Era 4'3 Regional Expectation AFRICA Prehistory to 1500

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Era 4.3Regional Expectation AFRICAPrehistory to
1500

• Day Two, Session 2B
• Craig Benjamin

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To Include

• Part One Physical and Cultural Environment
• Part Two Peopling of Africa and the Bantu
  Dispersion
• Part Three History of Northeast and Northwest
  Africa
• Part Four History of West and East Central
  Africa
• Part Five Kingdoms of Central and Southern
  Africa

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PART ONE The Physical and Cultural Environment
-Savanna

• Diverse environment mountains, deserts, tropical
  jungle and grassy plains (savanna)
• Savanna the most hospitable for human habitation,
  trade and agriculture
• Northern savanna (Sudan) stretches across Africa
  continent just south of the Sahara dessert
• Savanna also in East and Southern Africa

www.snaithprimary.eril
Sahara
Mt Kenya
www.highadventure
www.teachersfirst.com
Serengeti
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Savannah of East Africa the Serengeti Plain
www.savannahcamps.com
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Rain Forest

• Along the equator is dense tropical rain forest
• The jungle occupies 7 of Africa
• Jungle soils are poor (erosion, leaching of
  nutrients, lack of humus)
• Rain forest unhealthy disease-carrying
  mosquitoes (malaria and yellow fever) and tsetse
  flies (sleeping sickness)

photo2.si.edu/turtles
West African Rain Forest
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Early AgricultureSlash and Burn
esa21.kennesaw.edu

• Environment dictated patterns of foraging or
  farming
• i.e. what crops would grow in particular areas,
  and how to manage the environment
• Slash and burn agriculture more common,
  particularly in the rain forests
• Farmers clear and fertilize land, farm it for a
  couple of years then move on and start the cycle
  somewhere else
• Rain forest crops included root foods (yam and
  cassava)
• Savanna crops cereals (sorghum and millet)

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Cultural Patterns The Family

• Society based on extended family and descent
  patterns
• Most societies patrilineal (descent traced
  through fathers to sons and daughters in kinship
  groups)
• When a woman marries she then becomes part of her
  husbands kinship group
• But 15 of African societies are matrilineal
  (descent passed through the mothers side by
  mothers brother)
• Here women live with their kin and have more
  access to kinship resources

www.africaguide
Woman and child from Samboura Tribe, Kenya
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Marriage

• Strict rules for marriage, particularly outside
  of the clan
• Marriage accompanied by bridewealth (husband pays
  money, goods, services or cattle to wifes
  family)
• Earns rights for the husband in his new family
• If the wife is childless, her parents have to
  return to dowry
• Africans accepted polygyny (man could have more
  than one wife) because of high rates of infant
  mortality and the desire to express status

Part of a traditional marriage ceremony in
modern-day Zaire
www.museums.org.za
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Lineage

• Family the foundation for society people trace
  their lineage to a common ancestor
• Lineages and clans the basis for defense, work,
  land rights, bridewealth and religion
• Also basis for political structures, up to the
  largest kingdoms
• In small societies authority in the hands of
  senior lineages
• Community value system based on family unity and
  communal harmony
• Land held in trust by the entire community

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African Chiefs Kenyan and Nigerian
www.african.cam.ac.uk
sherry.free.fr/ frhome.html

• Larger societies evolved into chiefdoms and
  kingdoms with elaborate hierarchies,
  bureaucracies and long-distance trade
• Kingdoms dominated by one lineage rulers
  (combining sacred and secular power) were
  hereditary

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Women and Power

• Women often officials and advisors, religious
  leaders, soldiers and sometimes supreme rulers
• The kings wife (queen), and his mother and
  sisters often the powers behind the throne
• In Abomey each wife represented the interest of
  one of the kingdoms lineages
• Queen mother looked after the kings interests
  also a mediator who served as a unifying presence

Dahomey queen
www.nypl.org
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Work
Zairian market
www.megapasec.com

• Specific tasks determined by sex and age
• Women ran the homestead, cultivated fields,
  prepared food and ran markets
• Men built houses, roads and paths, cleared
  fields, tended livestock, hunted and conducted
  long-distance trade
• Men were also usually responsible for technology
  (iron-working, blacksmithing etc) but in some
  communities women were the smelters

19th C Print South African Cattle Herders
oldcharts.com/ dajargoat
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Religion

