Afroeurasia The landmasses of Africa and Eurasia together with adjacent islands, as a single spatial entity.

Agrarian societies A society in which agriculture, including both domesticated crop and animal production, is the foundation of both subsistence and surplus wealth.

Ahimsa The doctrine in Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism that all living creatures are sacred and should not if possible be harmed.

Asceticism The idea and practice of renouncing material comforts and pleasures in pursuit of an elevated moral or spiritual state.

Australopithecines Several species of early bipedal hominins, now extinct, whose remains have been found in eastern and southern Africa.

Bhakti In the Hindu tradition devotion to a personal deity, a form of worship that offered a means of salvation to ordinary believers.

Biosphere The zone of the earth than can support life.

Bipedal Walking upright on two legs, one skill among others that distinguishes hominins from apes.

Bishopric In the Roman Catholic Church and other denominations a district (diocese) under the authority of a bishop.

Black Death The pandemic outbreak of plague that swept across Central Asia, Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Europe between the mid-1340s and 1352; many regional plague epidemics recurred in the following century.

Bourgeoisie The social category of artisans, merchants, and bankers that occupies a position between farmers or laborers and the aristocratic class; in modern usage, the “middle class”; from the French word bourg, or town-dweller.

Bronze Age The era centered on the third and second millennia BCE when bronze-making was the most advanced metal technology in the world.

Bureaucracy A hierarchy of government officials that carries out the laws, decrees, and functions of the state.

Caliphate In Sunni Islam the political and religious institution ruled by the caliph, or successor of the Prophet Muhammad.

Canon law Laws governing a Christian church or denomination, especially in matters of faith, worship, moral behavior, and church administration.

Capitalism Economic activity characterized by private ownership of the production and distribution of goods or services undertaken for profit.

Cathedral A church that serves as the seat, or headquarters, of a Christian bishop.

Charter A document in which a state or other political authority granted specific rights or privileges to an individual, town, guild, or other organization to carry out particular functions.

Chattel slavery A type of slavery in which the bonded individual has the social and sometimes legal status of a unit of property and therefore no formal rights in law.

Chinampa An artificial island on a freshwater lake or pond, constructed of layers of mud, dirt, and vegetation to create arable soil.

City-state A politically sovereign urban center with adjacent agricultural land.

Clan A type of social organization in which a group claims shared identity as descendants of a single, usually distant ancestor.

Clergy In Christianity, people ordained for religious vocations, as distinguished from ordinary worshipers.

Codex A set of pages of parchment or other material bound together along one edge or, alternatively, a strip of material folded accordion-style to form pages.

Collective learning The process whereby humans accumulate and share complex knowledge and transmit it from one generation to the next.

Controlled burning Intentionally setting fires in forests or grasslands to encourage new plant growth, attract animals, and reduce insect and wildfire risks.

Cosmopolitan Characteristic of a place where people of diverse origins come together to exchange goods, ideas, and habits of living; characteristic of an individual who travels across political and cultural frontiers.

Dar al-Islam Territory where Muslims either rule or constitute the majority population.

Deurbanization A social process in which cities in a particular region decline or disappear.

Ecosystem A biological system in which living organisms, including humans, interact with one another and with nonliving elements such as air, sunlight, soil, and water.

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) A warming of ocean surface temperatures that occurs every two to seven years in the equatorial Pacific Ocean; an El Niño event produces unusual, sometimes extreme weather in various parts of the world; a Pacific cooling cycle is called La Niña.

Empire A type of state in which a single political authority, often identified with a particular kinship or ethnic group, rules over peoples of different ethnic identities.

Entrepôt A port or other urban center where merchants of different origins exchange goods and ship them onward.

Equal-field system The Chinese system for state distribution of land; assignment of fixed acreages of cropland to families on the basis of labor available to farm it.

Eunuch A male who has undergone removal of sex organs and who typically served as a functionary in a royal court, often as an attendant in the female quarters.

