Joined: 27-Jul-2006
Location: United States
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 398
QuoteReplyTopic: Wheres africa been???? Posted: 05-Sep-2006 at 02:01
Originally posted by machine
Africans (Blacks) would have seen the Pyramids, they would have seen the North Africans (Arabs) advancing, they traded slaves etc yet they never had any type of civilization, there was no innovation, nor curiosity. I cant name any great Africans. I do realise that there were Black people present in Egypt because of slaver, and there would have been African tribal leaders who would have got quite wealthy from the slave trade.
But Where have they been?????????
Apart from a few Arab built structures with in Africa ive seen nothing from them.
Dude, please tell me this is some sort of sick and twisted joke where a comical drum beat kicks in and everyone laughs at how not dumb and racist you are because you're supposedly being sarcastic.
No notable figures in African History? Dude, where do you come from? Does Mansa Musa ring a friggin bell, at all? No African structures? Hello? The city of Timbuktu, the fortresses of Zimbabwe, the large cities of Nubia and Aksum, let alone the enormous steles built by the Axumites.
King Ezana's Stele in Aksum, King Ezana living in the 4th century AD
How about the Kingdoms of Egypt, Nubia, Kush, Aksum (dear God, please tell me you've heard about Aksum in ancient Ethiopia, which was one of Rome and Byzantium's most avid foreign trading powers), the great fortress builders of Zimbabwe, and the large, ancient kingdoms of Mali and Ghana (Malinke, Wagadou, and Songhai, the latter being the largest African kingdom in history). Dude, do the world a favor, buy a text book on general and well-known History and read it very, very hard, and then come back here and sound smart. Thanks.
I heard that if the Africans could have a calvary of rhinos, then they would win any battle hands down. Too bad the Africans couldnt tame them. Although i heard they tried
HEADLINE: Tomb reveals Ancient Egypt's humiliating secret
BYLINE: Dalya Alberge
Dalya Alberge reports on how details of crushing defeat by another Nile superpower were kept hidden.
Ancient Egyptians "airbrushed" out of history one of their most humiliating defeats in battle, academics believe.
In what the British Museum described as the discovery of a lifetime, a 3,500-year-old inscription shows that the Sudanese kingdom of Kush came close to destroying its northern neighbour.
The revelation is contained in 22 lines of sophisticated hieroglyphics deciphered by Egyptologists from the British Museum and Egypt after their discovery in February in a richly decorated tomb at El Kab, near Thebes, in Upper Egypt.
Vivian Davies, Keeper of the museum's Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, said: "In many ways this is the discovery of a lifetime, one that changes the textbooks. "We're absolutely staggered by it."
The inscription details previously unknown important battles unprecedented "since the time of the god" the beginning of time. Experts now believe that the humiliation of defeat was one that the Ancient Egyptians preferred to omit from their historical accounts.
Contemporary Egyptian descriptions had led historians to assume that the kingdom of Kush was a weak and barbaric neighbouring state for hundreds of years, although it boasted a complex society with vast resources of gold dominating the principal trade routes into the heart of Africa. It did eventually conquer Egypt, in the 8th century BC.
Mr. Davies, who headed the joint British Museum and Egyptian archaeological team, said: "Now it is clear that Kush was a superpower which had the capacity to invade Egypt. It was a huge invasion, one that stirred up the entire region, a momentous event that is previously undocumented.
"They swept over the mountains, over the Nile, without limit. This is the first time we've got evidence. Far from Egypt being the supreme power of the Nile Valley, clearly Kush was at that time.
"Had they stayed to occupy Egypt, the Kush*tes might have eliminated it. That's how close Egypt came to extinction. But the Egyptians were resilient enough to survive, and shortly afterwards inaugurated the great imperial age known as the New Kingdom. The Kush*tes weren't interested in occupation. They went raiding for precious objects, a symbol of domination. They did a lot of damage."
The inscription was found between two internal chambers in a rock-cut tomb that was covered in soot and dirt. It appeared gradually as the grime was removed.
Mr. Davies said: "I thought it would be a religious text, but it turned out to be historical. Gradually, a real narrative emerged, a brand new text inscribed in red paint, reading from right to left."