• Religion (polytheistic) an integral part of day
  to day life
• High creator god remote from everyday affairs
  people more directly engaged with lesser
  divinities
• E.g. gods of nature and ancestral spirits who
  could intercede between humans and the high god
• Leaders had authority to approach ancestor
  spirits (thus legitimizing their leadership)
• Disasters explained because gods were unhappy
  with humans
• Rituals and sacrifices carried out to appease the
  gods
• Women served as priestesses, healers, rain-makers
  and spirit-mediums

www.african-dreams
Gods of the Ashanti people
Priestess, Ghana
www.cnmat.berkeley.edu
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Art and Craft

• Africans skilled artists sculpture in wood,
  ivory and soapstone
• Statues also shaped in baked clay, and then cast
  in bronze also cire perdue
• The sculpture of Benin (Nigeria) particularly
  renowned, but artistic traditions are rich and
  varied throughout Africa

www.insideafricanart
Nigerian (Benin) Bronze Figurines of Spirit
Guardians
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PART TWO The Peopling of Africa Paleolithic
Lifeways

• Early Africans were stone age hunter gatherers
• Male hunters used bows and arrows with stone
  barbs and poisons
• Women foraged wild plants (fruits, nuts, melons,
  roots and tubers)
• Even after the arrival of agriculture, many
  groups continued foraging
• Nile Valley and Lake Chad peoples fished the
  rivers and lakes
• Parts of the Sahara were once savanna
• C. 3000 BCE a prolonged dry spell led to
  desertification (a stimulus to agriculture?)

www.raid.ca.za
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Agriculture

• Domestication began independently in four regions
  highlands of Ethiopia central Sudan West
  African savanna West African forests
• Farmers grew crops adapted to each environment
• C. 3000 BCE farmers in the Ethiopian highlands
  cultivated grains, millets, sesame and mustard
• Forest farmers grew banana and coffee in West
  Africa they grew oil palms, peas and yams
• C. 1000 BCE wheat and barley imported in from SW
  Asia
• Sudanese grew sorghum, millet, rice, peas and
  nuts at least 4000 BCE
• Farmers domesticated livestock from 8000 BCE
• Cattle, sheep, goats and pigs were introduced
  from SW Asia

Millet www. Exoticwingsandthings.com
Yams www2.wbgh.org
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Ironworking
Ruins of Meroe (Sudan) today lah.ru.fotoart.megali
th

• Iron technology reached sub-Saharan Africa from
  Egypt in the 7th C BCE and spread across the
  Sahara with the Berbers
• Important early ironworking center at Meroe in
  Kush (huge iron slag heaps)
• Meroes ironworks tools and weapons well known by
  the 4th Century BCE, the key to Kushs success
• At Nok (Nigeria) evidence of ironworking from
  1000-500 BCE
• Nok produced steel with a carbon content equal to
  the iron of Egypt and Rome

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Ironworking and Society

• Ironworking done in the dry months then exchanged
  for food and animals
• Ironworkers had wealth and high status (magical
  powers?)
• Ironworking increased agricultural productivity
  by replacing stone tools with metal ones
  (clearing of thicker jungle, more efficient
  hunting and warfare)
• Ironworking contributed to population growth,
  craft specialization, trade, and more
  sophisticated social and economic structures
• Ironworking also a factor in the migration of the
  Bantu

Iron Mask from Meroe 4th Century
BCE witcombe.sbc.e
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The Bantu Dispersion

• Languages and cultures of many African societies
  strikingly similar all descended from a common
  society (or Bantu people)
• The original Bantu homeland near the present
  Cameroon/ Nigerian border reasons for their
  migration unclear
• Perhaps environmental change (climate drying up)?
• Or did iron tools gave the Bantu the ability to
  clear thicker vegetation in the forests (but they
  didnt use iron until after the migrations had
  begun)

Bantu peoples in Capetown today www.capetown.af
Original home of the Bantu www.africa-ata.org
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Migration
lodges.safari.co.za
Lake Victoria, Zambia
Victoria Falls, Zambezi River www.2ws.co.uk

• Bantu had common lifestyles (scattered homesteads
  and villages, farmed root crops, foraged and
  fished)
• C. 500 BCE one stream of Bantu moved south and
  settled in rainforests of Angola and Namibia,
  growing root crops and palm trees
• Another stream settled around Lake Victorian in
  East Africa, growing cereals and herding animals
• Bantu adopted slash and burn agriculture (had to
  keep moving)
• So Bantu kept migrating southwards, along the
  Congo River to Zambia, and crossing the Zambezi
  and Limpopo Rivers by the 4th Century CE

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Bantu Dispersion Map
www.history.umn.edu
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Bananas

