The ancient structure is the last surviving wonder of the ancient world. It was situated between the Sahara and the headwaters of the Sngal and Niger rivers, in an area that now comprises southeastern Mauritania and part of Mali. Although it is generally agreed that the term social structure refers to . Module Ten, Activity Two - Exploring Africa However, there have been many MWI3NWQ1OWEzZmIwYTEzNDljYTRjZTRiNTE5OTBiMjQ1YTI5NDk3ODM0ZDY5 Beside having been balkanized into several countries and branched among myriads of ethnic groups each speaking its own language and having its own cultural heritage, West Africa caste system constitutes yet another layer of its social structure. 2010-2011 provides a reassessment of the history of South Africa in the wake of that country's transition to majority rule. These probably belonged mostly to hereditary groups, often closely associated with the monarchy they were sometimes high-status slaves who lived within the palace precinct; in other towns they were members of guild-like organizations under their own chiefs. They could make the Nile overflow, cause famine, or even bring death. The histories and cultures of Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia and North Africa are covered elsewhere. Later, they faced competition from Hausa traders, who created an even more far flung network. At the top were the gods, such as Ra, Osiris, and Isis. Where there is a spring, a lake or a river, however, cultivation is possible, and in some areas, for example in the inner delta of the River Niger (see below), or on the shores of Lake Chad in West Africa, or the Great Lakes of central Africa, intensive cultivation has allowed concentrations of dense population to grow up. All Africans believed in spiritual beings. Generated by Wordfence at Sat, 4 Mar 2023 18:37:22 GMT.Your computer's time: document.write(new Date().toUTCString());. In other traditional African societies, class structure has been based on levels of control or servitude. South Africa, - California Digital Library Africa has some giant lakes, including a number strung out down the spine of the continent, from Lake Turkana in northern Kenya to Lake Malawi in south-east Africa. Although the majority of Africans were farmers, at least from the late 1st millennium onwards, large tracts of land were inhabited by nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists. The more high-status and long-distance traders, however, were men. The shores of these large bodies of water have been suitable for intensive agriculture, allowing some of Africas most notable kingdoms to flourish. They also applied a wide range of ointments, and practiced bone setting, surgery and skilled midwifery. YmNlZWRhOWNhNTAxYjRmYjc3ZWNhZDYyMGMyNGVhMjMyYjYyODYzMmMxZTQ1 Each passage features one paragraph of informational text and 4 multiple-choice questions. The Sahara desert forms a major barrier to contacts between the cities and states of the Mediterranean region and the peoples to its south. Apart from in West Africa and on the Swahili coast, where true cities had developed, African towns tended to have the appearance of large villages, or clusters of villages. Craft workers were often dedicated to meeting the needs of the ruler and the elite, their workshops located within the royal compound. Skill in this field could only be obtained by long experience and involved a mastery of mysteries which was reminiscent of magic. All climate zones in sub-Saharan Africa were characterized by a highly uneven settlement pattern. Sumer SOCIAL CLASSES - 8 CHARACTERISTICS OF A CIVILIZATION Facts about Ancient Africa 2: the important civilization The larger the state the more resources it could commit to defense and expansion. A common idea was that the founders of a particular community, on first settling the area, had made a pact with the spirits of the land in order to ensure good harvests. The surviving examples re terracotta, though there may well have been a much more substantial tradition of wood carving which lay behind these. 5 Ancient African social structures that thrived before colonisers The continent of Africa covers several broad climatic zones. Learn about the Bantu migrations,. Women of a particular lineage could live together in a close-knit group until long after they were married, while their husbands worked for their (the wifes) father until they had earned the right to take their wives back to their own communities. The Political Structures of West African Colonies - Nicholas Barry There was constant tension between the generations, which could spill over into real violence. This crosses much of the continent from east to west, from the Atlantic coast to the highlands of Ethiopia. The gold miners of West Africa formed a hereditary, and in some ways privileged, group of workers. Climatic zones Social structure | Definition, Examples, Theories, & Facts To survive in these harsh conditions a person needed his kin around him. The ancient kingdom