The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were all Germanic tribes who, during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, came to settle in the British Isles. This is why the English people are sometimes referred to as Anglo-Saxons (the poor Jutes seem to have been rudely dismissed). The Vikings also settled, violently, in England during this time period, and were soon joined by the conquering Normans from France.

The Berbers were a nomadic camel herding people who lived in northwest Africa during the Medieval period (and indeed still live there in large numbers today). The Berbers were renowned for their mastery of camels — they are thought to be the first people to domesticate camels. They were also renowned for their fanatical devotion to Islam and the violent means by which they spread Islam throughout West Africa.

Swahili city-states first emerged on the East African coast in the tenth century, and reached the height of their power between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. The Swahili city-states were ethnically diverse (comprised of Africans and migrants from the Middle East and India) and traded extensively along the Indian Ocean trade network.

Resistance by indigenous groups to the settling of Europeans in the Americas was futile as the Europeans possessed firearms. The Age of Sail was advantageous to Europeans at the expense of indigenous Americans, who were decimated by, among other things, the speed and power of European military might. The Age of Sail was important to European societies because it added to their wealth, by cultivating the natural resources of the Americas, but it did not lead to European peace; rather it became another theater of war in which the Spanish, Dutch, British and French competed.

While numerous factors led to the outbreak of the plague, theories agree that the diseases originated in Asia, not North America. Historians and scientists agree that the plague was transmitted to Europe via both land and sea trade routes, and the poor sanitation standards of European cities caused the plague to be rapidly transmitted among the populace.

The Aztec's had a centralized government with geopolitical boundaries centered on Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City). All of the other nations listed cannot claim any specific territory as their sovereign land. The Catalans seek sovereignty in Eastern Spain; the Kurds in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey; The Sikhs in Northern India and Pakistan; and the Yoruba in West Africa. 

The Ottoman Empire was the single largest country in the European/Middle Eastern spheres of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This vast empire stretched from Baghdad across the Arabian and Balkan Peninsulas into Northern Africa, where it controlled all the land from Egypt to Algiers. The Ottoman Empire first emerged as a power to be reckoned with in the eleventh century, when various Ottoman tribes left Asia and moved into the Mediterranean and Northern African regions. Soon, the Ottomans began to gain more and more territory, and the Empire’s conquest of the city of Constantinople in 1453 signaled the permanence of their dominance to all the other European states. From that time onward, various European countries struggled against Ottoman incursions (both territorially and economically). At times, the Ottoman Empire seemed unstoppable, especially due to its lucrative control over much of the vast Middle Eastern and Asian trade routes, which provided Europe with much coveted luxury goods, such as silks and spices. But the Ottomans made a dreadful mistake in 1683, when they attempted to conquer the Austrian city of Vienna. Their invasion was a disastrous failure and marked the beginning of the Empire’s long, agonizingly slow decline from power. All throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many European countries, including Russia and Austria, began to chip away at the Ottoman’s sphere of control, challenging them for control of various ports and seeking alternate trade routes, especially in newly-discovered North and South America. The Ottomans’ grip on power began to slowly but steadily slip.

Modern-day New York City was established on the island of Manhattan by Dutch settlers in 1625. It was called New Amsterdam and was the capital of the Dutch North American empire, called New Netherland. It was ceded to the English in 1667 after it had been captured by English forces a few years earlier. The English settlers renamed it New York.

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who made a famous voyage, on behalf of the Spanish crown, around the tip of South America (through the Strait of Magellan) and across the Pacific Ocean. This voyage was the first to successfully circumnavigate the earth, but, unfortunately for Magellan, he was killed in battle in the Philippines and thus did not complete the circumnavigation personally.

Bartolomeu Dias was a Portuguese explorer who, in 1488, became the first European known to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope (at the tip of South Africa) and reached the Indian Ocean. His voyage was part of the early era of European exploration and colonialism that established Portugal as a leading maritime empire.