Homework essay help Was Africa a place without a history

I have to write an essay and I have to use primary sources. I had no trouble finding them but a lot of the primary sources contradict each other. The subject of the essay is was Africa a uncivilized place barbaric place........

So with some people ancient historians with different opinions who is right ?

 

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I am not one to interfere with a homework assignment, but if the topic is "Was Africa a place without a history" then I suspect the topic is framed in a way that is supposed to compel yuou to answer "Africa has a history."

First, every place has a history, even if it is only a geological history, so the absurdity of the topic leads me to conclude that it is trying to force a particular answer. If the topic were "The history of subsaharan Africa had little impact on the development of modern culture" that might be less suggestive.

Second, I don't think the goal is to utterly ignor or disprove any sources. If there are sources onm both sides, you present both sides. In this particular case you have to ask whether the "pro-history" commentators are making facts up, or if the "anti-history" arguers are. Assuming there is emotion and bias on both sides, you try to boil down the "facts" being asserted. Some asserted "facts" will prove untenably biased, like "Negroes are like animals." All men are animals for heavens' sakes.

On the other hand, it seems likely that Zanj do dance and play instruments (including the tambourine). The Ethiopians may or may not have fought (or defeated) the Dhu Nowas, but in both cases those seem to be facts (or not) capable of independent investigation. You can distill some facts from these narratives and see if they can be independently corroborated. (Note though that if the topic of your paper were on the pervasiveness of racism, for example, then those statements of opinion are themselves strong (and primary) evidence. The nature of what you are looking for is a factor in determining how credible you should find a given source.)

Most likely the point of the assignment is to parse through the sources in this way to demonstrate how you analyze them and why you feel some sources are superior to others. The reasons you favor some sources over others should then be clearly stated for the reader.

Once you have established why certain sources are credible and others not (in your view, at least; objectively speaking, there is no right or wrong) you can then apply the credible sources to the overarching question of the paper.

 

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This site looks helpful.
http://wysinger.homestead.com/ancientafrica.html

 

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Northern Africa has a different history than the rest of Africa as Northern Africa was home to Carthage/Phoenicia and Egypt. The rest of Africa seems to have been inhabited by two types of black peoples. The traditional tribal ones and a nomadic people called the San who lived in small hunter groups and used poisoned arrows. The movie The God's Must be Crazy gets into the differences a bit.

 

There is no "right" and "wrong" in history. There is only narrative from both perspectives which go on until the dominant narrative survives. The fact that conflicting narratives can survive is a tribute to freedom of expression. There is no place without history, just places where history was not recorded or where due to wars and turmoil, storytellers or recorded history was lost.

Fortunately, some of the blanks can be filled in by painstaking research

http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimeline.htm

 

Historians make a distinction between History -- based on the written record -- and Archaeology -- based on the interpretation of artefacts. This is what comes to my mind when I read the title of the required essay.

Writing began in the Middle East, including Egypt -- which country has almost more history than anywhere else. However, much of Africa is devoid of indigenous written records, so we have only the impressions of outsiders: Arab traders until the 15th Century, and then European explorers and colonists. One may say, therefore, that there is an historical void in regard to Africa that does not exist in Europe or Asia.

 

Ethiopia was an ancient litterate society witrh a long history - one of the oldest christian churches and empires. Nubia southern egypt and sudan a very old civilisation too

 

Appeal to relativism! The natives didn't think they were barbarous or uncivilized, therefore they weren't! Essay finished!

If it needs to be longer I suggest looking up relativism and writing about how that came about.

 

Pretty sure there is a lot of history in Africa, yet to be discovered.

 

I have heard of Great Zimbabwe referred to as a "city" though it then raises the question of how that is defined.

 

That's a good answer. The opening question disregards the point that it appears African civilisations didn't develop much in the way of writing, as far as we know.

African civilisations have always been at a disadvantage because no one actually wrote anything about them in a romantic sense... therefore no one ever went looking for their remains.

Ask yourself what inspired Schliemann to go looking for Troy.
Was it natural curiosity, or curiosity inspired by Homer?

 

How certain can you be of that?

Consider the importance and impact of written language upon civilisation, and then factor in prejudice with regard to written records and "history".
In terms of pure size and influence, does anyone actually know what role "Zimbabwe" played in the history of Africa and what led to its eventual demise?
Does anyone actually know when it arose to begin with, or even consider that it is one of the very few African cities we have any knowledge of at all?

Uruk came and went within the course of a thousand years or so... and possibly only died as a result of the effect of environmental destruction. We have even less information regarding the rise of Zimbabwe.
We can only surmise as to the what led to the demise of Uruk through surviving written records. We can only surmise what led to the fall of Catal Hoyuk. These conclusions are conjecture, at best.
Without writing we have very little to go on.

 

Parts of ancient Africa was very civilized .... north Africa had the Egyptian pharaonic empire ...later that area was under greek influence ( Ptolemais, one of Alexander the great`s generals took over ) .... and then it became roman after the fall of Cleopatra , the western parts of north Africa was under the phoenicians and later the romans .... later under the vandals ... and then under the byzantines .......
Further down Ethiopia was an ancient superpower ....... with civilization, coinage, written language , religion and a big army .... controlling adjacent countries including part of Arabia and traded with India .....
Benin had old civilizations as did Zimbabwe ..........

 

Beware Afrocentrism

Keep an eye out for misleading accounts by Afrocentrist's (a common one is that the Egyptians were black). A good book on this is 'Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History' by Mary Lefkowitz.

 

Africa was home of many advanced civilizations before white people came and destroyed them, leading to the myth of Africans as uncivilized barbarians.

 

Correct. The barbarians were those that stole the African`s lands, enslaved them, and force fed them incongruous religions.

 

I spent 6 months traveling in Africa and found an interesting idea there. North of the Sahara I got the impression that the people there did not consider themselves a part of Africa, but of the Mediterranean. The people south of the Sahara considered the area north of the desert not a part of Africa.

A lack of a written record in sub-Saharan Africa makes an understanding of the area all the more difficult. The ransacking of much of Great Zimbabwe has made that site also difficult to understand. I was there and spent the better part of a day hiking around. It is a pretty place although not made by aliens as Von Daniken claimed.

As we can see from the posts so far the word barbarian is being used to refer to 'the other side'. I too would be wary of the Afro-Centric claims. There is no pan-African culture.

Africa is a huge continent with the largest sand dune areas in the world, the longest river in the world, and fabulous places to visit. History is another question. Human history is written. Most areas of Africa did not write a history. One of the interesting issues to write about might be the rock art of the Hoggar mountains.

Here is a link to get you started:
http://www.banknotes.com/dz143.htm

Although this is not a typical written language it does record information about the past.