atton," and I apologize for my pronunciation, "Viscount of Carcassonne, in the presence of my sons," and he goes on to list his sons. "Nobles, and of many other honorable men, "who have come to the monastery of St. Mary of Grasse," or Grasse, "since lord Leo , abbot of the said monastery, "has asked me, in the presence of all those above mentioned, "to acknowledge to him the fealty and homage" or homage "for the castles, manors, and places which the patrons, "my ancestors, held from him and his predecessors "and from the said monastery as a fief, "and which I ought to hold as they held, "I have made to the lord abbot Leo "acknowledgement and homage as I ought to do." So, in this case, the lord is an abbot, is a religious figure, is the head of a monastery and the vassal is a viscount. You can kinda view them as vice count. And notice, he's pledging fealty to the abbot. And in this case, it looks like Bernard Atton's ancestors were already vassals to the abbot and so this is really renewing it and so that the viscount could essentially keep his fief. Now to appreciate how complicated this could get, here on the timeline you see when Henry the Second lived, and as you can see, he had many titles. He was eventually King of England. You can see southern England up here. He was Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, which was interesting. He got that as a dowery when he marries Eleanor, whose previous husband was King Louis the Seventh of France. He is Count of Maine, Anjou, Touraine. And this is really interesting. He's a king of one kingdom, the Kingdom of England, but he is also a duke and a count within another kingdom, the kingdom of France. But this gives you a sense of, to some degree, how chaotic the Middle Ages were. It wasn't well organized like under the Roman empire or under ancient Persia or even most nation states today. It was many different kingdoms organized into many different duchies and counties. There wasn't a very clear rhyme and reason and positions and power constantly shifted, depending on loyalty, wars, marriages, and inheritance.

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Feudal system during the Middle Ages (video) | Khan Academy

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Instructor] Talk about in other videos, the Middle Ages refers to that roughly 1,000 year period of time in Europe from the end of the Western Roman empire in 476 until we get to about 1,000 years later with the emergence of the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration.

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The Arctic

The Arctic culture area, a cold, flat, treeless region (actually a frozen desert) near the Arctic Circle in present-day Alaska, Canada and Greenland, was home to the Inuit and the Aleut. Both groups spoke, and continue to speak, dialects descended from what scholars call the Eskimo-Aleut language family.

Because it is such an inhospitable landscape, the Arctic's population was comparatively small and scattered. Some of its peoples, especially the Inuit in the northern part of the region, were nomads, following seals, polar bears and other game as they migrated across the tundra. In the southern part of the region, the Aleut were a bit more settled, living in small fishing villages along the shore.

Did you know? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. That's about 1.5 percent of the population.

The Inuit and Aleut had a great deal in common. Many lived in dome-shaped houses made of sod or timber (or, in the North, ice blocks). They used seal and otter skins to make warm, weatherproof clothing, aerodynamic dogsleds and long, open fishing boats (kayaks in Inuit; baidarkas in Aleut).

By the time the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, decades of oppression and exposure to European diseases had taken their toll: The native population had dropped to just 2,500; the descendants of these survivors still make their homes in the area today.

The Subarctic

The Subarctic culture area, mostly composed of swampy, piney forests (taiga) and waterlogged tundra, stretched across much of inland Alaska and Canada. Scholars have divided the region's people into two language groups: the Athabaskan speakers at its western end, among them the Tsattine (Beaver), Gwich'in (or Kuchin) and the Deg Xinag (formerly-and pejoratively-known as the Ingalik), and the Algonquian speakers at its eastern end, including the Cree, the Ojibwa and the Naskapi.

In the Subarctic, travel was difficult-toboggans, snowshoes and lightweight canoes were the primary means of transportation-and population was sparse. In general, the peoples of the Subarctic did not form large permanent settlements; instead, small family groups stuck together as they traipsed after herds of caribou. They lived in small, easy-to-move tents and lean-tos, and when it grew too cold to hunt they hunkered into underground dugouts.