Feudalism A hierarchical system of social and political organization in which a monarch or other person in authority gives grants of land to individuals in return for allegiance and service.

Fief An estate of land an individual holds on condition of allegiance and service to the grantor.

Filial piety The quality in children of showing respect and care for their parents and all ancestors.

Geoglyph An image, character, or set of lines etched on a landscape, usually on a large scale, by moving rocks or soil or by cutting into the ground surface.

Glyph A graphic figure or character that conveys information, often a symbol carved in stone or other material.

Great Arid Zone The belt of arid and semiarid land that extends across Afroeurasia from the Sahara Desert to the Gobi Desert; it has been home to both pastoral nomadic and farming societies where sufficient water is available.

Guild An association of craftspeople or merchants formed to provide mutual aid and to pursue shared professional interests.

Hellenistic Relating to the interaction between Greek language and culture and the cultural styles of diverse peoples from the western Mediterranean to Central Asia.

Heresy In Christianity, beliefs or practices that contradict the church’s official doctrine.

Hominin The family of species that includes Homo sapiens and its ancestors of the past six to seven million years.

Humanism A system of education and intellectual inquiry originating in late medieval Italy and centered on the investigation of ancient Greek and Roman civilization.

Imam A Muslim religious or political leader; the individual who leads congregational worship and carries out duties such as officiating at marriages; in Shi’a Islam the leader of the Muslim community descended from Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin.

Inner Eurasia The interior landmass of Eurasia, whose dominant features are grassy steppes or forests, interrupted by deserts and highland areas.

Interglacial A period of global warming and retreating glaciers; our current geological epoch, the Holocene, is an interglacial.

Khanate A state ruled by a khan; a Turkic or Mongol monarchy.

Latitude The imaginary east-west lines that circle the earth and that indicate distance in degrees north and south of the Equator, which has the value of 0 degrees.

Legalism A Chinese school of thought that advocated strict obedience to the state and its laws.

Lingua franca A spoken or written language that facilitates commercial or diplomatic communication across cultural frontiers.

Little Ice Age A period of regional cooling that affected the Northern Hemisphere and lasted by some estimates from the later thirteenth century to the mid-nineteenth.

Liturgy The established forms of public worship, especially the order of services, including rituals, prayers, sermons, and hymns.

Longitude The imaginary north-south lines that extend between the North Pole and the South Pole and that run perpendicular to lines of latitude; by international agreement the line with a value of 0 degrees, called the Prime Meridian, passes through Greenwich, England.

Madrasa A center of higher learning dedicated mainly to study of Islamic religious and legal subjects.

Manor In medieval Europe a landed estate; also the main house or castle on the estate.

Matrilineal succession The practice of tracing descent or the transmission of property or political authority through female relatives.

Megalith A large stone sometimes roughly carved and used as part of a structure or arrangement of stones, often having religious significance.

Mesoamerica The region extending from central Mexico to Costa Rica.

Military slavery An institution in which males are held in bondage to a ruler or other authority and obligated to serve as a soldier or military officer.

Milpa A field on which farmers plant multiple crops that balance one another environmentally and nutritionally; a system used widely in Mesoamerica.

Monotheism The doctrine or belief that there is one supreme and universal deity.

Movable type printing A technology in which characters, especially alphabetic letters, are individually carved or cast on pieces of wood, ceramic, or metal, then assembled into a block of text, inked, and printed on paper or other material.

Mysticism The individual pursuit of knowledge or consciousness of spiritual truth through meditation, prayer, study, or ecstatic experience.

Natural philosophy A method of moral and scientific inquiry founded on logic, reason, and observation to discern fundamental laws governing nature and the cosmos.

Neolithic era The period from about 10,000 to 4000 BCE characterized by refined stone toolmaking and the development of agriculture.

Oceania The enormous region centered on the tropical Pacific Ocean and its thousands of islands; this definition excludes Australia but not New Zealand.