The tomb belonged to Sobeknakht, a Governor of El Kab, an important provincial capital during the latter part of the 17th Dynasty (about 1575-1550 BC).
The inscription describes a ferocious invasion of Egypt by armies from Kush and its allies from the south, including the land of Punt, on the southern coast of the Red Sea. It says that vast territories were affected and describes Sobeknakht's heroic role in organising a counter-attack.
The text takes the form of an address to the living by Sobeknakht: "Listen you, who are alive upon earth . . . Kush came . . . aroused along his length, he having stirred up the tribes of Wawat . . . the land of Punt and the Medjaw . . ." It describes the decisive role played by "the might of the great one, Nekhbet", the vulture-goddess of El Kab, as "strong of heart against the Nubians, who were burnt through fire", while the "chief of the nomads fell through the blast of her flame".
The discovery explains why Egyptian treasures, including statues, stelae and an elegant alabaster vessel found in the royal tomb at Kerma, were buried in Kush*te tombs: they were war trophies.
Mr. Davies said: "That has never been properly explained before. Now it makes sense. It's the key that unlocks the information. Now we know they were looted trophies, symbols of these kings' power over the Egyptians. Each of the four main kings of Kush brought back looted treasures."
The alabaster vessel is contemporary with the latter part of the 17th Dynasty. It bears a funerary text "for the spirit of the Governor, Hereditary Prince of Nekheb, Sobeknakht". Now it is clear that it was looted from Sobeknakht's tomb, or an associated workshop, by the Kush*te forces and taken back to Kerma, where it was buried in the precincts of the tomb of the Kush*te king who had led or inspired the invasion.
The El Kab tomb was looted long ago, probably in antiquity. There is more to investigate at the enormous site and the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt is now making such work a priority.
Those interested should check out these sources aswell.
David Phillipson. 2005.African Archaeology: Third Edition. Cambridge University Press, London.
Mark Horton. 1998. Kilwa. InOxford Companion to Archaeology, edited by Brian Fagan. Oxford University Press, London.
J.E.G. Sutton. 2002. The Southern Swahili Harbour and Town on Kilwa Island, 800-1800 AD: A chronology of booms and slumps. In The Development of Urbanism from a Global Perspective, an online book available at Uppsala University.
Said Hamdun & Noel King, Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, Princeton, NJ & New York: Markus-Wiener Publishing, Inc., 1994
I receive several e-mails daily from fellow grad students regarding archaeological digs, bio-anthropology and ancient history, so it's not always possible to know exactly where each article is coming from. However, from what I understand this is a collection of citations put together by a fellow grad student. It highlights the works of leading African historian Basil Davidson and archaeologist Randall-MacIver. The sources are listed below the article, anyone with a further interest should read the books listed, particularly those written by Davidson, Allen and Middleton. I would also recommend Medievial Rhodesia by Randall-MacIver.The purpose of my previous post was that I felt the books that were cited were highly relevant. I'm not here to be anyones teacher or try to change anyone's mind, I recieved an e-mail that I found to be condensed yet relevant so I wanted to share it. Therefore do with it what you'd like.
The use of technology and science in pre-modern Africa
If one asks individual modern ethnic Europeans if they think Africa remained in the Stone Age until the European colonial period, most whites probably have not really thought about it. But even if 90s PC-ness dictates that Europeans express non-offensive opinions, this idea of "primitive" black Africa is not contrary to centuries of European/Euro-American public perception.
Black Africa was not considered capable to developing its own civilizations. Materially sophisticated civilizations in Africa, such as the Nubians and the Ethiopians, and particularly the Egyptians, were always attributed to an outside impetus, such as colonization by "whites" from Asia, or ancient European influence. Although Egypt is now believed to have been an Afroasian racial melting pot, the Egyptian language and culture were undeniably African. Egyptian is part of the Afroasiatic language family, which has 222 surviving member languages.1 The overwhelming majority of these 222 languages are spoken in black Africa, which strongly suggests a black African origin for the Afroasiatic language family. Even ancient European sources record a tradition that claims that the Egyptians were descended from the Ethiopians.
