Early humans
The
Great Rift Valley of Africa provides critical evidence for the evolution of early
hominins. The earliest tools in the world can be found there as well:
- An unidentified hominin, possibly Australopithecus afarensis or Kenyanthropus platyops, created stone tools dating to 3.3 million years ago at Lomekwi in the Turkana Basin, eastern Africa.
- Homo habilis, residing in eastern Africa, developed another early toolmaking industry, the Oldowan, around 2.3 million years ago.
- Homo erectus developed the Acheulean
stone tool industry, specifically hand-axes, at 1.5 million years ago.
This tool industry spread to the Middle East and Europe around 800,000
to 600,000 years ago. Homo erectus also begins using fire.[1]
- Homo sapiens,
or modern humans, created bone tools and backed blades around 90,000 to
60,000 years ago, in southern and eastern Africa. The use of bone tools
and backed blades eventually became characteristic of Later Stone Age tool industries.[2] The first appearance of abstract art is during the Middle Stone Age, however. The oldest abstract art in the world is a shell necklace dated to 82,000 years ago from the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, eastern Morocco.[3] The second oldest abstract art and the oldest rock art is found at Blombos Cave in South Africa, dated to 77,000 years ago.[4]
Education
Social sciences in Africa, including
education, have a long history.
Nile Valley
In 295 BC, the
Library of Alexandria was founded in Egypt. It was considered the largest library in the classical world.
Al-Azhar University, founded in 970~972 as a
madrasa,
is the chief centre of Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning in
the world. The oldest degree-granting university in Egypt after the
Cairo University, its establishment date may be considered 1961 when non-religious subjects were added to its curriculum.
The Sahel
Three philosophical schools in Mali existed during the country's "golden age" from the 12th to the 16th centuries:
University of Sankore,
Sidi Yahya University, and
Djinguereber University.
By the end of Mansa Musa's reign in Mali, the Sankoré University had
been converted into a fully staffed University with the largest
collections of books in Africa since the
Library of Alexandria.
The Sankoré University was capable of housing 25,000 students and had
one of the largest libraries in the world with roughly 1000,000
manuscripts.
[5][6]
Timbuktu was a major center of book copying,
religious groups,
[7][8] the
sciences, and
arts.
[9][10] Scholars and students came throughout world to study in its university. It attracted more foreign students than
New York University.
[9][11]
Astronomy
Circular cromlech at Nabta
Three types of calendars can be found in Africa: lunar, solar, and
stellar. Most African calendars are a combination of the three.
[12] African calendars include the
Akan calendar,
Egyptian calendar,
Berber calendar,
Ethiopian calendar,
Igbo calendar,
Yoruba calendar,
Shona calendar,
Swahili calendar,
Xhosa calendar,
Borana calendar, and
Luba calendar.
Western desert of Egypt
A stone circle located in the
Nabta Playa basin may be one of the world's oldest known
archeoastronomical devices. Built by the ancient Nubians about 4800 BCE, the device may have approximately marked the
summer solstice.
Nile Valley
Since the first modern measurements of the precise cardinal orientations of the Egyptian pyramids were taken by
Flinders Petrie, various astronomical methods have been proposed as to how these orientations were originally established.
[13][14] Ancient Egyptians may have observed, for example, the positions of two stars in the
Plough /
Big Dipper
which was known to Egyptians as the thigh. It is thought that a
vertical alignment between these two stars checked with a plumb bob was
used to ascertain where North lay. The deviations from true North using
this model reflect the accepted dates of construction of the pyramids.
[15]
Egyptians were the first to develop a 365-day, 12 month calendar. It was a stellar calendar, created by observing the stars.
During the 12th century, the astrolabic quadrant was invented in Egypt.
[16]
The Sahel
Based
on the translation of 14 Timbuktu manuscripts, the following points can
be made about Timbuktu astronomical science during the 12th-16th
centuries:
- They made use of the Julian Calendar.
- Generally speaking, they had a heliocentric view of the solar system.
- Diagrams of planets and orbits made use of complex mathematical calculations.
- Scientists developed an algorithm that accurately oriented Timbuktu to Mecca.
- They recorded astronomical events, including a meteor shower in August 1583.[17]
At this time, Mali also had a number of astronomers including the emperor and scientist
Askia Mohammad I.
[18]
Turkana Basin
Megalithic "pillar sites," known as "
namoratunga," date to as early as 5,000 years ago and can be found surrounding
Lake Turkana in Kenya.
[19] Although somewhat controversial today, initial interpretations suggested that they were used by
Cushitic speaking people as an alignment with star systems tuned to a lunar calendar of 354 days.
[20]
South Africa
Today,
South Africa has cultivated a burgeoning astronomy community. It hosts the
Southern African Large Telescope, the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere.
South Africa is currently building the Karoo Array Telescope as a pathfinder for the $20 billion
Square Kilometer Array project.
South Africa is a finalist, with Australia, to be the host of the SKA.
Mathematics
Central and Southern Africa
The
Lebombo bone from the mountains between
Swaziland and
South Africa may be the oldest known
mathematical artifact.
[citation needed] It dates from 35,000 BCE and consists of 29 distinct notches that were deliberately cut into a
baboon's
fibula.
[21][22]
The
Ishango bone is a
bone tool from the
Democratic Republic of Congo dated to the
Upper Paleolithic era, about 18,000 to 20,000 BCE. It is also a baboon's fibula,
[23] with a sharp piece of quartz affixed to one end, perhaps for engraving or writing. It was first thought to be a
tally stick, as it has a series of
tally marks
carved in three columns running the length of the tool, but some
scientists have suggested that the groupings of notches indicate a
mathematical understanding that goes beyond counting. Various functions
for the bone have been proposed: it may have been a tool for
multiplication, division, and simple mathematical calculation, a
six-month lunar calendar,
[24] or it may have been made by a woman keeping track of her menstrual cycle.
[25]
Nile Valley
By the predynastic
Naqada period in Egypt, people had fully developed a
numeral system.
[26]
The importance of mathematics to an educated Egyptian is suggested by a
New Kingdom fictional letter in which the writer proposes a scholarly
competition between himself and another scribe regarding everyday
calculation tasks such as accounting of land, labor and grain.
[27] Texts such as the
Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the
Moscow Mathematical Papyrus
show that the ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic
mathematical operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and
division—use fractions, compute the volumes of boxes and pyramids, and
calculate the surface areas of rectangles, triangles, circles and even
spheres.
[citation needed] They understood basic concepts of
algebra and
geometry, and could solve simple sets of
simultaneous equations.
[28]
Mathematical notation
was decimal, and based on hieroglyphic signs for each power of ten up
to one million. Each of these could be written as many times as
necessary to add up to the desired number; so to write the number eighty
or eight hundred, the symbol for ten or one hundred was written eight
times respectively.
[29] Because their methods of calculation could not handle most fractions with a numerator greater than one,
ancient Egyptian fractions
had to be written as the sum of several fractions. For example, the
fraction two-fifths was resolved into the sum of one-third +
one-fifteenth; this was facilitated by standard tables of values.
[30] Some
common fractions, however, were written with a special glyph; the equivalent of the modern two-thirds is shown on the right.
[31]
Ancient Egyptian mathematicians had a grasp of the principles underlying the
Pythagorean theorem, knowing, for example, that a triangle had a right angle opposite the
hypotenuse when its sides were in a 3–4–5 ratio.
[32] They were able to estimate the
area of a circle by subtracting one-ninth from its diameter and squaring the result:
- Area ≈ [( 8⁄9)D]2 = ( 256⁄81)r2 ≈ 3.16r2,
a reasonable approximation of the formula
πr
2.
[32][33]
The
golden ratio seems to be reflected in many Egyptian constructions, including the
pyramids,
but its use may have been an unintended consequence of the ancient
Egyptian practice of combining the use of knotted ropes with an
intuitive sense of proportion and harmony.
[34]
Based on engraved plans of Meroitic King
Amanikhabali's
pyramids, Nubians had a sophisticated understanding of mathematics and
an appreciation of the harmonic ratio. The engraved plans is indicative
of much to be revealed about Nubian mathematics.
[35]
The Sahel
All
of the mathematical learning of the Islamic world during the medieval
period was available and advanced by Timbuktu scholars: arithmetic,
algebra, geometry, and trigonometry.
Other African traditions
One of the major achievements found in Africa was the advance knowledge of
fractal geometry and mathematics. The knowledge of
fractal
geometry can be found in a wide aspect of African life from art, social
design structures, architecture, to games, trade, and divination
systems.
[36] With the discovery of fractal mathematics in widespread use in Africa, Ron Eglash had this to say,
-
- "We used to think of mathematics as a kind of ladder that you climb,
and we would think of counting systems – one plus one equals two – as
the first step and simple shapes as the second step. Recent mathematical
developments like fractal geometry represented the top of the ladder in
most Western thinking. But it's much more useful to think about the
development of mathematics as a kind of branching structure and that
what blossomed very late on European branches might have bloomed much
earlier on the limbs of others. When Europeans first came to Africa,
they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive.
It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form
of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet."[37]
The
binary numeral system
was also widely known through Africa before it was known throughout
much of the world. It has been theorized that it could have influenced
Western
geomancy, which would lead to the development of the digital computer.
[38]
Metallurgy
Most of
sub-Saharan Africa moved from the
Stone Age to the
Iron Age. The
Iron Age and
Bronze Age occurred simultaneously.
North Africa and the Nile Valley imported its iron technology from the
Near East and followed the Near Eastern pattern of development from the
Bronze Age to the
Iron Age.
Many Africanists accept an independent development of the use of iron in
Sub-Saharan Africa. Among archaeologists, it is a debatable issue. The earliest dating of iron in
sub-Saharan Africa is 2500 BCE at Egaro, west of Termit, making it contemporary with iron smelting in the
Middle East.
[39] The Egaro date is debatable with archaeologists, due to the method used to attain it.
[40] The Termit date of 1500 BCE is widely accepted. Iron use, in
smelting and forging for tools, appears in West Africa by 1200 BCE, making it one of the first places for the birth of the Iron Age.
[41][42][43] Before the 19th century, African methods of extracting iron were employed in
Brazil, until more advanced
European methods were instituted.
[44]
West Africa
Besides being masters in iron, Africans were masters in brass and bronze.
Ife produced lifelike statues in brass, an artistic tradition beginning in the 13th century.
Benin mastered bronze during the 16th century, produced portraiture and reliefs in the metal using the
lost wax process.
[45] Benin also was a manufacturer of glass and glass beads.
[46]
The Sahara
In the
Aïr Mountains region of
Niger,
copper smelting was independently developed between 3000 and 2500 BCE.
The undeveloped nature of the process indicates that it was not of
foreign origin. Smelting in the region became mature around 1500 BCE.
[47]
The Sahel
Africa
was a major supplier of gold in world trade during the Medieval Age.
The Sahelian empires became powerful by controlling the
Trans-Saharan trade routes. They provided 2/3 of the gold in Europe and North Africa.
[48]
The Almoravid dinar and the Fatimid dinar were printed on gold from the
Sahelian empires. The ducat of Genoa and Venice and the florine of
Florence were also printed on gold from the Sahelian empires.
[49] When gold sources were depleted in the Sahel, the empires turned to trade with the Ashante Kingdom.
The Swahili traders in East Africa were major suppliers of gold to Asia in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade routes.
[50]
The trading port cities and city-states of the Swahili East African
coast were among the first African cities to come into contact with
European explorers and sailors during the European
Age of Discovery. Many were documented and praised in the recordings of North African explorer
Abu Muhammad ibn Battuta.
Nile Valley
Nubia
was a major source of gold in the ancient world. Gold was a major
source of Kushitic wealth and power. Gold was mined East of the Nile in
Wadi Allaqi and Wadi Cabgaba.
[51]
Around 500 BCE, Nubia, during the
Meroitic phase,
became a major manufacturer and exporter of iron. This was after being
expelled from Egypt by Assyrians, who used iron weapons.
[52]
Aksum
The
Aksumites produced
coins around 270 CE, under the rule of King Endubis. Aksumite coins were issued in gold, silver, and bronze.
East Africa
Anthropologist Peter Schmidt discovered through the communication of oral tradition that the
Haya in
Tanzania have been forging
steel
for nearly 2000 years. This discovery was made accidentally while
Schmidt was learning about the history of the Haya via their oral
tradition. He was led to a tree which was said to rest on the spot of an
ancestral furnace used to forge steel. When later tasked with the
challenge of recreating the forges, a group of elders who at this time
were the only ones to remember the practice, due to the disuse of the
practice due in part to the abundance of steel flowing into the country
from foreign sources. In spite of their lack of practice, the elders
were able to create a
furnace
using mud and grass which when burnt provided the carbon needed to
transform the iron into steel. Later investigation of the area yielded
13 other furnaces similar in design to the recreation set up by the
elders. These furnaces were carbon dated and were found to be as old as
2000 years, whereas steel of this caliber did not appear in
Europe until several centuries later.
[53][54]
Two types of iron furnaces were used in
Sub-Saharan
Africa: the trench dug below ground and circular clay structures built
above ground. Iron ores were crushed and placed in furnaces layered with
the right proportion of hardwood. A flux such as lime sometimes from
seashells was added to aid in smelting. Bellows on the side would be
used to add oxygen. Clay pipes on the sides called tuyères would be used
to control oxygen flow.
[55]
Medicine
West Africa
The knowledge of inoculating oneself against smallpox seems to have been known to West Africans, more specifically the
Akan. A slave named Onesimus explained the inoculation procedure to
Cotton Mather during the 18th century; he reported to have gotten the knowledge from Africa.
[56]
The Sahel
In
Djenné the mosquito was identified to be the cause of malaria, and the removal of cataracts was a common surgical procedure.
[57]
The dangers of tobacco smoking were known to African Muslim scholars, based on Timbuktu manuscripts.
[58]
Nile Valley
Ancient Egyptian physicians were renowned in the ancient Near East for their healing skills, and some, like
Imhotep, remained famous long after their deaths.
[59] Herodotus
remarked that there was a high degree of specialization among Egyptian
physicians, with some treating only the head or the stomach, while
others were eye-doctors and dentists.
[60] Training of physicians took place at the
Per Ankh or "House of Life" institution, most notably those headquartered in
Per-Bastet during the New Kingdom and at
Abydos and
Saïs in the Late period.
Medical papyri show
empirical knowledge of anatomy, injuries, and practical treatments.
[61]
Wounds were treated by bandaging with raw meat, white linen, sutures,
nets, pads and swabs soaked with honey to prevent infection,
[62] while opium was used to relieve pain. Garlic and onions were used regularly to promote good health and were thought to relieve
asthma symptoms. Ancient Egyptian surgeons stitched wounds, set
broken bones,
and amputated diseased limbs, but they recognized that some injuries
were so serious that they could only make the patient comfortable until
he died.
[59]
Around 800, the first psychiatric hospital and insane asylum in Egypt was built by Muslim physicians in Cairo.
Around 1100, the ventilator is invented in Egypt.
[63]
In 1285, the largest hospital of the Middle Ages and pre-modern era
was built in Cairo, Egypt, by Sultan Qalaun al-Mansur. Treatment was
given for free to patients of all backgrounds, regardless of gender,
ethnicity or income.
[64]
Tetracycline
was being used by Nubians, based on bone remains between 350 AD and 550
AD. The antibiotic was in wide commercial use only in the mid 20th
century. The theory is earthen jars containing grain used for making
beer contained the bacterium
streptomycedes,
which produced tetracycline. Although Nubians were not aware of
tetracycline, they could have noticed people fared better by drinking
beer. According to Charlie Bamforth, a professor of biochemistry and
brewing science at the University of California, Davis, said "They must
have consumed it because it was rather tastier than the grain from which
it was derived. They would have noticed people fared better by
consuming this product than they were just consuming the grain itself."
[65]
Successful Caesarean section performed by indigenous healers in Kahura,
Uganda, as observed by R. W. Felkin in 1879
East Africa
European travelers in the
Great Lakes region of
Africa (
Uganda and
Rwanda) during the 19th century observed
Caesarean sections
being performed on a regular basis. The expectant mother was normally
anesthetized with banana wine, and herbal mixtures were used to
encourage healing. From the well-developed nature of the procedures
employed, European observers concluded that they had been employed for
some time.
[66]
South Africa
A South African,
Max Theiler, developed a vaccine against
yellow fever in 1937.
[67] Allan McLeod Cormack developed the theoretical underpinnings of CT scanning and co-invented the CT-scanner.
The first human-to-human heart transplant was performed by South African cardiac surgeon
Christiaan Barnard at
Groote Schuur Hospital in December 1967. See also
Hamilton Naki.
During the 1960s, South African
Aaron Klug
developed crystallographic electron microscopy techniques, in which a
sequence of two-dimensional images of crystals taken from different
angles are combined to produce three-dimensional images of the target.
Agriculture
Northern Africa and the Nile Valley
Ethiopians were first to discover
coffee's edible properties
Donkey possibly domesticated in the Nile Valley or Horn of Africa
Archaeologists have long debated whether or not the independent
domestication of cattle occurred in Africa as well as the Near East and
Indus Valley. Possible remains of domesticated cattle were identified in
the Western Desert of Egypt at the sites of
Nabta Playa and
Bir Kiseiba and were dated to c. 9500-8000 BP, but those identifications have been questioned.
[68]
Genetic evidence suggests that cattle were most likely introduced from
Southwest Asia, and that there may have been some later breeding with
wild
aurochs in northern Africa.
[69]
Genetic evidence also indicates that donkeys were domesticated from the
African wild ass.
[70] Archaeologists have found donkey burials in early Dynastic contexts dating to ~5000 BP at
Abydos, Middle Egypt, and examination of the bones shows that they were used as beasts of burden.
[71]
Cotton (
Gossypium herbaceum Linnaeus) may have been domesticated 5000 BCE in eastern
Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced.
[72]
Ethiopia
Ethiopians, particularly the
Oromo people, were the first to have discovered and recognized the energizing effect of the
coffee bean plant.
[73]
Cotton possibly domesticated 5000 BCE in Sudan
Teff is believed to have originated in Ethiopia between 4000 and 1000 BCE. Genetic evidence points to
E. pilosa as the most likely wild ancestor.
[74] Noog (
Guizotia abyssinica) and
ensete (
E. ventricosum) are two other plants domesticated in Ethiopia.
The Sahel
The earliest evidence for the domestication of plants for agricultural purposes in Africa occurred in the
Sahel region c. 5000 BCE, when
sorghum and
African rice (
Oryza glaberrima) began to be cultivated. Around this time, and in the same region, the small
guineafowl was domesticated. Other African domesticated plants were oil palm,
raffia palm,
black-eyed peas,
groundnuts, and
kola nuts.
Sorghum domesticated in the Sahel
African methods of cultivating rice, introduced by enslaved Africans,
may have been used in North Carolina. This may have been a factor in
the prosperity of the North Carolina colony.
[75]
Yams were domesticated 8000 BCE in West Africa. Between 7000 and 5000 BCE, pearl
millet,
gourds,
watermelons, and
beans also spread westward across the southern Sahara.
Between 6500 and 3500 BCE knowledge of domesticated sorghum, castor
beans, and two species of gourd spread from Africa to Asia. Pearl
millet, black-eyed peas, watermelon, and okra later spread to the rest
of the world.
[76]
East Africa
Engaruka is an
Iron Age
archaeological site in northern Tanzania known for the ruins of a
complex irrigation system. Stone channels were used to dike, dam, and
level surrounding river waters. Some of these channels were several
kilometers long, channelling and feeding individual plots of land
totaling approximately 5,000 acres (20 km
2).
[77][78] Seven stone-terraced villages along the mountainside also comprise the settlement.
Textiles
Nile Valley
Egyptians wore
linen from the
flax plant, and used looms as early as 4000 BCE.
[79] Nubians mainly wore cotton, beaded leather, and linen.
Ethiopia
Shemma, shama, and kuta are all cotton-based cloths used for making
Ethiopian clothing. Three types of
looms
are used in Africa: the double heddle loom for narrow strips of cloth,
the single heddle loom for wider spans of cloth, and the ground or pit
loom. The double heddle loom and single heddle loom might be of African
origin. The ground or pit loom is used in the
Horn of Africa,
Madagascar, and
North Africa and is of Middle Eastern origins.
[80][81]
Northern Africa and the Sahel
Boubou worn by
Kora musician
The
Djellaba was made typically of wool and worn in the
Maghreb.
The textile of choice in the
sahel is cotton. It is widely used in making the
boubou (for men) and
kaftan (for women).
Camel hair was also used to make cloth in the
Sahel and
North Africa.
Bògòlanfini (mudcloth) is cotton textile dyed with fermented mud of tree sap and teas, hand made by the
Bambara people of the Beledougou region of central
Mali.
By the 12th century, so-called Moroccan leather, which actually came from the
Hausa area of northern
Nigeria, was supplied to Mediterranean markets and found their way to the fairs and markets of such places as Normandy and Britain.
West Africa
Kente used silk from the Anaphe moth and was produced by the
Akan people (Ashante, Fante, Enzema) in the countries of
Ghana and
Côte d'Ivoire.
Central Africa
Raffia cloth was the innovation of the
Kuba people, present day Democratic Republic of Congo. It used the fibers of the leaves on the
raffia palm tree.
East Africa
Barkcloth was used by the
Baganda in
Uganda from the Mutuba tree (
Ficus natalensis).
Kanga are
Swahili
pieces of fabric that come in rectangular shapes, made of pure cotton,
and put together to make clothing. It is as long as ones outstretch hand
and wide to cover the length of ones neck.
Kitenge are similar to kangas and
kikoy, but are of a thicker cloth, and have an edging only on a long side.
Kenya,
Uganda,
Tanzania, and
Sudan are some of the African countries where kitenge are worn. In
Malawi,
Namibia and
Zambia, kitenge are known as Chitenge.
Lamba Mpanjaka was cloth made of multicolored silk, worn like a toga on the island of Madagascar.
Southern Africa
In
southern Africa one finds numerous use of animal hide and skins for
clothing. The Ndau in central Mozambique and the Shona mixed hide with
barkcloth and cotton cloth. Cotton weaving was practiced by the Ndau and
Shona. Cotton cloth was referred to as machira. The Venda, Swazi,
Basotho, Zulu, Ndebele, and Xhosa also made extensive use of hides.
[82]
Hides came from cattle, sheep, goat, elephant, and from jangwa( part of
the mongoose family). Leopard skins were coveted and was a symbol of
kingship in Zulu society. Skins were tanned to form leather, dyed, and
embedded with beads.
Maritime technology
In 1987 the third oldest canoe in the world and the oldest in Africa, the
Dufuna canoe, was discovered in
Nigeria
by Fulani herdsmen near the Yobe river and the village of Dufuna. It
dates to approximately 8000 years ago, and was made from African
mahogany.
North Africa
Carthage's
fleet included large numbers of quadriremes and quinqueremes, warships
with four and five ranks of rowers. Its ships dominated the
Mediterranean. The Romans however were masters at copying and adapting
the technology of other peoples. According to Polybius, the Romans
seized a shipwrecked Carthaginian warship, and used it as a blueprint
for a massive naval build-up, adding their own refinement – the corvus –
which allowed an enemy vessel to be "gripped" and boarded for
hand-to-hand fighting. This negated initially superior Carthaginian
seamanship and ships.
[83]
The Sahel and West Africa
In the 14th century CE King
Abubakari II, the brother of King
Mansa Musa of the
Mali Empire is thought to have had a great armada of ships sitting on the coast of
West Africa.
[84] This is corroborated by ibn Battuta himself who recalls several hundred Malian ships off the coast.
[85]
The ships would communicate with each other by drums. This has led to
great speculation, that Malian sailors may have reached the coast of
Pre-Columbian America under the rule of
Abubakari II, nearly two hundred years before Christopher Columbus.
[86]
Numerous sources attest that the inland waterways of West Africa saw
extensive use of war-canoes and vessels used for war transport where
permitted by the environment. Most West African canoes were of single
log construction, carved and dug-out from one massive tree trunk. The
primary method of propulsion was by paddle and in shallow water, poles.
Sails were also used to a lesser extent, particularly on trading
vessels. The silk cotton tree provided many of the most table logs for
massive canoe building, and launching was via wooden rollers to the
water. Boat building specialists were to emerge among certain peoples,
particularly in the Niger Delta.
[87]
Some canoes were 80 feet (24 m) in length, carrying 100 men or more.
Documents from 1506 for example, refer to war-canoes on the Sierra Leone
river, carrying 120 men. Others refer to Guinea coast peoples using
canoes of varying sizes – some 70 feet (21 m) in length, 7–8 ft broad,
with sharp pointed ends, rowing benches on the side, and quarter decks
or focastles build of reeds, and miscellaneous facilities such as
cooking hearths, and storage spaces for crew sleeping mats.
Nile Valley
Early
Egyptians knew how to assemble
planks of wood into a
ship hull as early as 3000 BC (5000 BCE). The oldest ships yet unearthed, a group of 14 discovered in
Abydos, were constructed from wooden planks which were "sewn" together.
[88] Woven straps were used to lash the planks together, and
reeds or
grass stuffed between the planks helped to seal the seams.
[89] Because the ships are all buried together and near a mortuary complex belonging to
Pharaoh Khasekhemwy,
originally the boats were all thought to have belonged to him. One of
the 14 ships dates to 3000 BC, however, and is now thought to perhaps
have belonged to an earlier pharaoh, possibly
Pharaoh Aha.
[90]
Early Egyptians also knew how to assemble planks of wood with
treenails to fasten them together, using
pitch for
caulking the
seams. The "
Khufu ship", a 43.6-meter vessel sealed into a pit in the
Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the
Great Pyramid of Giza in the
Fourth Dynasty around 2500 BCE, is a full-size surviving example which may have fulfilled the symbolic function of a
solar barque. Early Egyptians also knew how to fasten the planks of this ship together with
mortise and tenon joints.
[91]
Horn of Africa and the Swahili Coast
It is known that ancient
Axum traded with
India,
and there is evidence that ships from Northeast Africa may have sailed
back and forth between India/Sri Lanka and Nubia trading goods and even
to Persia, Himyar and
Rome.
[92] Aksum was known by the
Greeks for having seaports for ships from Greece and
Yemen.
[93] Elsewhere in Northeast Africa, the 1st century CE Greek travelogue
Periplus of the Red Sea reports that
Somalis, through their northern ports such as
Zeila and
Berbera, were trading
frankincense and other items with the inhabitants of the
Arabian Peninsula as well as with the then
Roman-controlled
Egypt.
[94]
Construction and repair of dhows, near Mtoni, Zanzibar
Middle Age
Swahili kingdoms are known to have had trade port islands and trade routes
[95] with the Islamic world and Asia and were described by Greek historians are "metropolises".
[96] Famous African trade ports such as
Mombasa,
Zanzibar,
Mogadishu and
Kilwa[97] were known to Chinese sailors such as
Zheng He and medieval Islamic historians such as the Berber Islamic voyager
Abu Abdullah ibn Battuta.
[98] The
dhow
was the ship of trade used by the Swahili. They could be massive. It
was a dhow that transported a giraffe to Chinese Emperor Yong Le's
court, in 1414. Although the dhow is often associated with Arabs, it is
of Indian roots.
[citation needed]
Architecture
West Africa
The
Walls of Benin City are collectively the world's largest man-made structure and were semi-destroyed by the British in 1897.
[99] Fred Pearce wrote in New Scientist:
-
-
- "They extend for some 16,000 kilometres in all, in a mosaic of more
than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They cover 6500 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."[100]
Sungbo's Eredo is the second largest pre-colonial monument in Africa, larger than the
Great Pyramids or
Great Zimbabwe. Built by the
Yoruba people in honour of one of their titled personages, an aristocratic widow known as the
Oloye
Bilikisu Sungbo, it is made up of sprawling mud walls and the valleys
that surrounded the town of Ijebu-Ode in Ogun state, Nigeria.
North Africa and the Sahel
Around 1000 AD,
cob (tabya) first appears in the Maghreb and al-Andalus.
[101]
Tichit
is the oldest surviving archaeological settlements in the Sahel and is
the oldest all-stone settlement south of the Sahara. It is thought to
have been built by
Soninke people and is thought to be the precursor of the
Ghana empire.
[citation needed]
The
Great Mosque of Djenné
is the largest mud brick or adobe building in the world and is
considered by many architects to be the greatest achievement of the
Sudano-Sahelian architectural style, albeit with definite Islamic
influences.
Nile Valley
The Egyptian step pyramid built at Saqqara is the oldest major stone building in the world.
[102]
The
Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years.
The earliest style of
Nubian architecture included the
speos, structures carved out of solid rock, an
A-Group (3700–3250 BCE) achievement. Egyptians made extensive use of the process at
Speos Artemidos and
Abu Simbel.
[103]
Sudan, site of ancient
Nubia, has more pyramids than anywhere in the world, even more than
Egypt, a total of 223 pyramids exist.
Ethiopia
Aksumites built in stone. Monolithic stelae on top of the graves of kings like
King Ezana's Stele. Later, during the
Zagwe Dynasty Churches carved out of solid rocks like
Church of Saint George at
Lalibela.
Southern Africa
In
southern Africa one finds ancient and widespread traditions of building
in stone. Two broad categories of these traditions have been noted: 1.
Zimbabwean style 2. Transvaal Free State style. North of the Zambezi one
finds very few stone ruins.
[104] Great Zimbabwe,
Khami, and Thulamela
[105] uses the Zimbabwean style. Tsotho/Tswana architecture represents the Transvaal Free State style. ||Khauxa!nas
[106]
stone settlement in Namibia represents both traditions. The Kingdom of
Mapungubwe (1075–1220) was a pre-colonial Southern African state located
at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers which marked the
center of a pre-Shona kingdom which preceded the culmination of
southeast African urban civilization in
Great Zimbabwe.
Communication systems
Griots
are repositories of African history, especially in African societies
with no written language. Griots can recite genealogies going back
centuries. They recite epics that reveal historical occurrences and
events. Griots can go for hours and even days reciting the histories and
genealogies of societies. They have been described as living history
books.
Nile Valley
Hieroglyphs on an Egyptian funerary stela
Africa's first writing system and the beginning of the alphabet was
Egyptian hieroglyphs. Two scripts have been the direct offspring of
Egyptian hieroglyphs, the
Proto-Sinaitic script and the
Meroitic alphabet. Out of
Proto-Sinaitic came the
South Arabian alphabet and
Phoenician alphabet, out of which the
Aramaic alphabet,
Greek alphabet, the
Brāhmī script,
Arabic alphabet were directly or indirectly derived.
Out of the
South Arabian alphabet came the
Ge'ez alphabet which is used to write
Blin(cushitic),
Amharic,
Tigre, and
Tigrinya in
Ethiopia and
Eritrea.
Out the
Phoenician Alphabet came
tifinagh, the berber alphabet mainly used by the
Tuaregs.
The other direct offspring of
Egyptian hieroglyphs was the
Meroitic alphabet. It began in the Napatan phase of Nubian history,
Kush (700–300 BCE). It came into full fruition in the 2nd century, under the successor Nubian kingdom of
Meroë.
The script can be read but not understood, with the discovery at
el-Hassa, Sudan of ram statues bearing meroitic inscriptions might
assist in its translation.
The Sahel
With the arrival of Islam, came the
Arabic alphabet in the
Sahel. Arabic writing is widespread in the
Sahel. The Arabic script was also used to write native African languages. The script used in this capacity is often called
Ajami. The languages that have been or are written in Ajami include
Hausa,
Mandinka,
Fulani,
Wolofal,
Tamazight,
Nubian,
Yoruba,
Songhai, and
Kanuri.
[107]
West Africa
N'Ko script developed by
Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa. It is used in
Guinea,
Côte d'Ivoire,
Mali, and neighboring countries by a number of speakers of
Manding languages.
Nsibidi is
ideographic set of symbols developed by the
Ekpe people of Southeastern coastal Nigeria for communication. A complex implementation of Nsibidi is only known to initiates of
Ekpe secret society.
Adinkra is a set of symbols developed by the
Akan (
Ghana and
Cote d'Ivoire), used to represent concepts and aphorisms.
The
Vai syllabary is a syllabic writing system devised for the Vai language by
Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ in Liberia during the 1830s.
Adamorobe Sign Language is an indigenous sign language developed in the Adamorobe
Akan village in Eastern
Ghana. The village has a high incident of genetic deafness.
Niger-Congo languages are tonal in nature.
Talking drums
exploit the tonal aspect of Niger-Congo languages to convey very
complicated messages. Talking drums can send messages 15 to 25 miles
(40 km). Bulu, a Bantu language, can be drummed as well as spoken. In a
Bulu village, each individual had a unique drum signature. A message
could be sent to an individual by drumming his drum signature.
[108]
It has been noted that a message can be sent 100 miles (160 km) from
village to village within two hours or less using a talking drum.
[109]
East Africa and Madagascar
On the
Swahili coast, the
Swahili language was written in Arabic script, as was the
Malagasy language in Madagascar.
Warfare
Most of tropical
Africa did not have a cavalry. Horses would be wiped out by tse-tse fly. The
zebra was never domesticated. The army of tropical
Africa consisted of mainly infantry. Weapons included bows and arrows
[110] with low bow strength that compensated with poison tipped arrows. Throwing knives
[111]
were made use of in central Africa, spears that could double as
thrusting cutting weapons, and swords were also in use. Heavy clubs when
thrown could break bones, battle axe, and shields of various sizes were
in widespread use. Later guns, muskets such as flintlock, wheelock, and
matchlock. Contrary to popular perception, guns were also in widespread
use in Africa. They typically were of poor quality, a policy of
European nations to provide poor quality merchandise. One reason the
slave trade was so successful was the widespread use of guns in Africa.
Fortification was a major part of defense, integral to warfare.
Massive earthworks were built around cities and settlements in West
Africa, typically defended by soldiers with bow and poison tipped
arrows. The earthworks are some of the largest man made structures in
Africa and the world such as the wall of Benin and
Sungbo's Eredo.
In Central Africa, the Angola region, one find preference for ditches,
which were more successful for defense against wars with Europeans.
African infantry did not just include men. The state of
Dahomey included all-female units, the so-called
Dahomey Amazons, who were personal body guards of the king. The Queen Mother of Benin had her own personal army, 'Queens Own.'
Nile Valley
Ancient
Egyptian weaponry include bows and arrow, maces, clubs, scimitars,
swords, shields, and knives. Body armor was made of bands of leathers
and sometimes laid with scales of copper. Horse-drawn chariots were used
to deliver archers into the battle field. Weapons were initially made
with stone, wood, and copper, later bronze, and later iron.
In 1260, the first portable
hand cannons
(midfa) loaded with explosive gunpowder, the first example of a handgun
and portable firearm, were used by the Egyptians to repel the Mongols
at the
Battle of Ain Jalut.
The cannons had an explosive gunpowder composition almost identical to
the ideal compositions for modern explosive gunpowder. They were also
the first to use dissolved talc for fire protection, and they wore
fireproof clothing, to which Gunpowder cartridges were attached.
[112]
Aksumite weapons were mainly made of iron: iron spears, iron swords,
and iron knives called poniards. Shields were made of buffalo hide. In
the latter part of the 19th century, Ethiopia made a concerted effort to
modernize her army. She acquired repeating rifles, artillery, and
machine guns. This modernization facilitated the Ethiopian victory over
the Italians at the Tigray town of Adwa in the 1896
Battle of Adwa. Ethiopia was one of the few African countries to use artillery in colonial wars.
There are also a breastplate armor made of the horny back plates of crocodile from
Egypt, which was given to the
Pitt Rivers Museum as part of the archaeological Founding Collection in 1884.
[113]
North Africa and the Sahel
The first use of cannons as siege machine at the siege of
Sijilmasa in 1274, according to 14th-century historian
Ibn Khaldun.
Mossi cavalry in the Sahel
The Sahelian military consisted of cavalry and infantry. Cavalry
consisted of shielded, mounted soldiers. Body armor was chain mail or
heavy quilted cotton. Helmets were made of leather, elephant, or hippo
hide. Imported horses were shielded. Horse armor consisted of quilted
cotton packed with kapok fiber and copper face plate. The stirrups could
be used as weapon to disembowel enemy infantry or mounted soldiers at
close range. Weapons included the sword, lance, battle-axe, and
broad-bladed spear.
[114] The infantry were armed with bow and iron tipped arrows. Iron tips were usually laced with poison, from the West African plant
Strophantus hispidus. Quivers of 40–50 arrows would be carried into battle.
[115] Later, muskets were introduced.
Southern Africa
At the
Battle of Isandhlawana on 22 January 1879, the Zulu army defeated British invading troops.
From the 1960s to the 1980s,
South Africa pursued research into
weapons of mass destruction, including
nuclear,
biological, and
chemical weapons.
Six nuclear weapons were assembled. With the anticipated changeover to a
majority-elected government in the 1990s, the South African government
dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, the first nation in the world
which voluntarily gave up nuclear arms it had developed itself.
[116]
Commerce
Numerous metal objects and other items were used as currency in Africa.
[117] They are as follows:
cowrie shells,
salt, gold (dust or solid), copper, ingots, iron chains, tips of iron
spears, iron knives, cloth in various shapes (square, rolled, etc.).
[118] Copper
was as valuable as gold in Africa. Copper was not as widespread and
more difficult to acquire, except in Central Africa, than gold. Other
valuable metals included lead and tin.
Salt was also as valuable as gold. Because of its scarcity, it was used as currency.
North Africa
Carthage
imported gold, copper, ivory, and slaves from tropical Africa. Carthage
exported salt, cloth, metal goods. Before camels were used in the
trans-Saharan trade pack animals, oxen, donkeys, mules, and horses were
utilized. Extensive use of
camels began in the 1st century CE. Carthage minted gold, silver, bronze, and
electrum(mix
gold and silver) coins mainly for fighting wars with Greeks and Romans.
Most of their fighting force were mercenaries, who had to be paid.
[119]
Islamic North Africa made use of the
Almoravid dinar and
Fatimid dinar, gold coins. The
Almoravid dinar and the
Fatimid dinar were printed on gold from the Sahelian empires. The
ducat of Genoa and Venice and the florine of Florence were also printed on gold from the Sahelian empires.
[120]
West Africa and the Sahel
Cowries have been used as currency in West Africa since the 11th
century when their use was first recorded near Old Ghana. Its use may
have been much older.
Sijilmasa in present-day Morocco seems to be a major source of cowries in the trans-Saharan trade.
[121]
In western Africa, shell money was usual tender up until the middle of
the 19th century. Before the abolition of the slave trade there were
large shipments of cowry shells to some of the English ports for
reshipment to the slave coast. It was also common in West Central Africa
as the currency of the Kingdom of Kongo called locally nzimbu. As the
value of the cowry was much greater in West Africa than in the regions
from which the supply was obtained, the trade was extremely lucrative.
In some cases the gains are said to have been 500%. The use of the cowry
currency gradually spread inland in Africa. By about 1850 Heinrich
Barth found it fairly widespread in Kano, Kuka, Gando, and even
Timbuktu. Barth relates that in Muniyoma, one of the ancient divisions
of Bornu, the king's revenue was estimated at 30,000,000 shells, with
every adult male being required to pay annually 1000 shells for himself,
1000 for every pack-ox, and 2000 for every slave in his possession. In
the countries on the coast, the shells were fastened together in strings
of 40 or 100 each, so that fifty or twenty strings represented a
dollar; but in the interior they were laboriously counted one by one,
or, if the trader were expert, five by five. The districts mentioned
above received their supply of kurdi, as they were called, from the west
coast; but the regions to the north of Unyamwezi, where they were in
use under the name of simbi, were dependent on Muslim traders from
Zanzibar. The shells were used in the remoter parts of Africa until the
early 20th century, but gave way to modern currencies. The shell of the
land snail,
Achatina monetaria, cut into circles with an open center was also used as coin in Benguella, Portuguese West Africa.
The
Ghana Empire,
Mali Empire, and
Songhay Empire
were major exporters of gold, iron, tin, slaves, spears, javelin,
arrows, bows, whips of hippo hide. They imported salt, horses, wheat,
raisins, cowries, dates, copper, henna, olives, tanned hides, silk,
cloth, brocade, Venetian pearls, mirrors, and tobacco.
Some of the currencies used in the Sahel included paper debt or IOU's
for long distance trade, gold coins, and the mitkal (gold dust)
currency. Gold dust that weighed 4.6 grams was equivalent to 500 or
3,000 cowries. Square cloth, four spans on each side, called chigguiya
was used around the Senegal River.
In
Kanem cloth was the major currency. A cloth currency called dandi was also in widespread use.
[121]
Nile Valley
Ancient Egypt imported ivory, gold, incense, hardwood, and ostrich feather.
[122]
Nubia exported gold, cotton/cotton cloth, ostrich feathers, leopard skins, ivory, ebony, and iron/iron weapons.
[123]
Horn of Africa
Aksum exported ivory, glass crystal, brass, copper, myrrh, and
frankincense. The Aksumites imported silver, gold, olive oil, and wine.
[124]
The Aksumites produced coins around 270 CE, under the rule of king
Endubis. Aksumite coins were issued in gold, silver, and bronze.
East Africa
The
Swahili served as middlemen. They connected African goods to Asian
markets and Asian goods to African markets. Their most in demand export
was Ivory. They exported
ambergris,
gold, leopard skins, slaves, and tortoise shell. They imported pottery
and glassware from Asia. They also manufactured items such as cotton,
glass and shell beads. Imports and locally manufactured goods were used
as trade to acquire African goods. Trade links included the Arabian
Peninsula, Persia, India, and China. The Swahili also minted silver and
copper coins
