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Related Flashcards
Cards In This Set
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Cradle of humankind
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Emergence of Homo sapiens along the East African coast as early as 150,000 years ago; therefore Africa was the place where humans orginiated; Eurocentric view is that this statement is heresy
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Segmented political system
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Decentralized system marked by a diffusion of power; still united language, customs, and history but without a central authority; still could resolve conflicts
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Band organization
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Most decentralized; population divided into small hunter-gatherer groups comprised of members of an extended family; several dozen people; all adult males took part in face-to-face decision making; San people (bushman)
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Classical segmented system
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Groups based on kinship called clans, tens or hundreds of thousands in the population; a group of leaders or a committee of elgers to manage clan affairs; Somali ethnic group
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Universalistic segmented system
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Clans more closely unified by the existence of age-grade systems in which the period of birth was more important than the clan affiliation; age-sets with different responsibilities within society
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Ritually stratified segmented system
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Independent clans were unified in the spiritual realm by a commonly revered spiritual or religious leader; duties limited to presiding over religious ceremonies; no political power; Shilluk people of Sudan with the reth (divine king)
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Autonomous village system
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Ethnically homogenous; urbanized groups served as the cornerstones of local political organization; trading and such but still a little political competition between the rule
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Centralized political systems
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Western form of political organization; political authority controls a centralized state that can uniformly apply policies throughout a given territory and the inhabitants of the political system owe their allegiance to the state; nation-state (purest form is one authority and one ethinic group)
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Pyramidal monarchy
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Centralized authority in control of a centralized state; but king did not have absolute control over his kingdom; nonroyal clans had various degrees of autonomy; usually a royal council to check the king
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Associational monarchy
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Similar to pyramidal; still had a council but also had associational groups that transcended individual clans: associations were intermediaries between local villages and the authorities and they could collect taxes whereas in pyramidal the clans collected the taxes
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Centralized monarchy/ hierarchial political system
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Most authoritarian of the centralized political systems; most influential figure was a king to whom all within society were required to pledge their direct allegiance; the king was choosen directly by the royal council if one exsisted; basis of citizenship was neither clan nor ethnic ties; Zulu empire
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Polygamy
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Situation in which one is married to several spouses simultaneously
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Polyandry
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Woman takes two or more husbands
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Polygyny
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Man takes two more more wives; standard throughout African societies
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Bridewealth
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Money or something of high monetary value that was paid by the groom's family to that of the bride as part of the marriage; shows the pivitol reproductive role of women
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