of Ethiopia was named after its capital city, Axum. The main structure of the Awilu class people were considered precious in Hammurabi's Code and they were richer than the other two majorclasses in the society. Surrounded as they were by vast stretches of bush, agricultural villages and the human societies they sheltered were fragile places, always under threat from the encroaching forest. This was that there was a fundamental distinction between the cultivated and the wild, between civilization and savagery. The geography of Sub-Saharan Africa poses severe challenges to the rise and spread of pre-modern civilization. The unequal access to women made for severe tensions between males of different generations the young men felt frustration, envy and anger with the older men for monopolizing the female sex. In West Africa, the slow multiplication of population concentrations laid the basis for further expansion. PDF The Undiluted African Community: Values, The Family, Orphanage and Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, therefore, metalworkers were held in awe. Gumov vanika do kufra Fiat Doblo Maxi od 2010 (2-miesta) Fiat DOBLO 2/2010- autodiely, nhradn diely. Upon Africa's soils our prehistoric relatives have walked side by side. Africa has an exceptionally hostile disease environment, West Africa most of all; malaria, leprosy, tsetse fly and smallpox are only a few of the killer diseases of the continent, attacking not only humans but, in the last case, their animals as well. Reading Passage Compare And Contrast Teaching Resources | TPT The Mali empire, for example, had secretaries to conduct foreign correspondence, but its internal administration only employed word of mouth. In river floodplains. African hospitality can be defined as that extension of generosity, given freely without strings attached (Ekeke & Ekeopora, 2010). Such traders were men, and they ranged from single itinerant traders with perhaps a donkey to carry his goods, to those in charge of caravans of donkeys or, in the desert, of camels. The sheer effort of doing so, as well as the obstacles to population growth (such as the tsetse fly, mentioned above, which kills people as well as animals), meant that such clearings have formed isolated pockets of comparatively dense population surrounded by vast tracts of untamed forest. In : General history of Africa, V: Africa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, 5, p. 895-905 Language : English Also available in : Also available in : Franais Also available in : Portugus Year of publication : 1992 Licence type : CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. We learn about their beliefs and religion and the important structures that still stand in Egypt today. NTNjZjkxMjQ0YmE1NWYxYzRjOTRkMTFjNWZkYWE5MjRjMWE1NjA0Mzk5Yzhh Establishing a new settlement was not just about clearing forest or scrub and creating fields for crops; it was about taming the land, seeking the permission of the spiritual forces which controlled a patch to settled on it, and making a contract with them to bless them with protection and fertility. This reflects the much more limited role of trade outside West Africa. Similarly, belief that spiritual power came only through dead ancestors was common amongst herding societies. Learning support for teachers and students. This task would be helped by the fact that a defeated ruler had, by definition, been shown to have lost the support of the gods, and the victorious ruler had proved himself to be the more spiritually powerful. Africas other rivers are all interrupted by falls and rapids along their courses. From the 17th century onwards, indigenous African crops were supplemented by crops introduced from America, especially maize, cassava, beans and sweet potatoes. A man needed wives and children to help him cultivate his fields or keep his cattle, to give him support in old age, and to provide him with descendants whose veneration would aide him in the afterlife. The society of ancient Egypt was strictly divided into a hierarchy with the king at the top and then his vizier, the members of his court, priests and scribes, regional governors (eventually called 'nomarchs'), the generals of the military (after the period of the New Kingdom, c. 1570- c. 1069 BCE), artists and craftspeople, government overseers At a much higher level, some kingdoms gave high status to female members of the royal family. Begins with an engaging introduction, including an original thesis of the essay's main point Identifies three (3) civilizations introduced in the first half of the class Compares and contrasts the values and beliefs of each civilization Provides specific evidence, including well-integrated, appropriate . MWZkZDVjMmYwOWFkODY0ZjRiZmVjNWQ3ZmIwYzIyOWVjYjk1MzNlNGE5OWU2 Next were the farmers. On the other hand, to maintain status and authority required a Big Man to be generous why else would other men want to be his followers? As such it was essentially a form of theatre. The