In social studies, what does the term cultural diffusion describe?

Merchants and monks traveled the overland Silk Roads between South Asia, Central Asia, and China. Which belief system spread from South Asia into China along those routes?

Over many centuries, farming peoples moved out of West Central Africa into eastern and southern Africa. Which cultural trait spread across that huge area with them?

The armies of Alexander the Great conquered lands stretching from Egypt to the Indus River, and soldiers and settlers stayed in the many cities he founded there. What spread through those cities?

The Mauryan ruler Ashoka supported Buddhism and sent teachers to lands outside his empire in South Asia. What was one result of sending them?

Roman engineers built stone arches and aqueducts in cities across the empire, from North Africa to Britain. What best explains why such similar structures appear so far apart?

English words such as algebra, cotton, and sugar entered the language from Arabic. What does this borrowing indicate about English and Arabic speakers?

Phoenician traders sailing the Mediterranean carried their alphabet to Greek ports. How did the Greeks use what they received?

Japanese scribes adopted Chinese characters for writing and later developed extra symbols for Japanese syllables. What pattern of cultural diffusion does this illustrate?

Papermaking was invented in China and later became common in Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and then Europe. What carried this technology westward?

Swahili, spoken on the East African coast, contains many Arabic loanwords. What explains those words?

Archaeologists have uncovered Roman coins at ancient port sites in southern India. What claim does this evidence support?

A wide desert and a high mountain range separate two societies, and few travelers cross either one. What effect do these physical features usually have on cultural diffusion?

Two societies must speak the same language before cultural traits can spread between them.

The European lute looks much like the ud, an instrument played in Southwest Asia and North Africa, and its name comes from the Arabic word for the ud. What does this best show?

A family moves from one country to another and keeps cooking its home dishes and marking its holidays. Neighbors take up the dishes and join the holiday. Which process of cultural diffusion carried these traits?

An army conquers a neighboring region and occupies it for a hundred years. What do occupations like this often spread into the conquered region?

A society adopts another society's system of written law codes and courts. Which kind of cultural trait has spread in that case?

During the 1200s and 1300s the Mongol empires controlled much of the overland route across Eurasia, and travel along it grew safer. What effect did this have on cultural diffusion?

Along with silk, spices, and new ideas, what harmful thing traveled the long-distance trade routes of Eurasia in the 1300s and killed millions of people in the regions it reached?