How about answering a few questions for yourself and see if you can see any similarities between the early African Civilizations and the way they operated? With the combination of comparative art, inscriptions, and others, it’s quite possible to see how different cultures were running things. Read on to see if you can see how the early civilizations were structured.
Some of the earliest writing we have from early African Civilizations is the so-called Minoan scripts. These are inscriptions made by cave dwellers. The answer is written right there, right in front of you, right here in this worksheet. Also, if you know anything about the Mayans, it is possible to get some ideas about how their writing system was developed.
These days, we use small cuneiform tablets as our primary source of information about early cultures and the written language they used. So, now we can start looking at the kind of inscriptions these early civilizations left behind and what kind of meanings we can get from them. If you know a little about the Mayans, you might be able to learn something from the explanation of how those early writings were written.
Then, the rest of the information comes from the differences in the religious practices of different native civilizations. For example, the Mayans believe that when you die, you will have a special place where you go to after death. This is called a spirit. They are not averse to taking this step, but they are a little less worried about it than the Aztecs.
Another difference is that the Mayans took a lot of care when it came to naming human beings. They give you a name and then you have to live up to it, so if you fail to do so, you will be cursed. The Aztecs did not worry about such details and simply put the name on the body of the dead person and you can forget about it.
The same kind of thing can be said for other aspects of life in early African Civilizations. The Mayans were not superstitious, but the Aztecs were, and the Aztecs were somewhat more free with their superstition.
It was the greater availability of gold and other precious metals in these early African Civilizations that fueled their expeditions. Of course, if you read the Maya inscriptions, you can read how the people of those early times were obsessed with wealth and their home nation was known as Huitzilopochtli. That name means “The God of Gold.”
Perhaps the true similarities between ancient African Civilizations and the way they operated stems from how they managed their resources. The Aztecs did a good job of it, as did the Egyptians, but the Mayans were fond of telling their home countrymen that they were cursed for stealing and turning themselves into beggars. By answering some questions about how their civilization operated, it is possible to see some resemblances between how the two worked.
