Ancient Africa
A Global History, to 300 CE
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A panoramic narrative that places ancient Africa on the stage of world history
This book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economic transitions of world civilization. Christopher Ehret takes readers from the close of the last Ice Age some ten thousand years ago, when a changing climate allowed for the transition from hunting and gathering to the cultivation of crops and raising of livestock, to the rise of kingdoms and empires in the first centuries of the common era.
Ehret takes up the problem of how we discuss Africa in the context of global history, combining results of multiple disciplines. He sheds light on the rich history of technological innovation by African societies—from advances in ceramics to cotton weaving and iron smelting—highlighting the important contributions of women as inventors and innovators. He shows how Africa helped to usher in an age of agricultural exchange, exporting essential crops as well as new agricultural methods into other regions, and how African traders and merchants led a commercial revolution spanning diverse regions and cultures. Ehret lays out the deeply African foundations of ancient Egyptian culture, beliefs, and institutions and discusses early Christianity in Africa.
A monumental achievement by one of today’s eminent scholars, Ancient Africa offers vital new perspectives on our shared past, explaining why we need to reshape our historical frameworks for understanding the ancient world as a whole.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
UCLA historian Ehret (The Civilizations of Africa) delivers a comprehensive and stimulating look at the major transitions in African history and their significance for the global development of early civilizations. Drawing from archaeology, linguistics, and anthropology, Ehret argues that major transformations in the history of civilization developed independently in Africa, often preceding similar developments in the Near East, Middle East, Mediterranean, and Asia. He recognizes five historical periods between 68,000 BCE and 300 CE, each with distinctive technological, dietary, and commercial developments. Major innovations between and during these periods include the development of ceramics in present-day Mali, in which women played a significant role; the smelting of metals from ores at various locales across the African savannas in the eighth and ninth centuries BCE; mechanical weaving and textiles; the shift from foraging subsistence to early agriculture, including plant and animal domestication; the establishment of towns and long-distance trade; the growth of specialized craft production and trading centers such as the Tichit region in today's Mauritania; and the rise of early cities, states, and nations. Throughout, Ehret notes the influence of climatic change on these transformations and makes a persuasive case that "African history offers strong counterweights to... presumptions about male and female roles in history." Exhaustive and carefully documented, this is a vital reconsideration of world history. Illus.
