Part Two – A Brave New World

I.                  Mid-sixteenth Century Europe (1500s)

A.      Fragmented Christendom

1.      devastating religious wars

2.      discovery of fascinating new cultures

B.      Medieval Order Crumbling

1.      Renaissance artist-scientists

2.      commercial expansion

-         contacts with Asia, Africa

-         geographic exploration

-         global economy

3.      sudden tremendous rise in population

4.      rise of nation-states:  Spain, France, England

5.      balance of power alliances

6.      Copernicus:  planets move around the sun

C.     Travel, Invention

1.      the Muslim world

2.      firearms, eyeglasses, printing presses, clocks

Chapter 18 – Africa, the Americas, and cross-cultural encounters

I.                  Global Travel and Trade

A.      Beginnings:  pilgrimages, curiosity

1.      trade:  Turks, Mongols, silk routes

2.      Marco Polo; Kublai Khan

3.      monks, monastaries

4.      end of Byzantine civilization:  Ottoman Empire

B.      Seeking Water Routes to the East

1.      navigational aids:  sextant, compass, astrolabe

2.      maps, charts:  Prince Henry the Navigator (Port.)

3.      caravelles

4.      Portuguese sailed east; Spanish sailed west

C.     The African Cultural Heritage

1.      Muslim conquest of North Africa (600s)

2.      800 different native languages

3.      kinship and extended family tradition

4.      cohesive communities

5.      animism -  belief that spirits inhabit all things in nature;  Supreme Creator, potency of nature

D.     West African Kingdoms

1.      villages

2.      Ghana’s regulation of gold and salt; Arabic influence from 1000s on

3.      Mali Empire:  1230 – 1255  (trade routes to and through Timbuktu)

4.      Muslim scribes and jurists: Arabic as language of administration

-         mosques

-         libraries

-         slavery

E.      African Literature

1.      folk traditions:  oral transference

2.      griots:  poet-historians, chanters, singers

Sundiata – epic of Mali history

3.      African myths and tales: human fallibility rather than human sinfulness

4.      African poetry:  strong percussive qualities, anaphora (repetition of words or beginnings of lines); voice inflections

5.      call-response  (conversations between narrator and listeners)

6.      rhythmic energy

F. African Music and Dance

1.      call and answer patterns

2.      instruments:  drums, rattles, harp, xylophone

F.      African Sculpture

1.      fetish – object supposed to have magical powers

2.      totem – heraldic emblem of tribe, family, or clan

3.      the antelope

II.               Cross-Cultural Encounter

A.      Ibn Battuta in West Africa

B.      The Benin Culture

C.     The Europeans in Africa

III.            The Americas

A.       Native American Cultures

1.      migrant groups from Japan

2.      Empires:  Meso-America

3.      theocracies

B.      The Arts of Native America

C.      Empires of the Inkas and the Aztecs

D.      The Aftermath of Conquest