Conquest of Madagascar

Edited by Sander - 19-Oct-2007 at 06:08

Edited by Sander - 22-Oct-2007 at 00:22

Originally posted by jdalton That the Bantu spread across the southern half of Africa because of their superior technology (specifically ironworking and farming) and pushed out or assimilated the hunter-gatherers previously living there is one of the most basic assumptions of pre-colonial African history. I've never seen it once questioned. There is ample archaeological and cultural evidence but I'm more familiar with the linguistic evidence. The Bantu languages are all very much related, and moreover the languages get more similar and less diverse as you move further from Nigeria. There are hundreds of languages (Bantu and non-Bantu) in Nigeria and only about 30 in Mozambique (all Bantu and all the same family within that heading). Google the words Bantu and history and you will no doubt find the Bantu expansion front and centre. There is still some uncertainty about who first started using iron south of the Sahara and why, but everyone agrees it happened in either West Africa or just south of Nubia and that it happened before the year 1. I'll start a thread on African iron some day. I'm not saying that the Indonesians of Madagascar had no impact on the African mainland. I seem to remember reading somewhere about Asian crops spreading across Africa and adding to the diet of the entire continent? I'll see if I can find where I read that. In the meantime I'm only trying to defend the innovations that were clearly African. You might as well claim that the Mayans learned to write from the Spanish as say that the Bantu leaned to smelt iron from Indonesians. Sander, I continue to doubt your Arabian source. It claims, for example, that African slaves were brought to China because they were "needed." But China hasn't had slavery as an institution since before Confucius, and he died in 479 BCE.

Originally posted by pinguin Sure fellow?   After all, a branch of the Austronesians -the polynesians- conquered the Pacific, which represent almost half of the world. As far as I know, Arabs just trade the traditional routes from Africa up to India.   With respect to iron, it may be that Bantues had it before Indonesians in Madagascar... however, the South East Asian influence is clear in everything else, particularly in musical instruments and game board.

Originally posted by andrew   Africa: As the rest of near Middle Eastern tribes picked up on iron making they started to conquer other settlements. The Hyksos conquered Egypt and introduced iron making to the Egyptians. Although the Egyptians continued to use bronze, for some odd reason, the Nubians mass produced iron making. At Meroe, ancient Nubian capital, they produced iron at a large scale which inevitably spread along East Africa and branched to West Africa.

You guys are giving me sources of things from the 15th and 16th centuries well after the Arabs started their trans-Pacific trade between East and West. Also the picture pinquin had with the Arab ship is so awful I can't explain considering the Phoenicians and Egyptians had triremes since BC. The Arabs are great feritilizers of other people's cutlures they took shipbuilding from the Persians, Egyptians, Aegeans, and Phoenicians and picked up upon it. The Phoenicians mapped out the constellations well before anyone else did and traveled as far north as England in the stormy Atlantic.

Edited by andrew - 23-Oct-2007 at 11:38

Originally posted by pinguin Arab ships of the times of Simbad the Sailor were not better than that boat. Arab ships were famous for its problems of constrution. In other words, you have to be couragious just to get in them. They were tide together by ropes, rather than by pegs of nails like other people did. Norse ships of the Middle Ages were a lot more advanced that the average arab cargo ship. Indonesians and Polynesians are known to be great sailors and have great tech since ancient times.

Originally posted by pinguin get info about shipbuilding in times of the arabs and compare with polynesian designs. Easy.

Originally posted by pinguin I am just saying Polynesian and Indonesian/Javanese ships (related people) were superior than Egyptians, Phoenicians et all.

Originally posted by pinguin With respect to iron, it may be that Bantues had it before Indonesians in Madagascar... however, the South East Asian influence is clear in everything else, particularly in musical instruments and game board.

I am not disputing your claim that Madagascarans influenced the culture of East Africans. Why not? Everybody else influenced them- the Arabs, Indians, even China visited East Africa. And I've looked it up now, Indonesian/Madagascarans did introduce bananas and Asian yams into Africa and they have been grown there ever since. Just don't try to take away one of SS Africa's most brilliant episodes, the development of ironworking and the Bantu expansion.

As for evidence (not proof, there is no proof) that West Africans either developed ironworking independently or saw other people using it (Hyksos? Carthaginians?) and then developed their own method to manufacture it rather than having some outsider teach them, how about this...

The origins of ironworking in sub-Saharan Africa soon after 1000 B.C. are still unclear. That early date is suspiciously close to dates for the arrival of Near Eastern ironworking techniques in Carthage, on the North African coast. Hence historians often assume that knowledge of metallurgy reached sub-Saharan Africa from the north. On the other hand, copper smelting had been going on in the West African Sahara and Sahel since at least 2000 B.C. That could have been the precursor to an independent African discovery of iron metallurgy. Strengthening that hypothesis, the iron-smelting techniques of smiths in sub-Saharan Africa were so different from those of the Mediterranean as to suggest independent development: African smiths discovered how to produce high temperatures in their village furnaces and manufacture steel over 2000 years before the Bessemer furnaces of 19th-century Europe and America.

-from "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond

China had cast iron from an early date and Japan had steel (I'm not sure when), but did Indonesia have steel in 1 AD? Africa did.