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I am really happy to see some nice information about Sudan. Some years ago I got a bit angry at racism in myself and around me, and I did a little research on A
by JPLeRouzic 10y ago
I am really happy to see some nice information about Sudan.
Some years ago I got a bit angry at racism in myself and around me, and I did a little research on Africa History.
I was deeply disturbed to understand that concepts that were deeply engraved in me as Africa as a "terra nulla", without history, without writing systems or even buildings, were huge lies.
Sudan, Ethiopia and Erythrea have a rich history which goes thousands years back linking Egypt, the middle east to India. Later it was a milestone on the road from the Roman empire to India.
Most of what we call as Egyptian history is in fact a mix of Lybian, Assyrian, Egyptian and Nubian (Sudanese) history.
One thing that is not mentioned is that Sudan and Ethiopia have their own writing system [0].
I suggest also to have a look at Jos Plateau (Nigeria) prehistory which goes back hundred of thousand years. Jos Plateau is also probably one of the areas at the origin of the great Bantu migration. And how those people mastered Iron metallurgy and also to the rice invention in the mega lake Chad area where was found the most ancient boat in the world.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meroitic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meroitic_alphabet
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- budu3 10y agoI just wanted to add a few more African civilizations, namely: Great Zimbabwe[0], Axum[1], Asante Kingdom [2] Swahili Kingdoms[3] etc. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axum [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashanti_Empire [3]http://richard-hooker.com/sites/worldcultures/CIVAFRCA/SWAHILI.HTM http://richard-hooker.com/sites/worldcultures/CIVAFRCA/SWAHI...
- bassislife 10y agoAdding to the list the very important Kanem-Bornou Empire and Bagirmi Kingdom.
- halflings 10y agoAnd for North Africa, the Amazigh (called "Berbers"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berbers
- kej 10y agoNeeds more west Africa! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire The Mali Empire was so wealthy that Musa I's pilgrimage to Mecca destabilized the gold market of the eastern Mediterranean.
- vidarh 10y agoAnd the Benin empire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Empire Not so large, but noteworthy for the admiration Europeans showed for Benin City / Edo, and for its centuries of history of trading extensively with Europe (and even employing European mercenaries to assist in attacks on surrounding states). E.g. a Dutch account from the 17th century (from the Wikipedia link): > The king's palace or court is a square, and is as large as the town of Haarlem and entirely surrounded by a special wall, like that which encircles the town. It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses, and apartments of the courtiers, and comprises beautiful and long square galleries, about as large as the Exchange at Amsterdam, but one larger than another, resting on wooden pillars, from top to bottom covered with cast copper, on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and battles... The "special wall" was the Benin Earthworks[1]: > They extend for some 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometres) in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They cover 2,510 sq. miles (6,500 square kilometres) and were all dug by the Edo people. In all, they are four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet.[3] ... and it was destroyed by the British [2] as they conquered, burned and looted the city. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Expedition_of_1897 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Expedition_of_1897
- Ixiaus 10y agoI'm interested in what you've said here. Do you have a few books to recommend?
- JPLeRouzic 10y agoThere are many books by scholars but it is probably not what you are asking for. But you can read a lot as usual on the English Wikipedia [0]. I wrote recently a small book in French about this subject and had entertained the idea to write an augmented version in English in one or two years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Africa
- open-source-ux 10y agoNot books, but a few years ago the BBC broadcast a series of programmes called Lost Kingdoms of Africa. There were eight programmes in total. The very first programme was on Nubia. Unfortunately, the programmes are not available on iPlayer (the BBC's online TV and radio catch-up service, which isn't available to anyone outside the UK). But do a search on YouTube and you'll find all eight episodes. Here is a link to the BBC site that lists each episode http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bgnb1/episodes/guide http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bgnb1/episodes/guide
- anubisresources 10y agoFor East Africa you can't beat anything by Richard Reid. He also has a wonderful book on Africa from 1800 to the present you may enjoy: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1405132655/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2QIG0EDPSDL11&coliid=I3SWL60MZVNWJH https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1405132655/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_... I tend to only focus on E Africa when reading (since I live in Uganda), but Richard Reid's writings are the best for understanding the region's history.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI too was rather appalled at what passed for 'history' in the US school system about Africa. The continent is huge and arguably the birthplace of humans. And yet before my wife and I started homeschooling the children, their understanding of Africa was basically a ginormous jungle with some backwards cities along the coasts that existed by hunting animals to extinction and selling their body parts to foreigners. It is really depressing. I'd love to see at least a semester of 'history' for each of the 7 continents.
