“West African Civilizations”: Tiered Questions
Directions
A. Read pages 106 through 151, including the text, timelines, infographics, and primary sources.
B. Create a GoogleDoc.
C. Type your answers to the following tiered questions using size 12 font. *Tiered questions
incorporate challenging tasks and concepts of various levels and kinds.
D. Give complete answers, restate the question, provide support, specifics, and/or evidence,
quote and cite the authors and page number of any copied information.
E. Check your accuracy, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and typos.
F. What and Who questions may be answered with shorter responses, while How, Why, and
Analysis questions require longer responses with evidence, support, and explanation. Example:
Being a Roman citizen was a valuable and significant honor, “Rome’s laws protected the rights
of the city’s citizens, the people who could participate in the government. Only citizens could
hold public offices or vote. In addition to the rights to vote and hold office, however, all citizens
had duties to perform. For example, citizens had to pay taxes, and male citizens had to serve in
the army when needed. Most Romans were very proud of their citizenship. They thought it was
an honor to be a citizen of Rome.” (Burstein and Shek, 25-26).
G. Plan your time to complete this assignment. Work backward from the due date and give
yourself extra time to complete. Break down the assignment in your planner into smaller parts to
complete each day.
H. Submit your answers on turnitin.com on or before the due date. *Make sure to upload the
correct document and wait for the uploading process to finish and confirm.
Answer these questions for Chapter 5
1. What does this scene show about the city of Timbuktu? (106-107)
2. What does the photograph suggest about the role of music in West African villages?
(108-109)
3. Specifically, how would you improve the timeline? (108-109)
4. What type of environment is located just south of the Sahara? (114)
5. Summarizing: What are West Africa’s four climate and vegetation regions? (114)
6. What are West Africa’s major resources? (115)
7. By what means did family, labor, and trade contribute to the development of West Africa?
(116-117)
8. How did traditions matter to expanding technology and trade? (116-117)
9. How did technology change life in West Africa? (118)
10. What trade goods were a source of West Africa’s wealth? (119)
11. What goods were traded across the Sahara? (120-121)
12. Why was salt a valued trade good? (120-121)
13. Analyze the continuities in the commercial life of the West African region from 3000 B.C to
A.D. 300. This may not only include trade. You may also include social and political
continuities that influenced that trade.
14. Analyze the changes in the commercial life of the West African region from 3000 B.C to
A.D. 300. This may not only include trade. You may also include social and political changes
that influenced that trade.
Answer these questions for Chapter 6
15. Explore the picture. Describe the architecture of the Djenne [Jenny] mosque in the
background. (126-127)
16. Why were gold and salt highly desired trade goods? (130-131)
17. How did trade help Ghana develop? (132-133)
18. How did the rulers of Ghana control trade? (133-134)
19. How was inheritance in Ghana different from inheritance in other societies you have
studied? (134)
20. Why did Ghana decline in the 1000s? (134-135)
21. How did Sundiata [soohn-JAHT-ah] consolidate political and religious power? (136-137)
22. What was traded between the towns of Ghat and Timbuktu? (137)
23. Research Beyond the Text: From which genus is ebony most commonly yielded?
24. Research Beyond the Text: What protections were established for ivory in the United
States National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking?
25. Sequencing: What six steps did Sundiata [soohn-JAHT-ah] take to turn Mali into an empire?
(136-138)
26. How did traders from the north bring their goods to Timbuktu? (139)
27. How did Mansa Musa spread Islam? (138-140)
28. How did Mali’s growth eventually weaken the empire? (140)
29. How did Mansa Musa change people’s views of West Africa? (141)
30. About how many miles did the Songhai Empire stretch from west to east? (143)
31. What did Sunni Ali achieve as ruler of the Songhai? (142-143)
32. Drawing Inferences: Why do you think Askia the Great’s tomb is still considered an
honored place? (145)
33. Evaluating: What do you think was Askia’s greatest accomplishment? (145)
34. What do you think happened to the people of West Africa after the empire of Songhai was
defeated? (146)
35. What were proverbs in West Africa intended to do? (147-149)
36. What is name of the two collections of West African epics? (147-149)
37. Why were griots [GREE-ohz] highly valued? (147-149)
38. Why were the written histories of West Africa written by people from other lands? (147-149)
39. Why may Ibn Battutah have been particularly interested in security within Mali? (149)
40. How did West African music affect modern American music? (150)
41. Summarize how traditions were preserved in West Africa. (150-151)
Mr. Bluma
Food for Thought
I stumbled upon this article by a college history professor. Dr. Stearns makes some
insightful observations and calls to action. Feel free to let me know what you think about his
bounty of ideas and love of history. (*This is optional. No need to include with #1-41, unless
you would like to or to simply let me know in class.)
Why Study History?
By Peter N. Stearns
People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is
the study of the past. Given all the demands that press in from living in the present and
anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the desirable and
available branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American educational programs do—on a
good bit of history? And why urge many students to study even more history than they are
required to?
Any subject of study needs justification: its advocates must explain why it is worth
attention. Most widely accepted subjects—and history is certainly one of them—attract some
people who simply like the information and modes of thought involved. Audiences less
spontaneously drawn to the subject and more doubtful about why to bother need to know what
the purpose is.
Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals.
In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of
history can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine. History is in
fact very useful, actually indispensable, yet the products of historical study are less tangible,
sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.
In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer
accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds its place in current
education is because earlier leaders believed that a knowledge of certain
historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the
person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England
(1066). Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in
many societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us
to some extent. Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless
memorization—a real and not very appealing aspect of the discipline.
History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society,
and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real
functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths
to historical meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.
History Helps Us Understand People and Societies
In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and
societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a
number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly
handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use
historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation,
or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about
experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about
human behavior. Even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited,
often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Major
aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances,
cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly,
as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable
quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This,
fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential
base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some
sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.
History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be The
second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The
past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—
whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the
teenage behaviors, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that
took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development,
yet often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying
history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the
factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an
institution or a society persist despite change.
(historians. org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/archives/why-study-history-(1998)