The growth of the fur trade in the 17th and 18th centuries disrupted the Subarctic way of life-now, instead of hunting and gathering for subsistence, the Indians focused on supplying pelts to the European traders-and eventually led to the displacement and extermination of many of the region's native communities.

The Northeast

The Northeast culture area, one of the first to have sustained contact with Europeans, stretched from present-day Canada's Atlantic coast to North Carolina and inland to the Mississippi River valley. Its inhabitants were members of two main groups: Iroquoian speakers (these included the Cayuga, Oneida, Erie, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora), most of whom lived along inland rivers and lakes in fortified, politically stable villages, and the more numerous Algonquian speakers (these included the Pequot, Fox, Shawnee, Wampanoag, Delaware and Menominee) who lived in small farming and fishing villages along the ocean. There, they grew crops like corn, beans and vegetables.

Life in the Northeast culture area was already fraught with conflict-the Iroquoian groups tended to be rather aggressive and warlike, and bands and villages outside of their allied confederacies were never safe from their raids-and it grew more complicated when European colonizers arrived. Colonial wars repeatedly forced the region's Indigenous people to take sides, pitting the Iroquois groups against their Algonquian neighbors. Meanwhile, as white settlement pressed westward, it eventually displaced both sets of Indigenous people from their lands.

The Southeast

The Southeast culture area, north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Northeast, was a humid, fertile agricultural region. Many of its natives were expert farmers-they grew staple crops like maize, beans, squash, tobacco and sunflower-who organized their lives around small ceremonial and market villages known as hamlets. Perhaps the most familiar of the Southeastern Indigenous peoples are the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, sometimes called the Five Civilized Tribes, some of whom spoke a variant of the Muskogean language.

By the time the U.S. had won its independence from Britain, the Southeast culture area had already lost many of its native people to disease and displacement. In 1830, the federal Indian Removal Act compelled the relocation of what remained of the Five Civilized Tribes so that white settlers could have their land. Between 1830 and 1838, federal officials forced nearly 100,000 Indigenous people out of the southern states and into "Indian Territory" (later Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee called this frequently deadly trek the Trail of Tears.

The Plains

The Plains culture area comprises the vast prairie region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from present-day Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Before the arrival of European traders and explorers, its inhabitants-speakers of Siouan, Algonquian, Caddoan, Uto-Aztecan and Athabaskan languages-were relatively settled hunters and farmers. After European contact, and especially after Spanish colonists brought horses to the region in the 18th century, the peoples of the Great Plains became much more nomadic.

Groups like the Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche and Arapaho used horses to pursue great herds of buffalo across the prairie. The most common dwelling for these hunters was the cone-shaped teepee, a bison-skin tent that could be folded up and carried anywhere. Plains Indians are also known for their elaborately feathered war bonnets.

As white traders and settlers moved west across the Plains region, they brought many damaging things with them: commercial goods, like knives and kettles, which Indigenous people came to depend on; guns; and disease. By the end of the 19th century, white sport hunters had nearly exterminated the area's buffalo herds. With settlers encroaching on their lands and no way to make money, the Plains natives were forced onto government reservations.

The Southwest

The peoples of the Southwest culture area, a huge desert region in present-day Arizona and New Mexico (along with parts of Colorado, Utah, Texas and Mexico) developed two distinct ways of life.

Sedentary farmers such as the Hopi, the Zuni, the Yaqui and the Yuma grew crops like corn, beans and squash. Many lived in permanent settlements, known as pueblos, built of stone and adobe. These pueblos featured great multistory dwellings that resembled apartment houses. At their centers, many of these villages also had large ceremonial pit houses, or kivas.

Other Southwestern peoples, such as the Navajo and the Apache, were more nomadic. They survived by hunting, gathering and raiding their more established neighbors for their crops. Because these groups were always on the move, their homes were much less permanent than the pueblos. For instance, the Navajo fashioned their iconic eastward-facing round houses, known as hogans, out of materials like mud and bark.