Oligarchy A political system in which a relatively small number of individuals or families control the government.

Paleoanthropologists A scientist concerned with the study of human evolution and the physical and behavioral characteristics of hominins.

Paleogeneticist A scientist who uses biotechnology to study preserved genetic material from the remains of usually long-dead or extinct animals or humans.

Paleolithic Meaning “old stone age,” the period dating from about 2.6 million years ago, when hominins first made stone tools, to about 12,000 years ago, when humans first experimented with agriculture.

Pandemic An infectious disease that moves from one region to another, affecting large numbers of people.

Paracultivation A set of technical, social, and cultural practices aimed at managing wild plant resources.

Pastoral nomadism A type of economic and social organization in which livestock herding is the principal means of subsistence; pastoral nomadic communities typically migrate seasonally in search of pasture and water.

Patriarch In the early Christian centuries, the title of the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria; in later centuries the title of the highest official of the Greek Orthodox Church, as well as other Asian or African Christian churches.

Pax Romana The Latin term for Roman Peace; a period of relative peace, order, prosperity, and military expansion in the empire extending from the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE) to Marcus Aurelius (161–180 CE).

Phalanx A military formation in which soldiers march and fight in closely packed, disciplined ranks.

Pleistocene The geological epoch, or ice age, from 1.8 million to 11,500 years ago, when glaciers covering the earth’s northern latitudes repeatedly formed.

Pogrom An organized, violent attack on a minority community; most commonly refers to assaults on Jews; from Russian meaning “riot” or “devastation.”

Polis The ancient Greek term for a sovereign state centered on a single city; a city-state.

Polytheism A belief system that incorporates multiple deities or spirits.

Pope The title used from about the ninth century to designate the head of the Christian church; from the Latin papa, or father.

Primogeniture The legal or customary right of the firstborn child, usually a male, to inherit a family’s entire estate, sometimes including a royal title or office, to the exclusion of younger children.

Principality A sovereign state or dependent territory ruled by a person of noble rank, for example, a prince, princess, duke, or duchess.

Proselytize To convert or attempt to convert an individual or group to one’s religion.

Pueblo A Spanish word meaning village or small town; Spanish colonizers used this term to describe multistory compounds that the Ancestral Puebloans built in the American Southwest.

Quipu An apparatus consisting of combinations of colored strings and knots used in Inca and other South American societies to record names, dates, statistical information, and abstract ideas.

Republic A type of government in which supreme power rests with a body of citizens possessing rights to approve laws and select public officials.

Samurai Cavalry soldiers who served Japan’s rulers and provincial landlords.

Satrapy An administrative unit of the Persian empire under the authority of a satrap, or provincial governor.

Scholastic theology A system to investigate the relations between the authority of spiritual revelation and the claims of human reason.

Secular ruler In the Christian tradition a ruler who is not an ordained priest and does not formally represent the authority of the church; a temporal as opposed to spiritual leader.

Serfdom A system of labor in which people were legally bound to work for and pay fees to a particular landlord in return for protection and rights to cultivate land.

Shaman A man or woman who the community believes has access to supernatural forces or beings, and who can appeal to the spirit world to discern the future, bring good fortune, or perform healing.

Shari’a The corpus of Islamic laws based primarily on the Quran and the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.

Shifting agriculture A method of crop production in which farmers cleared a plot and grew crops on it for a few seasons until the soil became depleted, then moved on to plant a new field.

Shogun Japanese military commander, who ruled under the ceremonial authority of the emperor; the shogunate was the state ruled by the shogun.

Southern Seas The China seas and the Indian Ocean, including the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

State A territory and population with a centralized governing authority; a sovereign state determined its own form of government, laws, and policies.

Sultanate Monarchy; derived from the Arabic “sultan,” meaning “holder of authority.”

Trade diaspora Merchants who share cultural identity but who live among foreign communities to operate networks of trade.