1. Inca
1.1. Government & Military
1.1.1. The Inca needed a sophisticated and organized government to maintain an empire this large.
1.1.2. The Inca government was called the Tawantinsuyu. It was a monarchy ruled by a single leader called the Sapa Inca.
1.1.3. The emperor or king of the Inca Empire was called the Sapa Inca, which means "sole ruler"
1.1.4. As the Inca Empire grew, an army created by a loose confederation of peasant warriors was replaced by one of professional officers.
1.2. Religion
1.2.1. Religion was for the Incas, as with many other ancient cultures, inseparable from politics, history, and society in general
1.2.2. All facets of community life were closely connected to religious beliefs, from marriages to agriculture, government to burials.
1.2.3. Success and failures of any kind in life were due to the influence of the gods and the Inca’s ancestors.
1.2.4. The Inca religion was also an important tool for the ruling elite to legitimize both their own privileged position within Inca society and to spread the general belief of Inca superiority over the subjects of their vast Empire.
1.3. Social Structure & Family Life
1.3.1. When a child was born, the Inca would wash the baby in cold water and wrap it in a quilt.
1.3.2. The social structure of Russia was made by self-perpetuation and some mobility. They also get higher education
1.3.3. The Inca society was a vertical hierarchical organization divided in four social classes.
1.3.4. At the top of the stratum was the Sapa Inca, the most powerful person. Below was the royalty. The third social class was the nobility which (royal relatives, priests and chiefs.) At the bottom was the ayllu which included the majority of the population.
1.4. Economy & Trade
1.4.1. The Incas were rich in foodstuffs, textiles, gold, and coca, the Inca were masters of city building but had no money.
1.4.2. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Inca Empire was the largest South America had ever known
1.4.3. The incas herded llamas and alpacas for meat, wool, hides and dung
1.4.4. Although the Incas had a lot of gold which they used for jewelry and building they did not trade with the gold
1.5. Science & Technology
1.5.1. the Incas were excellent farmers, despite having no animals suitable for pulling plows or carrying heavy loads
1.5.2. The Incas farmed the highlands, where special care had to be taken to prevent soil erosion on the hillsides
1.5.3. These civilizations never developed the wheel or used animals for hauling, and the Incas had no system of writing.
1.5.4. Inca to thrive at extremely high elevations continues to perplex scientists today
1.6. Arts & Education
1.6.1. the Incas did create their own distinctive style which was an instantly recognisable symbol of imperial dominance across the empire.
1.6.2. Inca art is best seen in highly polished metalwork, ceramics, and textiles.
1.6.3. The royal classes and a few specially-chosen individuals from the provinces of the Empire were formally educated by the Amawtakuna, while the general population were passed on knowledge and skills by their immediate forbears.
1.6.4. Inca education during the time of the Inca Empire was divided into two principal spheres: education for the upper classes and education for the general population.
1.7. Geography & Agriculture
1.7.1. The Incans gave their empire the name, 'Land of the Four Quarters' or the Tahuantinsuyu Empire.
1.7.2. It stretched north to south some 2,500 miles along the high mountainous Andean range from Colombia to Chile and reached west to east from the dry coastal desert called Atacama to the steamy Amazonian rain forest.
1.7.3. Agriculture was a community practice, and farmers worked in small teams of seven or eight,
1.7.4. The incas sang as they worked with the men hoeing and women following behind, breaking up clods and sowing seeds.
2. Mali
2.1. Government & Military
2.1.1. The Empire’s most famous ruler was named Mansa Musa, and chroniclers of the times wrote that when he travelled to Mecca on a pilgrimage he distributed so much gold that he caused great inflation lasting a decade
2.1.2. The military culture of the empire’s driving force, the Mandinka people, influenced many later states in West Africa including break-away powers such as the Songhay and Jolof empires.
2.1.3. A study of the Mali Empire’s military is really a study of Mandinka military culture. The Mandinka were early adopters of iron in West Africa, and the role of blacksmiths was one of great religious and military prestige among them.
2.2. Religion
2.2.1. There's a well-known saying in Mali that the country is "98% Muslim, 2% Christian and 100% animist"
2.2.2. Islam absorbing traditional practices and allowing people to retain connections with their customary spirituality
2.2.3. The religion of Islam played an important part in the government and many of the government administrators were Muslim scribes.
2.2.4. An estimated 90 percent of Malians are Muslim,
2.3. Geography & Agriculture
2.3.1. Mali is a landlocked nation in West Africa, located southwest of Algeria
2.3.2. Mali extends south-west from the southern Sahara Desert through the Sahel to the Sudanian savanna zone.
2.3.3. Mali's size is 1,240,192 square kilometers.
2.3.4. There are rugged hills in the northeast, with elevations of up to 1,000 meters.
2.4. Social Structure & Family Life
2.4.1. The social structure group includes: Kings, Priests, Storytellers or Griots, Villagers, Slaves.
2.4.2. The culture of Western African cities and the people were divided into sections based on their social standing.
2.4.3. The structure of the family is often reflected in the organization of living space.
2.4.4. The husband either sleeps in his wives' houses on a rotating basis or, if means permit, may build his own individual house, where he receives his wives.
2.5. Economy & Trade
2.5.1. Mali's most popular trading items are cotton, gold, and livestock products.
2.5.2. Main destinations for trading were Thailand, Italy, Brazil, and Portugal.
2.5.3. The economy of Mali is based to a large extent upon agriculture, with a mostly rural population engaged in subsistence agriculture.
2.5.4. the former Soviet Union, China and the Warsaw Pact countries had been a major source of economic and military aid.
2.6. Science & Technology
2.6.1. The history of science and technology in Africa since then has, however, received relatively little attention compared to other regions of the world, despite notable African developments in mathematics, metallurgy, architecture, and other fields.
2.6.2. The third oldest canoe in the world and the oldest in Africa, the Dufuna canoe, was discovered in Mali by Fulani herdsmen. It dates to approximately 8000 years ago
2.6.3. Carthage's fleet included large numbers of quadriremes and quinqueremes, warships with four and five ranks of rowers
2.6.4. In 1999 a Nobel Prize was won in chemistry for work in femtochemistry, methods that allow the description of change states in femtoseconds or very short seconds.
2.7. Arts & Education
2.7.1. Traditional art describes the most popular and studied forms of African art which are typically found in museum collections.
2.7.2. Wooden masks, are one of the most commonly found forms of art in western Africa.
2.7.3. Africa is home to 43% of the world's out of school children.
2.7.4. In sub-Saharan Africa, 10 million children drop out of primary school every year.