A new documentary on ancient northeast Africa.
"Nubian Spirit" is a beautifully shot documentary which unravels
the fascinating and often magical legacy of Ancient Sudan. It
shines light onto the Ancient African culture, history and spiritual
mythology of the people from the Nile Valley .
The film digs deep into Ancient Africa's numerous contributions to
modern civilization. It draws out the reality of such disciplines as
astronomy, architecture, science and much more that the Ancient
Africans used to make sense of their world. Blackninefilms.com. H4>
NUBIAN SPIRIT: THE AFRICAN LEGACY OF THE NILE VALLEY
International Exhibition on Ancient African
Manuscripts and Writing Systems
The International Exhibition on Ancient Manuscripts and Writing
Systems in Africa will be inaugurated on 17 December 2010 in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It will take place in the historic halls of the
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa in
close cooperation with Ethiopia's Ministry of Culture, Council of
Churches, Islamic Council, Institute of Ethiopian Studies and
national museums. This International Exhibition will be travelling
throughout Africa and the world.
CONFERENCE: THE MANCHESTER MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
"Egypt in its African Context"
The Manchester Museum, University of Manchester
3-4 October 2009
The African elements of the ancient Egyptian culture, and indeed
its physical location in Africa, have frequently been ignored,
and
there exists a level of prejudice against suggestions that Egyptian
culture can be situated within an African cultural context.
The
contextualising of ancient Egypt culturally
and geographically
within Africa, the concept of ancient Egypt as part of Black
History,
and the discussion of how the material is perceived only recently begun to receive
attention, and the discussion is still regarded as peripheral
and often irrelevant.
The conference was organized in association with The Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge and with the support of The Petrie Museum
of Egyptian Archaeology.
The conference was organized in association with The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and with the support of The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.
Ancient Aksum
TIMELINE OF ANCIENT NORTHEAST AFRICA
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON AFRICA
Multiregional and monoregional theories of human origins
point to Africa as the birthplace of humanity.
Several molecular biologists and paleontologists confirm this to date.
The evidence so far implies that the first humans
in the world (homo sapiens) emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago
and migrated to the various continents much later-perhaps as recent
as 45,000 years ago, in the case of migration to Europe.
We note the 4 million year old fossils of Ardi
and those of Dinknesh (Lucy) and her descendants dated around 3.2 million years.
The1996 discovery in Southern Ethiopia
of stone tools 2.6 million years old are relevant to this discussion.
The Kenyan -Ethiopian- Tanzanian region
seems to be an important birthplace of modern humans.
Not surprisingly,however, some find it difficult to reconcile
the Book of Genesis with scientific findings.
A common view in the scientific community is that
Ancient Africans migrated within Africa,
vertically and horizontally, as well as OUT OF AFRICA
to populate the world.
For views on the African and Afro-Pacific (Afro-Australian) origins
of some Ancient Americans, such as the Ancient Brazilians,
see Dr.Walter Neves,University of Sao Paolo, Brazil
(BBC Homepage: Thursday August 26, 1999).
See also Spencer Wells of in his pathbreaking work
'Journey of Man: The Story of the Human Species' (PBS, 2003). Consult www.pbs.org.
The Kushite Spread of Haplogroup R1*-M173 from Africa to Eurasia(Winters, 2010)
Having emerged millions of years ago in the environs
of present day Ethiopia and Kenya, some ancient Ethiopians and Eritreans
migrated into neigboring Yemen (Saba), across the Red Sea.
Legends of the area, view Queen Makeda, also known as the Queen of Sheba (Saba)
and Ethiopia, as an Ancient Ethiopian. Biblical texts
such as 1 Kings 10, 'The Song of Solomon', and, Ancient Ethiopian chronicles
such as the 'Kebra Nagast' tend to reflect this view.
As pointed out by historians such as Stuart Munro-Hay Aksum was an African civilization.
It was one of many centers of power to emerge
in the environs of ancient Ethiopia and Eritrea,
and, was predominantly derived from the intellectual
and material resources of ancient Africa.
See some relevant resources:
Note AFRICAN LEGACY, and the significance of a range of newly discovered sites, which include:
The world's oldest stone tools dated
2.6 million years.
The discovery in Ethiopia of skeletal remains of homo erectus- 1.3 million years old.
Olduvai, Northern Tanzania hosts the second oldest tools- dated 2.1 million years.
Note also, Blombos Cave, South Africa, where, in
2003,
the world's oldest jewelry were found, in the form
of 41 perforated shell beads. Here we have evidence of stylized
art work, as well as
'the kind of symbolism and creativity
associated with modern humans.'....now dated between 80,000 and 100,000 years ago.
See South Africa museums,Cape Town.
