| A | B |
|---|
| loess | a dusty, yellow soil |
| levee | a wall that keeps a river within its banks |
| erosion | the wearing away of soil by wind or water |
| famine | a time when very little food is available and people starve |
| steppe | a dry, treeless plain |
| dynasty | a line of rulers who belong to the same family |
| nobles | relatives to the kings who were given land. They oversaw construction of new towns and became their rulers |
| oracle bones | bones used by special priests who the Shang believed could tell the future |
| emperor | the supreme ruler of an empire |
| provinces | political divisions of land |
| summary | a brief states the main ideas in a piece of writing or group of ideas |
| topic sentence | the sentence that contains the main ideas |
| Confucianism | the ideas of Confucious...that through education people could learn how to be good again |
| Mandate of Heaven | the belief that each emperor received a right to rule from the gods |
| Grand School | under Wudi's government it was the best school of the empire, good students were sometimes sent to study there |
| seismograph | a machine used to detect earthquakes |
