The Aztec Triple Alliance, centered at the island capital of Tenochtitlan, dominated central Mexico through a tributary empire with sophisticated agriculture (chinampas), a complex calendar system, monumental architecture, and mandatory education for both sexes.
The Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, stretching roughly 4,000 km along the Andes with an extraordinary road network, terraced agriculture, and a sophisticated administrative system that used quipu (knotted strings) for record-keeping instead of writing.
The Kingdom of Kush in modern Sudan was a major Nile Valley civilization that conquered and ruled Egypt as the 25th Dynasty (c. 747-656 BCE), and later developed the distinctive Meroitic culture with its own writing system, iron industry, and pyramid tradition.
A powerful maritime thalassocracy based in Sumatra that controlled the Strait of Malacca, dominating Southeast Asian trade and spreading Mahayana Buddhism across the region for over 700 years.
The Mali Empire was one of the largest and wealthiest empires in West African history, famed for Mansa Musa, whose 1324 hajj to Mecca distributed so much gold that it reportedly depressed gold prices across the Mediterranean for years.
The Songhai Empire succeeded Mali as the largest empire in West African history, controlling trans-Saharan trade routes and making Timbuktu's Sankore University a renowned center of Islamic scholarship.