General History of Africa ( Ki-Zerbo, et al. ODI0YWEwOGYyOTY5ZGVhNjEzMWUzOTFjMGEzYTA3ZjUzZjNkM2EyNDZhODVk A popular form of leisure was a board game called mankala. In cattle-herding societies, and some crop-growing societies which were in close proximity to them, the young men were grouped into an age set of junior warriors. In forest regions, away from lakes and rivers, human porterage was the only means of transport as the presence of tsetse fly meant that animals could not be used; this was by definition very labour intensive and meant that agricultural produce could travel only short distances. Imperialism Africa was among the last regions of the globe to be subject to imperial rule. Come drought, famine or epidemic, however, clusters would contract again. In North Africa, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, there is a narrow zone of temperate, Mediterranean climate. Social There were six social classes in Ancient Ghana. social structure, in sociology, the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together. European travelers to Africa were surprised to find, even in the interior of the continent, inoculation being practiced. The original settlers became the founding ancestors of the new community, and because it was they who had struck the original pact with the spirits of the land, it was they alone who could communicated with them, even (or especially) after death. Much more frequently however, a kingdom simply fragmented into its constituent population clusters. The foundation myths of several states, including the kingdom of Benin, tell of populations inviting a foreigner to settle among them, to settle their disputes and provide them with leadership. It offers a general survey of the geographical environments they inhabited; their settlements, social structures and economies; and their religions and cultures. This was a form of draughts, and was played in private rather than in public. Society - Ancient Africa - Kingdom of Kush - Weebly Not a few chiefly dynasties traced their ancestry back to such a figure. The sculptural tradition in West Africa goes back to the terracotta figures of the Nok culture of the early first millennia BCE and CE, and began to reach a peak in the 13th and14th centuries in Ife, in Yorubaland (in modern day Nigeria). MWQxZmFmZDU1YzRiOTgwN2YwNjgwNGEyMWVmYmVjZTQ1YTI4ODkzMTA1OGQ2 NGMzYjY2N2JjMDIxN2EyZWI0ZmM1ODc0MjY4OTQzYmM1YmJkMTViN2U5NjAw ZWFhZmI1NmY5ZjVhZjJjNjYxYTFjNzUxMjgzZTE4MGZhOWIyODQyZWE4ZGIz But it was ancestors with whom these people directly interacted, and approaching them with sacrifices of cattle. Together with drought, famine, epidemic, violence, and an unforgiving food-producing environment, it is easy to see how African populations struggled to grow. It is possible that in such cases systems of exchange were focussed on the palace, which acted as centers of redistribution. But humans also were traded: it has been estimated that from the mid-second millennium CE perhaps seven thousand captives a year were taken north across the Sahara from the south, to the slave markets of North Africa and the Middle East. It is inhabited by the San hunter-gatherer people who have adapted their lifestyle to this forbidding environment over 20,000 years. Sometimes these were royal kinsmen or aristocrats, at other times royal slaves completely dependent upon the king for his authority. Each village consisted of a lineage group, or clan, tracing its origin to a founding ancestor. Hypothesis 2: Social structures cause inequity and injustice against the meaningful participating in economic decision-making and benefiting from opportunities in a society. Those humans whose livelihood depended on adventuring into the bush hunters above all but also herbalists and iron workers, who needed wood for their furnaces were regarded with awe, for they must be protected by strong magic to survive such trips.if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'timemaps_com-leader-4','ezslot_13',198,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-timemaps_com-leader-4-0');if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'timemaps_com-leader-4','ezslot_14',198,'0','1'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-timemaps_com-leader-4-0_1'); .leader-4-multi-198{border:none !important;display:block !important;float:none !important;line-height:0px;margin-bottom:15px !important;margin-left:auto !important;margin-right:auto !important;margin-top:15px !important;max-width:100% !important;min-height:250px;min-width:250px;padding:0;text-align:center !important;}. NDJiMmE4NmUzM2JjYWVjMzMwOGIyMzIwMTJjODRhNTY1YjBiYWE5ZTA5NTIx Ancient West Africa: Bantu Migrations & the Stateless Society HUM 2213 Midterm Paper essay. The resulting dissent, fueled by machismo, ambition, or desire for land, might lead to the exodus of a group of young men to a new location. MzVjNDBhYTk5MTk1YTUxYzM0ODRjOTE3MGZiNmNiNjg5MWQ5NGYxNDBiNDdm Many towns were centers of craft production. Such was