• Adopted ironworking and new food crops,
  particularly the banana (brought to Africa by
  Malaysian and Polynesian sailors thousands of
  years earlier)
• Bananas grew abundantly, required little labor or
  jungle clearing, and did not attract mosquitoes
• Some Bantu remained foragers
• Much intermingling between the migrants and the
  resident cultures

www.raingod.com
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PART THREE Northeast and Northwest Africa -
ETHIOPIA

• Ethiopia home to some of Africas oldest and most
  enduring cultures a source to trade goods for
  thousands of years before the first kingdoms
  emerged
• Ancient Egyptians traded for herbs, spices, gold
  and animals from the 5th Dynasty on
• Arabian traders from Saba established a trading
  settlement on the Eritrean coast c. 800 BCE
  (Daamat)
• Sabaeans traded ivory and farmed
• Their language (Geez) became the elite language

www.bibleca.islam
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Aksum

• By 1 CE Aksum was dominating Red Sea trade ties
  with Ptolemaic Egypt and Rome, and Sri Lanka and
  India (using the monsoonal trade winds)
• Aksum provided Ptolemies with war elephants to
  use against Babylon also exported exotic goods
  and slaves in exchange for cloth, glass and wine
• By the 4th Century CE Aksum at its zenith - the
  dominant trading power of the Red Sea, issuing
  its own coins

www.unesco.org/.../ethiopia
4th century monumental stelae, Aksum
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Christianity

• Aksums King Ezana (320-350) converted to
  Christianity at about the same time as
  Constantine
• Eventually the head of the Ethiopian church was
  chosen by Coptic church leaders in Egypt
• Greek became the court language, but Geez the
  language of the church centuries later Syrian
  monks converted much of the rural population

Coptic Christian Church in Aksum
today www.aksum2006.com
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The Zagwe and Solomids

• 615 Aksum gave refuge to
• followers of Muhammad -
• the beginning of Islamic
• expansion into East Africa
• By 8th Century Islamic groups had replaced Aksum
  as a major trading force rulers migrated to the
  interior and converted Cushitic peoples
• A new nobility (the Zagwe) stressed continuity
  with Aksum
• Emperor Lalibela constructed 11 cathedrals hewn
  into the rock
• Zagwe replaced by the Solomids in 1270, who
  campaigned against Muslims on the coast
• Solomids gained control over the slave and ivory
  trade

Rock Cathedral of Lalibela
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One of the 11 rock cathedrals of Lalibela
www.rucksachsen.de/Touren/ fahrrad
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The Ethiopian Empire

• All land owned by the emperor, who granting fiefs
  (gults) to loyal nobles
• No fixed capital - a mobile court moved around
  the empire
• Greatest ruler was Zara Yakob (1424-1468) his
  subjects had to avert their eyes on penalty of
  death
• Granted church estates and appointed Bishops, so
  the church supported his expansion
• His successors could not hold the empire
  together, and Ethiopia declined in the 16th C

Zara Yakob
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EMPIRES OF THE WESTERN SUDAN
www.metmuseum.org

• Western Sudan benefited from long-distance
  trans-Saharan trade routes from the Mediterranean
• Berbers mixed with older traders on the Niger
  River
• They monopolized trade in gold and salt, leading
  to the emergence of wealthy West African kingdoms
• Agriculture practiced along the Niger from the
  9th Century no conflict between communities
• Between 600 and 300 BCE walls suggest conflict
  with Berbers
• Important early center for trade, fishing and
  agriculture in the Niger Delta was Jenne-jeno
  (from c. 250 BCE)

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Crossing the Sahara

• Sahara crossed by several trade routes
  (established by Carthage and Rome from 1000 BCE)
• One route (suitable for horse and ox-drawn
  chariots) stretched south from Libya and Tunisia
  another connected Morocco with Mauritania
• Trade declined with the collapse of Rome, then
  revived by the Byzantines and Arabs
• The camel (introduced c. 100 BCE) became the main
  beast of burden, carrying loads of up to 300
  pounds without water
• But slow (20 30 miles a day) - took two months
  to cross the Sahara

www.lost-oasis.org
www.travelphoto.co.uk
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GHANA

• The earliest kingdom in the Sudan emerged in the
  4th Century CE, named after its legendary
  war-chief Ghana
• By 800 CE Ghana a powerful kingdom, based on
  agriculture and trade with the Mediterranean
• King monopolized gold trade (had a nugget big
  enough to tether his horse to)!
• Salt also valuable for diets and preserving
• The Sahara had large salt deposits (Taghaza)
• Salt quarried in 200lb slabs carried by camels to
  trading centers like Timbuktu