The bias of white scholars is evident in their theories concerning archeological findings of art and technology in undeniably black parts of Africa. Basil Davidson writes:
"Over the past 50 years or so, whenever anything remarkable or inexplicable has turned up in Africa, a whole galaxy of non-African (or at least non-black) peoples are dragged in to explain it... Yet every one of these achievements and phenomenon is now generally agreed to have had a purely African origin."2
In the following sections, we present a brief overview of the use of technology in premodern sub-Saharan Africa. Readers may wish to do more in-depth reading on their own.
1.where do you lot get your sources from about african history?
2.does anyone know any websites where i can get peer reviewed studies of all scientific disciplines about african history.
Well, as for myself I get the vast majority of my information from text, specifically archaeological text but history text aswell. When I do look online I usally go to archaeological/anthropological sites. I'm sure the other posters can give you more information on specific sites than I can.
Ahhh yes, this makes perfect sense. It's attempt to justify failures and or the mistreatment of a people by rationalizing that these people deserved this mistreatment(slavery, colonialism) due to some kind of an inherent inferiority.
I think it's even broader than that. I don't think there are many people today who try to justify slavery or the excesses of colonialism. I think a wide variety of systems people have applied to Africa - be it imperialism, or globalized economics, even the independance movements in Africa in the sixties - through their failure to realize promises in Africa, show fundamental errors in each ideology. Africa is above all a place of paradox. If Africa's culture or history were the problem and imperialism were the cure, how come the promises of imperialism never materialized, Africa never industrialized, and there was never the emergence of a middle class or political stability? But if imperialism was the reason for all of Africa's problems, how come things have got much worse in places like Zimbabwe under the independance governments? Every ideology applied to Africa has been wrong. If you can lay the blame on Africa itself you don't have to question your own favorite ideology.
Ok, I got you now. Rather than look deeply into trying to understand why these various systems in Africa have failed it's much easier to blame in on Africa itself. It's a difficult question answer and I'm not sure there is just one answer there may be many. I have some of my own ideas on why most of Africa is in the state it's currently in, none that I"m entirely confident in though. It's a tough question that most would rather avoid.
"im not saying that Africa was necessarily on par with the rest of the world, but that's not necessarily because they somehow lacked innovation or curiosity. It was simply because of the difficult geographical and ecological conditions, which retared their development by thousands of years".
Ahhh yes, this makes perfect sense. It's attempt to justify failures and or the mistreatment of a people by rationalizing that these people deserved this mistreatment(slavery, colonialism)due to some kind of an inherent inferiority.
I think it's even broader than that. I don't think there are many people today who try to justify slavery or the excesses of colonialism. I think a wide variety of systems people have applied to Africa - be it imperialism, or globalized economics, even the independance movements in Africa in the sixties - through their failure to realize promises in Africa, show fundamental errors in each ideology. Africa is above all a place of paradox. If Africa's culture or history were the problem and imperialism were the cure, how come the promises of imperialism never materialized, Africa never industrialized, and there was never the emergence of a middle class or political stability? But if imperialism was the reason for all of Africa's problems, how come things have got much worse in places like Zimbabwe under the independance governments? Every ideology applied to Africa has been wrong. If you can lay the blame on Africa itself you don't have to question your own favorite ideology.
"That's simple. It makes the question of why Africa is in the situation it is, a more comfortable one to answer. People don't like to take responsibility for their history! It's a history that can potentially embarrass everyone - imperialists, proponents of free trade, proponents of mixed economies, even African nationalists. All these things have failed and in one way or another contributed to the situation. This way, the fundamental flaws in all these ideas don't have to be examined."
Ahhh yes, this makes perfect sense. It's attempt to justify failures and or the mistreatment of a people by rationalizing that these people deserved this mistreatment(slavery, colonialism) due to some kind of an inherent inferiority. So rather than analyze the present situation in Africa in it's entirety, it's much easier to say they are just inferior to begin with and therefore only have themselves to blame, a somewhat of the survival of the fittest mentality. Recognizing black achievement in antiquity would counter these beliefs, therefore black achievement is denied or dismissed. Makes really good sense, thanks.
"So not only do they not have the funds, but the end is often unattainable even if they did due to the often volatile political situation in those countries. No matter how magnificent the history, tourists aren't flooding Iraq, for instance."