By the time the southwestern territories became a part of the United States after the Mexican War, many of the region's native people had already been killed. (Spanish colonists and missionaries had enslaved many of the Pueblo Indians, for example, working them to death on vast Spanish ranches known as encomiendas.) During the second half of the 19th century, the federal government resettled most of the region's remaining natives onto reservations.

The Great Basin

The Great Basin culture area, an expansive bowl formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevadas to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south, was a barren wasteland of deserts, salt flats and brackish lakes. Its people, most of whom spoke Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan dialects (the Bannock, Paiute and Ute, for example), foraged for roots, seeds and nuts and hunted snakes, lizards and small mammals. Because they were always on the move, they lived in compact, easy-to-build wikiups made of willow poles or saplings, leaves and brush. Their settlements and social groups were impermanent, and communal leadership (what little there was) was informal.

After European contact, some Great Basin groups got horses and formed equestrian hunting and raiding bands that were similar to the ones we associate with the Great Plains natives. After white prospectors discovered gold and silver in the region in the mid-19th century, most of the Great Basin's people lost their land and, frequently, their lives.

California

Before European contact, the temperate California area had more people than any other North American landscape at the time, with approximately 300,000 people in the mid-16th century. It's estimated that 100 different tribes and groups spoke more than 200 dialects. These languages were derived from the Penutian (the Maidu, Miwok and Yokuts), the Hokan (the Chumash, Pomo, Salinas and Shasta), the Uto-Aztecan (the Tubabulabal, Serrano and Kinatemuk) and the Athapaskan (the Hupa, among others). Many of the "Mission Indians" who were driven out of the Southwest by Spanish colonization also spoke Uto-Aztecan dialects.

Despite this great diversity, many native Californians lived very similar lives. They did not practice much agriculture. Instead, they organized themselves into small, family-based bands of hunter-gatherers known as tribelets. Inter-tribelet relationships, based on well-established systems of trade and common rights, were generally peaceful.

Spanish explorers infiltrated the California region in the middle of the 16th century. In 1769, the cleric Junipero Serra established a mission at San Diego, inaugurating a particularly brutal period in which forced labor, disease and assimilation nearly exterminated the culture area's native population.

The Northwest Coast

The Northwest Coast culture area, along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to the top of Northern California, has a mild climate and an abundance of natural resources. In particular, the ocean and the region's rivers provided almost everything its people needed-salmon, especially, but also whales, sea otters, seals and fish and shellfish of all kinds. As a result, unlike many other hunter-gatherers who struggled to eke out a living and were forced to follow animal herds from place to place, the Indians of the Pacific Northwest were secure enough to build permanent villages that housed hundreds of people apiece.

Those villages operated according to a rigidly stratified social structure, more sophisticated than any outside of Mexico and Central America. A person's status was determined by his closeness to the village's chief and reinforced by the number of possessions-blankets, shells and skins, canoes and even slaves-he had at his disposal. (Goods like these played an important role in the potlatch, an elaborate gift-giving ceremony designed to affirm these class divisions.)

Prominent groups in the region included the Athapaskan Haida and Tlingit; the Penutian Chinook, Tsimshian and Coos; the Wakashan Kwakiutl and Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka); and the Salishan Coast Salish.

The Plateau

The Plateau culture area sat in the Columbia and Fraser River basins at the intersection of the Subarctic, the Plains, the Great Basin, California and the Northwest Coast (present-day Idaho, Montana and eastern Oregon and Washington). Most of its people lived in small, peaceful villages along streams and riverbanks and survived by fishing for salmon and trout, hunting and gathering wild berries, roots and nuts.

In the southern Plateau region, the great majority spoke languages derived from the Penutian (the Klamath, Klikitat, Modoc, Nez Perce, Walla Walla and Yakima or Yakama). North of the Columbia River, most (the Skitswish (Coeur d'Alene), Salish (Flathead), Spokane and Columbia) spoke Salishan dialects.