- sattoshi 10y agoLove it when such things are said, what semester would you replace with African history? I'm graduating next year in Canada which has a relatively short history and yet in history we didn't have much free time to plug other topics. Imagine doing this in a country with richer history (i.e. any European country)
- ChuckMcM 10y agoThe typical curriculum is 'American History' and 'World History'. But it seems to work well to cover each continent Antartica, Austrailia, Africa, China, India, S. America, N. America from 0 - present, and then cover in parallel when things crossed between continents. Doing it that way you come at the present with a bunch of different perspectives landing on the present day.
- MiddleEndian 10y agoIf I could truly change how History were taught, I would eliminate the rote memorization. Any exam with multiple choice questions about what year something occurred in is missing the point, in my opinion. Lots more material could be covered without this.
- jcranmer 10y agoHistory is hard to teach well; there is way too much of it to instruct in any amount of time. You could probably fill an entire semester with nothing other than the causes of World War I, for example. You thus need to ask yourself why you're teaching history in the first place. In my school system, we taught history from 4th grade onwards as state history, world history, US history (for 2 years), civics, skip (•), world history, US history, and finally US government. World history usually hits Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Crusades, Reformation, Renaissance, Age of Discovery, maybe ancient China and India. I'm also pretty sure we somehow got a tiny bit of Mesoamerica squashed in there (although it was little more than "here's Olmecs and Maya and Aztecs, and there was this thing called Inca in the Andes"). You'll notice that everything after the founding of the US is pretty much ignored in world history, so you'll learn that (barring electives) mostly when you talk about it in the context of US history. Even though I often complain that "world" history usually just means European history, you'll also notice that an awful lot of European history is skipped. No discussion of major political events like the War of Spanish Succession, the Thirty Years' War, or the Spanish Reconquista (except as maybe a throwaway like "Spain was recently united and reconquered from the Muslims when Christopher Columbus came to court..."). Given the problems with history already, I don't think there is much hope for being able to give African history any decent coverage. Quite frankly, history classes are mostly geared towards nationalism (hopefully more about positive national pride and not about jingoism and ideas of national superiority) and focusing on foundations of Western thought, neither of which really benefit from learning about Africa. That said, it's probably worth expanding the unit on colonization to include brief histories of the colonized polities prior to colonization. For example, touch on Timbuktu's and Djenné's roles as major centers of Islamic learning in the Early Modern. A full picture of Africa is probably impossible to impart, but effort should be taken to avoid thinking of it only as lands just waiting to be colonized by Europeans. • I went to a magnet school which had slightly different scheduling than other schools in the county. I think it's supposed to be normally two years of world history, but the course in 9th grade was replaced with a technology course and you'd be expected to grab another credit of history via some elective... which is how I got a course that was history of art, architecture, and technology.
- schoen 10y agoThe writing system you mentioned fell out of use centuries ago, but there's another East African writing system which has been in use for millennia and is still in wide use today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%27ez_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%27ez_script
- jcranmer 10y agoFrom the point of view of world history, there is a Eurasian core (which includes the Mediterranean and eastern coasts of Africa as well as the lower reaches of the Nile) that ends up driving most of known history. That is absolutely not to say that there is nothing of interest outside of this core region (far from it!), but rather that most world histories are going to ignore those regions simply for lack of time. Unfortunately, Africa gets a double-shafting here. During the main phases of European world exploration, Africa had the misfortune to be mostly explored in the era of greatest racism, when Africans were usually held with little more than contempt. In contrast, the racism that held during the exploration of the Americas mostly manifested in the idea of the "noble savage" which generally included some mild appreciation for native culture (particularly more distant). Since I found the extreme Eurocentrism of "world history" in school to be distasteful, most of my subsequent fascination of history has inclined to the Americas, and sometimes Africa, instead. The Bantu migration is one of the two impressive preliterate migrations we know (the other one being Austronesian colonization of the Pacific and Madagascar). Unfortunately, the reassessment of history, particularly in popular accounts, takes a long time. It's only been a few decades since historians started realizing that earlier historians were often racist egoists who didn't mind making stuff up to suit their agendas. Popular accounts still get the Medieval era wrong, despite it being most of what's shoved down students' faces (e.g., witch hunts didn't really start up until the Renaissance, and people were generally obsessed with cleanliness in the Middle Ages).