(www.museum.org.za/sam/muse/9904/htm)
At Loiyangalani, Tanzania,East Africa,
in the Serengeti National Park, decorated ostrich eggshell
beads were discovered by archeologists.
These point also to early
human creativity, and were found March 2004, in layers dated between
280,000
and 40,000 years.
We must also take into account:
The Ishango mathematical/calendar artifact of East-Central
Africa,
dated about 25,000 years.
(This artifact was taken out of the Congo region to Belgium.
See the exhibit at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium. )
Also in this category of early mathematical artifacts is
the 37,000 year old Lebombo bone of SWAZILAND, Southern Africa. The Blombos findings of South Africa, earlier mentioned, include symbolic inscriptions of straignt and diagonal lines, according to Henshilwood (2009).These finds are approximately 60,000 years older than the Lebombo artifact, according to recent dating.
In 2007 Swiss archeologists found ancient pottery
in Mali, West Africa, dated 9400 BCE. Ancient pots in this range have also been found in Niger, West Africa 8000 years old, the oldest in the continent and the third oldest in the world.
Nubia
(Ancient Sudan -Univ. of Khartoum)
One
of Several Temples, Lalibela, Ethiopia.
See alsoAksum and Rome
o.Ethiopian
Slide Show (includes engineering achievements - Univ. of Pennsylvania)
Queen
Hatshepsut's Expedition to the Land of Punt
Sayed El-Sayed Extract from the inscriptions on the walls of the funeral palace of Queen Hatshepsut, at Dar al-Bahri. See Hilliard,C.'Intellectual Traditions of Pre-Colonial Africa.' McGraw Hill, 1998.
'Measuring the fresh myrrh, in great quantities, for Amon, lord of Thebes; marvels of the countries of Punt, treasures of God's-Land, for the sake of the life, prosperity and health.....'
Here is an example of Egyptian sentiments about Punt:
'When I hold my love close
and her arms steal around me,
I'm like a man translated to Punt....'
Foster,John. Love Songs of the New Kingdom.Univ. of Texas, 1992.p.25
WEST AFRICA
Benin Iya, the Benin Enclosures and Fortifications,
West Africa, 10,000 miles in length. This is
one of the largest man-made structures in the world according to
the renowned British archeologist Patrick Darling.
The Gwoza Terraces of NE Nigeria, West Africa The Walled Cities of Zazzau & Kano, Northern Nigeria, West
Africa Monumental fortifications of West Africa 1000AD (wall 100 miles long x 70'
high) -
commissioned by Madame Sungbo of the Ijebu Kingdom,
Yorubaland, West Africa.
Note numerous metallurgical and other artifacts such as:
The Bronzes of Benin, Ife and Igbo-Ukwu, Nigeria, West Africa Indigenous Glassworks of Bida, Nupeland, Nigeria, West Africa Ancient Terracotta Figurines of Nok, Nigeria, West Africa Southern Africa of disinformation, Africans developed knowledge systems
of their own in the pre-colonial era. Some survived into the
post-colonial era, despite various forms of colonial
intimidation. In the case of writing, the use of specific
scripts was often confined to the priestly hierarchy. range of symbols and motifs for communicating various
ideas and concepts. The variety of writing material
used in some parts of the continent, historically, reflects
the complex history of Africa's writing systems which in the
past were in scribed on materials such as parchment, papyrus,
leather, skin, fabric, sand, clay, and metal more extensively
in some parts of the continent than others. Among
some of the writing
systems (Ayele Bekerie)
Meroitic (Nubia),
Hieroglyphics (Egypt),
Bamum(Cameroon),
Vai (Liberia),
Nsibidi (Nigeria/Cameroon),
Ajimi (Nigeria/Niger)and the Adinkra pictographic system (Akan- Ghana,Ivory
Coast)
systems of oral expression involving the preservation and
transmission of information in oral format.In some
cases these systems coexisted with the above-mentioned
writing systems. Texts such as the epic of Sundiata (Mali)
or the Abuja Chronicle (Nigeria) are good examples of
works which were originally in this mode.
See
Johnson, Hale and Belcher, African Oral Epics, 1997
Internet
Sourcebook (Paul Halsall)
Abridged Bibliography on Africa
African Timeline
Oral Literature(Ruth Finnegan)/ Courtesy Open Book publishers
Professor of History and African Studies, CCSU
"emeagwali@mail.ccsu.edu"
Phone:860-832-2815
Other relevant sites include:
(h) Africa's
oldest boat has been found in Ancient Nigeria -
Ancient Northeast Africa
Geez (Ethiopia),
SELECTED PRIMARY SOURCES ON ANCIENT AFRICA
On-line Newsletter of
African Studies
Send comments to Dr Gloria Emeagwali,