In the 18th century, other native groups brought horses to the Plateau. The region's inhabitants quickly integrated the animals into their economy, expanding the radius of their hunts and acting as traders and emissaries between the Northwest and the Plains.

In 1805, the explorers Lewis and Clark passed through the area, followed by increasing numbers of white settlers. By the end of the 19th century, most of the remaining members of Plateau tribes had been cleared from their lands and resettled in government reservations.

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Native American Cultures - Facts, Regions & Tribes

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Native Americans, also known as American Indians and Indigenous Americans, are the indigenous peoples of the United States. By the time European adventurers arrived in the 15th century A.D., scholars estimate that more than 50 million Native Americans were already living in the Americas - 10 million in the area that would become the United States.

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- [Lecturer] We've already talked about the Aztec civilization in several videos, but what we're going to focus on in this video is the Aztec empire which shouldn't be confused with the Aztec civilization. The civilization is referring to the broader groups of people over hundreds of years, but the Aztec empire is a very specific entity that formed in the 100 years before Spanish colonization. What you see here is a zoomed in version of what today would be southern Mexico and right over here on the globe and you can see many city-states formed here. A city-state is a city that is also considers itself a state that has its own political organization, its own way of functioning. It's not dependent on any other government forms, and it's analogous to what we see in classical Greece where we have the city-states of Athens and Sparta. Now what's particularly interesting is what's going on around Lake Texcoco in the 14th Century. In 1325 you have the city of Tenochtitlan form on this island in Lake Texcoco and initially Tenochtitlan is one of the weaker city-states around Lake Texcoco. You see many of these city-states, some of the stronger ones you have Texcoco right here, and in particular you have Azcapotzalco, but as we fast forward roughly 100 years, you get to a situation where Azcapotzalco falls into a civil war. Their ruler dies and there's a succession battle and the various city-states around Lake Texcoco take sides. What eventually happens is Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan form what is known as a triple alliance or the triple alliance and are able to conquer the Azcapotzalco. And so in conquering the Azcapotzalco, what you have forming is known as the Aztec empire. Now it starts as an alliance between these three city-states and other city-states in the area, but over time Tenochtitlan which is sometimes referred to as Mexico Tenochtitlan because it is a city-state of the Mexico people and this is where the name Mexico or Mexico actually comes from. Now even though it's an alliance, over time, Tenochtitlan essentially becomes the capital of this alliance, or the capital of this Aztec empire which continues on for roughly 100 years until 1521 when it is defeated by Hernando Cortes. Now the story of how Hernando Cortes is able to conquer this empire is fascinating and I'm not going to be able to go into all of the details in this video, but needless to say he's able to convince several hundred conquistadors to come and try to conquer the empire and he's able to do so by recruiting tens of thousands, some estimates I've seen are 100,000 soldiers from neighboring city-states who had issues with the Mexico or with the Aztec empire and so he's eventually able to take over the famed city of Tenochtitlan. It's really important to recognize how advanced they were at the time. You see these causeways, these bridges leading into the island. They had a fairly advanced dam system to collect freshwater from the rain while also to control flooding. In fact a lot of that was destroyed when the conquistadors came and Mexico City which eventually gets founded over this lake is going to have issues with flooding for some time in the future. In fact the Spanish, in order to control the flooding, end up draining this lake and it's where Mexico City forms. But the big takeaway here is near the end of the Aztec civilization, as we get to the 100 years before the conquistadors arrive, you have this empire form. This empire which starts as an alliance of city-states but eventually becomes a tributary empire. Unlike the neighboring Mayans, which were on the Yucatan peninsula. On this map they would be in this region right over here, the neighboring Mayans were autonomous city-states. Some might have had more power, more influence at different times, but the Aztec tributary state means the other city-states are paying tribute to Tenochtitlan. They are paying revenue, they are paying service to what essentially is the capital or the seat of that empire until it is conquered by the Spanish with, and remember, the Spanish are able to do this with several hundred conquistadors with the help of neighboring city-states and a smallpox epidemic which kills 50% of the population of the region.