14th Century mosque, Timbuktu www.rohophoto.com
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Slaves

• Ghana also traded slaves (servants, laborers,
  porters, traders and soldiers)
• Household slaves mainly women slave women
  forced to marry because the man did not have to
  pay bridewealth
• Slaves captured in raids on weaker communities
  then transported in caravans and exchanged for
  horses and salt
• Greatest demand came from North African
  Mediterranean states slaves sold in Libya traded
  on to the eastern Mediterranean
• 8th - early 20th Century
• 4 million slaves taken 1200
• miles across the Sahara desert
• many died en route

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Slave Trade
www.wwnorton.com/
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Ghana at its Peak

• Ghana in 1067 had an army of 200,000 warriors
  (wearing chain mail)
• Divine king appointed all officials and was the
  supreme judge surrounded by retainers carrying
  gold swords, horses with gold blankets, and dogs
  with gold collars!
• After 1076 Ghana weakened by attacks from the
  Berbers, and lost its dominance of gold trade

Modern Ghanian (and baby) panning for gold
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MALI
www.eth.mpg.de/people
Mining for gold in Mali today

• Ghanaian rule eventually replaced by the Malinke
  clan in 1235
• Malinke created a vast empire known as Mali,
  which regained control of the desert gold mines
  and trade
• When gold replaced silver as the man currency of
  Europe in 1252, Mali became Europes leading
  supplier, exporting several tons of gold annually

Ancient gold coins from Mali www.thebritishmuseum.
co.uk
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Mansa Musa

• Mali at its peak under Mansa Musa (1307-1337)
  renowned throughout Africa, Asia and Europe
  because of Mali trade with the Mediterranean and
  Middle East
• State well organized, multicultural, administered
  by governors and ministries
• Islam a unifying element amongst the elite
  (commoners remained loyal to local gods)
• After Musas death tributary states demanded
  independence, including the Songhai

Mansa Musa in Egypt 14th Century
Illustration www.mrdowling.com
Musa was a devout Muslim who undertook a
pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 He spent so much gold
in Egypt en route that the value of gold in the
country plummeted!
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The Songhai

• 1464-1528 Songhai the largest of all the Sudanese
  empires
• Under Kings Sunni Ali (1464-1492) and Askia
  Muhammad (1493-1528) they captured most of Mali,
  including the great cities of Timbuktu and
  Jenne-jeno
• Empire administered by a bureaucracy
  professional army included horsemen in chain-mail
  armor and a navy of Niger River canoes
• Songhai a center for Islamic scholarship (mosque
  at Timbuktu famous throughout the Islamic world)
• Askia Muhammad also made a pilgrimage to Mecca
• Songhai eventually invaded by Moroccans, who used
  firearms to overcome the spears, bows and arrows
  of the Songhai army

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West African Forest Kingdoms

• In the West African forests small communities
  practiced basic agriculture some grew into
  substantial kingdoms
• Yoruba city-state (11th C. CE)
• Edo kingdom in Benin (15th C.) - trade and
  fishing
• 14th C. kingdom of Oyo - wealth based on tolls
  collected from traders, plus large slave-labor
  force
• All the forest states renowned for their art,
  particularly sculpture in bronze, copper, brass
  and terracotta

Fishermen in Benin today
www.kmtspace.com
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PART FOUR City-States of East Africa

• East African (Swahili) Coast part of an extensive
  trading network that linked Africa with the Near
  East, India and East Asia
• But coastal trade did not have impact on the
  interior until the 19th Century
• Cultural development of East African coast linked
  to the arrival of Bantu (100 BCE - 300 CE)
• Language was a Bantu derivation - Swahili from
  the Arabic sawahil coast
• Swahili grew crops and fished
• Eventually their traders linked up with merchants
  from the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf

Saadani National Park, Swahili Coast, Tanzania
www.africaguide.com
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East African Trade

• Periplus (c. 100 CE) names several trading towns
  on the Swahili coast trading with Arabia
• Rhapta exported ivory, rhinoceros horn and
  tortoise shell imported iron tools and weapons,
  cloth, glass and grain
• Indian Ocean trade thrived between 300 and
• 1000, stimulated by the arrival of Muslim
  merchants
• Arab dhows made Indian Ocean trade feasible
  they were fast and could carry up to 200 tons of
  goods
• Sailors used the monsoon winds sailed southwest
  between November and March, and northeast between
  April and October each crossing took about a
  month

www-robotics.usc.edu
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Swahili Civilization
Modern swahili women