Thank you. I just could never wrap my head around this need for some to deny or dismiss black achievment in antiquity. How is this beneficial to anyone?
That's simple. It makes the question of why Africa is in the situation it is, a more comfortable one to answer. People don't like to take responsibility for their history! It's a history that can potentially embarrass everyone - imperialists, proponents of free trade, proponents of mixed economies, even African nationalists. All these things have failed and in one way or another contributed to the situation. This way, the fundamental flaws in all these ideas don't have to be examined.
Another thing I find interesting is that people speak of Africa as if they have it all figured out. It's not as if there as been this intense interest in Africa outside of Egypt. It's not as if scholars and archaeologist have been knocking each other over trying to get to Africa to study ancient civilizations. Those few scholars and archaeologist that have had an interest Africa outside of Egypt more times that not haven't even recieved enough funding to complete their research.
Well, that's a factor of the situation in Africa moreso than disinterest. African governments, for the most part, simply don't have the funds or the stability. Archaeology is usually an investment by the local government, in the interest of promoting tourism. So not only do they not have the funds, but the end is often unattainable even if they did due to the often volatile political situation in those countries. No matter how magnificent the history, tourists aren't flooding Iraq, for instance.
Thank you. I just could never wrap my head around this need for some to deny or dismiss black achievment in antiquity. How is this beneficial to anyone? It reminds me of the my father is stronger than your father spats we have as children. For those of us who enjoy history, isn't the goal to attain a well rounded, balanced, non bias view of history? Or maybe this is the minority view.
Another thing I find interesting is that people speak of Africa as if they have it all figured out. It's not as if there as been this intense interest in Africa outside of Egypt. It's not as if scholars and archaeologist have been knocking each other over trying to get to Africa to study ancient civilizations. Those few scholars and archaeologist that have had an interest Africa outside of Egypt more times that not haven't even recieved enough funding to complete their research.
This leaves us with a very incomplete puzzle, therefore, the information we do have about Africa is fragmented. The last 20 years or so there has been an increased interest in the kingdoms of Nubia, and somewhat in Timbuktu spurred on by SA government and that's about it. I was having a chat with my professor a few weeks back about Nubia and after he scuffeled through his archives, he came across an article that was published in TIME called The Niles other Kingdom by Scott Macleod. French archaeologist discovered exquisite ceramic figurines, bowls and funerary objects at sites in Sudan/Nubia that date from at least 8000 b.c. These findings predate prehistoric finds in Egypt by 3,000 yrs. The article seems to suggest that Nubia not Egypt may have been the first true African civilization.
The excavations still seem to be ongoing. This to me only shows how much we still don't know about Africa, it's shows how much there still is to learn not just in Nubia but the entire continent. I think those of you who want to dismiss black African achievements as less than or inferior need to keep this in mind. Also if it were not for those Africans and that continent none of us would be living and breathing at the moment. I can't think of any contribution bigger than that, I'd think that should garner just a little respect, don't you?
Living in a time of free will coupled with an abundance of credible literature on just about every subject, I feel that ignorance is a choice. Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.. If staying ignorant allows one to continue to perpertrate their agenda then it most definately is blissful. What I mean is for some believing that Africa had no civlization, innovations or great leaders serves a purpose for that individual.
Maybe it gives them some sort of false sense of superiorty, so believing in the lowly African and the dark continent helps to facilitate those beliefs. Therefore they really have no interest in learning about African history, but are only interested in perpetuating their stereotypical views in order to feel validated. The African continent has been shun for quite sometime and still holds many secrets that have only begun to be told, but what little that is known is quite fascinating to say the least. Besides what greater contribution could a continent give but life itself? Just my 2 cents.
There wasn`t any "Great Civilization" in Subsaharan Africa,Zimbabwe could be an exception,but as far as i know it served only as a fortress and maybe as acultcenter for the few people who lived inside(And surrounding).We cannot count Nubia,Axum,Napata,The Swahili Coast,etc,because they`re all mixed bloodsand they built these civilizations because of external influences
Whoa ... name a European or Asian civilization that evolved in a vacuum and didn't have vast foreign influences, then!
You can't just discount civilizations because they benefitted from diffusion. If that's the case, then no civilization ever produced in Europe or Asia counts.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot create polls in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum