What Was? A study of ancient Africa. See below a section from our text.

Africa: The Land, Peoples, and Early Civilizations

'Read and Understand
1. Africa is a diverse continent.
2. Africa is the birthplace of humankind.
3. Trade communities arose in the east and south. 4. Trade empires flourished in the western Sudan.

Key Terms
oral tradition
griot archaeology botany linguistics savanna desertification oasis
trade language sedentary pharaoh hieroglyph syncretism divine kingship

In the beginning, according to the  Yoruba, the world was a watery place. Qludomare. the Almighty, decided to make  the marshy land into solid earth. He asked the chief of the gods Orjsha-nla, to make the ground solid. Olodumare gave Orisha-nla some loose dirt, a hen, and a pigeon and sent him on his way.
Orisha-nla climbed down a spider web that connected the heavens to the earth. He threw the dirt onto a watery place and at once the hen and pigeon began to spread it around, making solid ground. Orisha-nla went back to the heavens to report to Olodumare that he had been successful.
Olodumare then asked the chameleon to see if Orisha-nla had indeed been successful. On his first trip, the chameleon said the earth was wide but still not dry enough. On his second trip, the chameleon said the earth was both wide and dry enough.

It took four days to finish creating the earth. On the fifth day, no work was done. This was a day to worship Olodumare, the Almighty. This creation story has been passed down orally for centuries by the Y oruba, an ethnic group in what is now Nigeria. To the Yoruba, the place where the world began was their holy city of lie, whose name means "that which is wide."

The Yoruba creation story is an example of the oral tradition. Most African societies have a well-developed oral tradition system of passing history down from one generation to the next.
Some African societies, especially in West Africa, have professional historians called griots who are trained in the oral tradition. In the past, griots were typically assigned to kings and were entrusted with all the important facts about their people. Griots also reminded kings of traditions that had to be followed.
An African griot who practices the oral tradition today explains his work this way. "I teach kings the history of their ancestors so that the lives of the ancients might serve them as an example, for the world is old, but the future springs from the past.”
Much of what we now know about Africa's distant past is a result of the griots' work. In this lesson, you will learn about Africa's past. As you will read, the history of Africa in fact goes to the very birth of humankind.


Africa is a diverse continent.

Western historians have not always recognized the importance of the oral tradition. Because many African societies did not have a written language when Europeans came to the continent centuries ago, Europeans decided that Africans had no history. In fact, until recently, most Western scholars believed that African history began only with the coming of Europeans.
The Europeans were using their own standards to judge African culture and therefore dismissed the Africans' rich cultural heritage and achievements. This cultural ignorance has led to many misconceptions about Africa, some of which persist to this day. For example, one popular misconception is that Africa is a land full of jungles, when in fact, only about one seventh of Africa is covered by jungles.
Africa is a continent of great diversity, both in the land and in the peoples. Perhaps one reason why Westerners have continued to see Africa in only stereotypical ways is because of an ignorance of this diversity.

Historians use many methods to study African history.
Historians are mindful of Africa's diversity as they piece together its past. They must also use many different methods. You have seen how the oral tradition is important to the study of Africa. Some stories tell about great battles. Others tell about times when crops were good or bad. When these stories are collected and analyzed by historians, they provide important knowledge and information about the African past. Other tools that African historians use, besides written records, are those of archaeologists, botanists, and linguists.
Archaeology is the study of ancient societies. Archaeologists study material remains to learn about past ways of life. Botany is the study of plants. Through botany, scientists learn about the development of food production and the role that it has played in the evolution and the shaping of African cultures. Linguistics is the study of languages. African historians use linguistics to understand and interpret the movements of African peoples. By comparing languages, scientists can determine the time when related languages separated from one another.

Geography shaped Africa's history.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the African continent is its size. The landmass of the continent and its adjacent islands is 11,700,000 square miles. This area is about 3 times the size of the United States. The continent is 4,600 miles wide at its widest point. From north to south, the continent measures 5,200 miles. A single state in West Africa, Mali, is larger than the combined areas of California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.
Africa has great geographical diversity deserts, snow-covered mountains, and woodland forests. Even though they are the same distance from the equator, the tropical locations of Zambia in southern Africa and Nigeria lli West Africa have markedly different climates. The reason is the difference in their altitudes.

Clumps of vegetation, including grasses and umbrella-shaped trees, permit easy grazing on Africa's savanna. The natural balance of the savanna has been affected by the prevalence of domesticated herds. The domesticated animals eat the grasses that once were eaten only
, by the natural herds of grazing animals. Competition for food and overgrazing result. In addition, people often kill natural predators when they hunt near the domesticated animals, which affects nature's balance between prey and predators. What solutions would you suggest for these problems?

Tropical rain forests The tropical rain forests of the African continent are found in the western part of equatorial Africa along the Guinea coast and Zaire. The climate here is characterized by high temperatures of 68°F (20°C) and an annual rainfall in excess of 50 inches (127 mm). Trees grow well in this region and yield such valuable wood products as mahogany and ebony, as well as palm oil from the fruit of the palm tree.
A variety of crops grow in the tropical rain forest region. These crops include manioc, yams, corn, rice, sweet potatoes, plantains, bananas, coffee, and cotton. Important mineral deposits are also found in the tropical rain forest. These minerals include gold, copper, coal, diamonds, manganese, iron ore, tin, zinc, bauxite, and titanium.
Savannas The tropical forests thin off into the savanna belt. The savanna consists of tropical woodland and grassland. As the rainfall diminishes, the rain forest is succeeded by woodlands that cover about 25 percent of the African continent. The absence of dense woodlands allows the people in the savanna to keep herds and live a nomadic life.

4From the savanna come agricultural products such as sorghum, wheat, peanuts, millet, cotton, and bananas. The economic mainstay of this region is livestock, including cattle and sheep. This area also contains mineral resources such as gold, diamonds, coal, petroleum, copper, manganese, iron ore, phosphates, zinc, copper, and tin.
Deserts The savanna woodland gives way to bush and scrub and merges with the desert. The two major desert areas of Africa are the Sahara and the Kalahari. The Sahara, whose name comes from an Arab word meaning" desert," is the world's largest wasteland. (The term subSaharan is used to describe Africa south of the Sahara.) The Sahara started to become a desert about 10,000 years ago, when the climate in the region became less wet and the rivers dried up. When green land becomes desert over a period of time, the process is known as desertification.
In spite of. its forbidding nature, the Sahara has not been an impenetrable barrier. For centuries, trade routes across the Sahara have linked the northern and southern parts of Africa. Palm groves and oases provided convenient stopping
places when crossing the desert. An oasis is a place where underground water comes to the surface in a spring or well.

Highlands The highlands are characterized by their elevation of more than 5,000 feet. The highlands are located in east, central, and southern Africa. The cool temperate nature of this region has attracted European settlements.
The commercial crops in the highlands consist of coffee, cotton, sisal, coconut, tea, cashew nuts, and rice. Coffee is also a highly valued crop and is widely grown. Valuable minerals in the highlands include diamonds, copper, gold, tin, soda, ash, and phosphates.

Rivers have linked African regions.
The rivers of the African continent have been a source of inspiration and imagination. The Nile, the Niger, the Zaire, and the Zambezi rivers have played important roles in the continent's history. They are among the longest and largest river systems in the world. These rivers sometimes represented cultural or political boundaries between groups of people. Sometimes they served as transportation links between regions.
The rivers also served as water highways for European exploration of the African continent in the 1800's. European explorers claimed to

The lower Volta River, shown above, is part of a tODD-mile river system in western Africa. It is but one of Africa's great river systems that have served as a transportation routes for thousands of years. Why are rivers often considered the world's oldest ready-made roads?

have discovered these rivers, not taking into account that Africans had developed major civilizations along these rivers centuries before Europeans entered the continent. Many of these explorers gave European names to the rivers, lakes, and falls that they encountered. The Zaire, for example, was long known by its European name, the Congo. The African name for one of the world's most spectacular falls is musi oa tunya, which means "smoke that thunders." When the famous missionary David Livingstone came upon the falls, he named them Victoria Falls after the British queen.


Africa has cultural diversity.
Africa's many environments have contributed to the creation of cultural diversity on the continent. A complete map of Africa would include the locations of the many hundreds of different peoples. Some scholars classify African peoples according to their physical type and skin color. Because of a mixing of peoples through centuries of intermarriage, this sort of classification is not very useful in most parts of the continent. Some nations, such as Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Egypt, have long histories of interaction between different physical types, producing populations with varying skin colors and varying genetic features. These parts of the continent have served as historical crossroads, linking Africa with other parts of the world.

Language Families of Modern Africa

Map Study    .
Use this map and the political map on page 2 to determine which language family dominates three different African nations.

_,Using language classifications is one way to discuss the diverse groups in Africa. More than 800 languages are spoken on the African continent. Some of the languages are spoken by large groups of people, others by small groups. Within some language groupings are hundreds of distinct languages and many hundred more dialects.
African languages spoken on the continent are divided into four major groups: Afro-Asiatic, Congo-Kordofawian, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan. Afro-Asiatic group languages are common in the north, northeast, and certain parts of central Africa. The Congo- Kordofawian family of languages is the largest group and includes languages spoken in West Africa and South Africa. The Nilo-Saharan group is spoken in some areas around the Nile and Niger rivers and the western Sudan. Khoisan is characterized by sounds made with a click of the tongue. It is spoken by the Khoi and the San in southern Africa.
Many Africans are able to speak a number of local languages. There are also trade languages, such as Swahili, that are used by a large number of people. A trade language might be a combination of languages, or a simplification of one language. Because of colonization, (see Chapter 3) many Africans use the languages of their colonizers to communicate among themselves.






"Lesson Review 1

Define: (a) oral tradition, (b) griot,
(c) archaeology, (d) botany, (e) linguistics,
(f) savanna, (g) desertification, (h) oasis,
(i) trade language
Identify: musi oa tunya
Answer:
1. What functions do the griots serve?
2. In what ways is Africa geographically
diverse?
3. What are the four major language groups in
Africa?
4. Why are trade languages useful?