ANCIENT AFRICA

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ANCIENT AFRICA
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The Land and Its People

• Second largest continent behind Asia
• 12 million square miles
• Every type of environment there- tropical rain
  forests, grasslands, vast deserts, snowy mountain
  ridges
• Earliest known humans originated in Africa

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• More than 1000 languages spoken there by hundreds
  of various ethnic groups with unique cultures and
  histories.
• 5 thousand years ago the worlds earliest
  civilizations developed in Egypt.
• The Nile was the center of trade as it was
  located at the juncture between Europe, and Asia
• People started using camels to transport goods
  which expanded Africas trade network.

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• The ancient Egyptians was one of the worlds
  longest-lasting civilizations.
• Ships used the Nile to transport
• people and merchandise.
• Egyptians had their own way of
• writing which allowed them to
• keep records.

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Egyptian Social Classes

• Farmers and workers at the bottom
• Merchants and craft workers in the middle
• Landowners, government officials, scribes and
  priests at the top
• Unlike other societies,
• those who were talented
• were able to rise through
• the classes

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South of the Sahara

• People lived in villages and grew their food on
  small plots nearby
• Trade created some sizable towns- including
  Timbukto- which flourished as a seat of learning
  as well as a commercial center
• Trade gave rise to empires

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• Axum- which is now Ethiopia, gained fame around
  300 B.C. as the greatest trade center of
  northeastern Africa
• Ghana, was the intermediary between salt traders
  in the north and gold and ivory producers in the
  south. Flourished between the 9th-10th centuries
  A.D.
• Songhai, located in what
• is now Mali and parts of
• Niger and Nigeria,
• controlled the Saharan
• trade routes between
• 15th-16th centuries A.D.

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Traditions and Beliefs

• Belief in the Afterlife- careful preparations
  were made for their time after Earth life
• Royal families preserved their bodies as mummies
• Burial places had pictures of everything they
  might need in the afterlife
• Primary responsibility for the king was to ensure
  good fortune for his people

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• Belief in gods that represented natural forces or
  animals, such as Re, the sun god the
  falcon-headed Horus the cat-headed Baset.
• Diversity in Africa resulted in a mixture of
  religious systems- each with their own gods,
  shrines, and ceremonies
• Most recognized a supreme god as well as many
  lesser gods and spirits.

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• Christianity was the first foreign-born religion
  to take hold in Africa.
• The conquest of northern Africa by Arab Muslims,
  which began in A.D. 639, reduced the number of
  Christians.
• Coptic Church of Egypt and the Ethiopian
  Christian Church, both with very distinctive
  forms of worship, continue to survive even today.
  
• The influence of Islam was brought about through
  trade and conquest

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• Africans both north and south created magnificent
  and expressive visual art for a variety of
  reasons
• Religious Art
• Ceremonial Art
• Everyday Art
• Very diverse forms
• and materials used

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• Ancient Egyptians were among the worlds greatest
  architects-
• No trees to build with so they mastered the use
  of stone, created pillared temples as well as the
  famous pyramids
• Perhaps the worlds first tourists were those
  that came from Greece and Mesopotamia to see the
  wonders in Egypt
• Great palaces covered several acres of ground.

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Entertainment

• Religious and ceremonial dances and music
• Drum was the most important African instrument-
  some made out of animal skins, others out of
  hollowed logs
• Dancers used their performance movements in
  everyday life and interpreted the polyrhythm of
  the drums

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• In West Africa and some parts of central Africa,
  masked dances were a major part of ceremonial
  life. Occurred on/for
• Events in the agricultural year
• Birth, adulthood, marriage death
• Secret societies
• Curing the sick
• Performance were public but only dancers could
  see the masks outside of performance

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• Egyptian hieroglyphics combined pictures and
  symbols to represent sounds
• Both carved in stone and written on paper- made
  by pounding papyrus together
• Only the upper classes in ancient Egypt could
  read
• Writing was done by scribes- associated with the
  royal courts and temples

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• Most African languages were not written down
  until the arrival of Arabic and Roman scripts.
• Not including European languages introduced by
  colonizers, African languages can be grouped into
  4 major language families
• Afro-Asiatic (Northeast Africa)
• Niger-Congo (Northwest Africa)
• Nilo-Saharan (north central Africa)
• Khoisan (click-languages spoken in the far south)

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Things Fall Apart

• By Chinua Achebe Nigerian author
• One of the first African novels written in
  English to receive global critical acclaim
• Title of the novel comes from William Butler
  Yeats poem The Second Coming

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• Novel depicts the life of Okonkwo, who is a local
  leader and known wrestling champion in Umuofia (a
  fictional village in Nigeria) inhabited by the
  Igbo.
• It focuses on his 3 wives, his 8 children, and
  the influence of British colonialism and
  Christian missionaries on his traditional
  community during the late nineteenth century.