• Swahili civilization flourished 1000 1500
  hundreds of city-states emerged along the
  1800-mile coast from Mogadishu in the north to
  Sofala in the south
• Largest had deep harbors and linked with internal
  trade routes, becoming regional centers that
  thrived for centuries
• Each too commercially competitive to merge into a
  single empire - operated independently and
  relatively peacefully until the Portuguese
  arrived in the 16th Century
• Government headed by kings or sultans, with the
  throne passing to one of the head queens brothers

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Swahili Art and Architecture

• Swahili artists and architects borrowed from the
  Middle East tradition - created beautiful cities
  with palaces, mansions, mosques, elaborate
  walkways and public fountains
• Palace at Kilwa, built on the edge of a cliff
  above the ocean, contained 100 rooms and an
  octagonal bathing pool in one of its many
  courtyards

www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww
Ruins of the Great Palace at Kilwa
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Gold, Slaves and the Chinese

• West Asia the worlds major commercial center
  Swahili cities joined in the trade networks of
  three continents
• Three cities Kilwa, Pate and Mogadishu minted
  copper and silver coins to facilitate trade
• Kilwa (with access to the gold mines of Zimbabwe)
  a major gold-exporter until gold began to arrive
  in Europe from the Americas
• Swahili traders exported ivory and slaves
  (domestic servants in India, or laborers in Iraq)
• Trading expeditions arrived from China - a fleet
  under Admiral Zheng He in the 1400s
• He brought Chinese porcelain, silk and lacquer
  ware, and exchanged them for ivory, incense and
  exotic animals
• Took back African envoys who stayed at the
  Chinese court for years

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The Voyages of Admiral Zheng He
www.pbs.org
www.unce.edu
www.unce.edu
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PART FIVE Kingdoms of Central and Southern
Africa

• By the 3rd century CE most of central and
  southern Africa also colonized by migrating Bantu
  peoples
• Lived as farmers in homesteads and villages,
  tending cereal crops and animal herds
• From 1000 CE some of these grew into states with
  ruling elites who became wealthy through
  accumulating cattle
• Cattle were used as bridewealth and as a means of
  building broader political networks by exchange
  they also financed regional trade that extended
  to the Swahili networks

www.african-art-work
Zulu Cattle, South Africa
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States and Stone

• New states built walls, homes, palaces and
  religious centers from stone archaeologists have
  discovered 150 centers
• The rulers of Mapungubwe lived in stone palaces
  on the hilltops, commoners in the valleys below
• Elites maintained their wealth by controlling
  cattle herds and trade in metals, gold and ivory,
  which fed into East African trade

The cliff-top site of the ruins of Mapungubwe
www.africaart.com
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Great Zimbabwe (1290-1450)

• Successor was Great Zimbabwe (houses of stone)
  on a fertile plateau north of the Limpopo River
• Powerful and wealthy, built a huge complex 60
  acres (pop 18,000)
• Great Enclosure (royal palace) had walls 12 feet
  thick and 20 feet high built without mortar
• Kings key advisors all women (wives and sisters)
  who practiced ritual medicine to protect his well
  being
• Elites kept vast cattle herds and controlled the
  gold trade (gold mined by women and children)
• Great Zimbabwe collapsed suddenly in 1450,
  perhaps because of environmental degradation

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Great Zimbabwe
tlc.ousd.k12.ca.us/library
Walls of the Great Enclosure
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Mutapa and Kongo
Boatman on the Congo River
www.pulitzer.org

• A successor to Great Zimbabwe was the kingdom of
  Mutapa south of the Zambezi River
• By 1500 the king controlled a vast part of the
  Zimbabwe Plateau
• Another important state was that of the Kongo (at
  the mouth of the Congo River in west central
  Africa)
• When Portuguese arrived in the late 15th Century
  Kongo was a sophisticated state, led by a king
  with a professional army and provincial
  administrators

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Conclusion

• By 1500 Africa home for a diverse range of
  states, but most Africans still lived as hunters
  and farmers
• Powerful states emerged all over Africa Egypt,
  Kush, Aksum, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Benin, Great
  Zimbabwe
• African states unique and home grown, but
  influenced by trade contacts with Europe, the
  Indian Ocean, Asia and the Muslim world
• Many Africans remained faithful to their ancient
  religions, but others adopted Christianity and
  Islam, which altered African culture