Grade 6 Spring — The Classical World and Late Antiquity to ~500 CE: Late Rome and Byzantium, Han China, Mauryan and Gupta India, Sasanian Persia, Aksum and Early Ghana, Classical Maya and Teotihuacan — Whose 'Fall'? Whose Golden Age? Whose Living Descendants?

Analyze the sub-Saharan African civilizations contemporaneous with Late Antique Rome — the Kingdom of Aksum (c. 100-940 CE) with Ezana's Christianization c. 350 CE, the early Ghana / Wagadou proto-state (c. 300-1240 CE), and the broader Bantu-language-family migrations — per Christopher Ehret, Graham Connah, Stuart Munro-Hay, and Glen Bowersock scholarship

Analyze Aksum — Red Sea trading empire integrated with the Indian Ocean world-system, Ezana's trilingual stele c. 350 CE (Geʽez + Sabaean + Greek) announcing the conquest of Meroë (Kushite Nubia, carries forward from G6-Fall) AND the king's conversion to Christianity (the SECOND state in world history after Armenia 301 CE to adopt Christianity as state religion, ~30 years BEFORE Theodosius's Edict of Thessalonica 380 CE), Aksumite stelae (the largest standing stones quarried in the ancient world); the early Ghana / Wagadou proto-state (modern Mauritania-Mali region, fully formed by ~700-800 CE per Connah but Soninke-tradition origin earlier), trans-Saharan trade in salt-and-gold; Bantu-language-family migrations from West African Cameroon-region homeland southward and eastward across sub-Saharan Africa over 2,000 years (with explicit framing that this is contested-AND-Indigenous-Khoisan-peoples-ARE-today across southern Africa).

Exercise pool (2)