their reputation for effective healing that the early Europeans resorted to witch doctors, including Christian missionaries. M2M4NGNlYzZmM2IzNmFlYTA3OGFjMDcwMWRiZjdmY2UyMzM5ZDg5OTcwNjA1 In the West African state of Bornu, for example, some royal women controlled extensive territories and were active in the government of the realm. However, at the very least these would have had a psychological impact which in many cases would have contributed to the healing process. Small, isolated areas of dense population were surrounded by large tracts of sparsely peopled wilderness. New findings from a study of 12 diverse groups in Africa shed new light on the origin of modern humans, ancient . The great majority of this area is far too dry for agriculture whether crop cultivation or animal grazing of any kind. YWIzMzRhYjk5MGRlMDRiYzhlZmIyMjQ5ZjgwODE5MTIxZjAwNjdhODZiM2Y4 The herding way of life probably dated to the third millennium BCE, and preceded agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. MjU3ZDQ3NDE0ZGRiM2NlMTZjMmE3NTQ0ODIxMzVlMzExZDc3ZTk0NDYyNGQ4 MzE4Y2I3MDllMDBjODdjOGU4NDEwZGMxMWUzYzYxMDlmYmI2OWNiZmY1MGMw OTZhNjdjMmQ4MzVlNTAyODMzY2ZjOTFlOWE3NjJkOGI5NjVmODQ2NGRhN2Y2 The African History is a number one educational website that features General history of Africa which include Ancient & Pre-colonial Africa, Ancient African civilizations, Empires/Kingdoms, Great Ancient African rulers, African Culture, global black history and news. Only the driest and coolest regions escaped this disease. Its capital, Great Zimbabwe, is the largest stone structure in precolonial Southern Africa. Camels were employed in the long-distance trans-Saharan trade, and donkeys were the normal mode of transport in the West African savannah. In a few, more sophisticated kingdoms, such as Songhai, power was more centralized, with the state divided into provinces ruled by governors appointed by the king. Indeed, in some areas, particularly where grassland and forest met, all three modes were practiced locally, resulting in a particularly fruitful exchange of produce. Between ten and fifty people might live here, sometimes much more, in a complex of houses forming one compound. Many of them rose and fell throughout the African history. African religions. Slavery was widespread in traditional African societies. The unequal access to women made for severe tensions between males of different generations the young men felt frustration, envy and anger with the older men for monopolizing the female sex. At an individual and family level, dealing with the challenge to build up numbers manifested itself in the supreme importance attached to the production of children. The famous one that can be associated with the ancient Africa is the pharaoh and their pyramids. makes it the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara Desert. Many studies have been mostly about political centralisation. Also the leaders were chosen if they were the strongest to beat everyone who opposed them or the smartest as in the most strategic (Adams, 2016). Men captured in war or raids were often sacrificed to the gods, and the wives, retainers and servants of dead rulers were frequently buried with him. Suspects were often the victims of mob violence. This The Call of the Wild by Jack London Middle School reading unit and novel study is exactly what you need to teach your . J. Clyde Mitchell, The Yao Village: a Study in the Social Structure of a Malawian Tribe. The advancements made in the ancient world continue to influence our societies today. Government and Economy - Ancient Africa - Google This was usually played communally, and noisily, in the open air, with plenty of noise. The effects of disease were compounded by diets amongst crop-growing peoples low in animal protein and vitamins, in milk for infants, and, for many places, restricted access to clean fresh water. The narrow Nile corridor was home for one of the greatest and earliest of all human civilizations, ancient Egypt; but south of Egypt a series of impassable rapids severely limits contact with the interior of Africa. The salt miners, on the other hand, were a dependent group not much better than slaves. They must also have all been centers of exchange, yet many African towns, especially outside West Africa (where commercial activity was a major function in urban settlements), seem to have had no markets. However, population pressures often forced farmers out onto drier land. Around the year 3000 BC, agriculture arose independently in Ethiopia with crops like coffee, teff, finger millet, sorghum, barley, and ensete. OTIxY2QzNGMwMmQ0OGI0YWIzNDFhOThjNGU4ZTVhM2IzYjQyOTkzYjMwZmNk Further south a huge, well-nigh impenetrable swamp, the Sud, acts as a further major barrier. It has captivated visitors since it was built as a royal burial chamber some 4,500 years ago. Some towns specialized in a particular industry, such as leather-making, bead-making or metal-work, for which they were renowned over a large area.