Demonstrate understanding of West African, Great Zimbabwe, Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations through a cumulative review of trade, government, and evidence.
This unit crossed two continents and roughly 800 years, but a few threads run through all of it. Trade built wealth and connected distant places, again and again: the same gold-salt trade that funded Ghana, Mali, and Songhai (week 10) sent Mansa Musa to Mecca with enough gold to shake Cairo's economy (week 11), and Indian Ocean trade connected Great Zimbabwe (week 12) to Persia, India, and China just as surely as the Silk Road connected Baghdad and Constantinople in the last unit.
You also saw three very different ways to organize a large civilization: Maya city-states (week 13), the Aztec tribute empire (week 14), and the tightly centralized Inca empire (week 15) -- and you practiced comparing them directly (week 16). Finally, you sharpened a historian's most important skill twice this unit: reading evidence carefully, whether it was the Catalan Atlas, imported pottery at Great Zimbabwe, or an artifact with no writing attached at all (week 17). None of these civilizations needed contact with Europe to build monumental cities, sophisticated math, or huge trade networks -- a fact worth holding onto as you move into medieval Europe next unit.
Mastery looks like: They can identify at least one trade connection, one government structure, and one piece of artifact evidence from across the unit, and explain how they relate.
Common stumbles: Treating each civilization as an isolated story instead of recognizing the shared threads of trade, government structure, and evidence analysis across the unit.