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Lecturer] We've already talked about the Aztec civilization in several videos, but what we're going to focus on in this video is the Aztec empire which shouldn't be confused with the Aztec civilization. The civilization is referring to the broader groups of people over hundreds of years, but the Aztec empire is a very specific entity that formed in the 100 years before Spanish colonization.

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- [Narrator] What we're going to do in this video is think about the significant empires that formed shortly before the European colonization of the Americas. In particular, we're going to focus on the Inca Empire. In other videos, we have talked about the Aztecs. But what's interesting is this period of time in the 15th and early 16th centuries, when these empires form, but then shortly thereafter, about a hundred years after they form, they are conquered by the Spanish conquistadors. So let's focus on the Inca Empire, but keep it in comparison to some of the other significant empires and civilizations we know about. As we enter into the 15th century, we have the kingdom of Cuzco. What we now call the Inca Empire did not exist yet. The ninth ruler of the kingdom of Cuzco, a gentleman by the name of Pachacuti, he decides to go on a fairly aggressive effort of expansion. It is Pachacuti that takes the Incas from the kingdom of Cuzco, and creates an empire. Now as I mentioned, they did not call themselves the Incas. Inca was actually their word for ruler. So this was Pachacuti Inca. Their name for the empire that gets started by Pachacuti was Tawantinsuyu. What's it's really referring to is the four regions. You can see the four regions here that were conquered, with Cuzco at the center. One of the interesting things is that right around the same time, we talk about it in another video, you have the Aztec Empire forming. The Aztec civilization exists well before that, as does the pre-Inca Empire civilizations. But in the 15th century is also when you have the Aztec Empire form. The Mayan civilization, by this point, is in its post-classical period. It's classical period is in bold right over here. But there's still many independent Mayan city states in the Yucatan Peninsula. But the two notable empires here are the Aztecs and the Incas, which form in the 15th century. What makes them an empire is that you have one group, in the case of the Incas, the kingdom of Cuzco, conquering other peoples, and taking tribute from them. Now what was interesting about the Incas is that they were able to form this large empire, the largest empire in the Americas at the time of the European conquest. This empire had 10 million people in it. What's amazing is that you have this large, powerful empire with significant building projects. This is a picture of Machu Pichu. Historians believe that it was built as an estate for Pachacuti. So they were able to do sophisticated construction despite not having a written system as we know it. They had a system of knots for some forms of record keeping. But despite that, they were able to have a sophisticated society. Their way of taxing people was not through formal coinage. They didn't have a monetary system as we know it. Members of their society had to dedicate a proportion of their labor to the empire, to the emperor. This might seem different than what we do, but if you think about it, if my income is taxed at 30% or 35% in, say, the US, essentially what I'm giving to the government is 35% of the work of my labor. I'm just doing it through a monetary system. They did it directly. A certain percentage of my labor would directly have to be for the empire. That's how things like Machu Pichu actually got built. This was called the Mit'a system. Well, like the case with the Aztec Empire, the Inca Empire lasts for about 100 years until the Conquistadors come into the picture. Francisco Pizarro in particular, on his third expedition, is able to conquer this powerful Inca Empire. He does this with only several hundred men. But they were far better armed than the Incas. But many historians believe there was also complacency on the part of the Inca ruler at the time. He didn't believe that these Conquistadors would be able to overtake his army that numbered in the tens of thousands.

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Inca Empire overview (video) | Khan Academy

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Narrator] What we're going to do in this video is think about the significant empires that formed shortly before the European colonization of the Americas. In particular, we're going to focus on the Inca Empire. In other videos, we have talked about the Aztecs.

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Not everyone in Africa converted to Islam. And even before Islam started spreading though Africa, people had religious and spiritual beliefs.