ancient african social structure

Social Structure - Ancient Africa - Kingdom of Axum - Weebly Africa before Transatlantic Enslavement - Black History Month 2023 Africa was not just the birthplace of humanity but also the cradle of early civilisations that made an immense contribution to the world and are still marvelled at today. Its capital, Great Zimbabwe, is the largest stone structure in precolonial Southern Africa. Given the nomadic nature of these societies the spiritual power in question could not be tied to a particular area might, indeed, be a universal spirit who controlled all the land. In fact, cults involving rain shrines and weather gods might command the loyalty of people over a wide area, a form of worship practiced side-by-side with that concerning the spirits of the land. Ancient Africa | Boundless Art History | | Course Hero Male children could be trained up to become administrators in the royal service, and in some states filled the most responsible positions at court: their lowly social status was thought to act as a check to their ambitions and a guarantee of their loyalty (though a chief slave may have usurped the Mali throne in 1357). OTg3ZTYwNWY1OWRjMGZiYzY3ZjQ0MGEzYTgyOTVhZDY3M2YwZDIyMzFjMzJk 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. Younger men would set out to seduce or rape the young wives of their elders, and their elders would be determined to prevent this. There might also be slaves who had been reduced to their lowly status through some misfortune or other famine, debt or even captivity in war. NTlmYTU5OWZlYjIyNzk0NmRkZjAxMGZiMTRhMzBkYWViYTY4ZmNjYjlmNDMz Gender and age differentials With distances between centers of population usually large, transport costs were high. In some societies the wives even retained ownership of their family property after marriage. ZWFhZmI1NmY5ZjVhZjJjNjYxYTFjNzUxMjgzZTE4MGZhOWIyODQyZWE4ZGIz Most crafts supplied local markets, even when using high levels of skill. Ancient Africa had many different societies, but they can be roughly categorized into four types. YmNjNjY4NWM4MWUxYzhlYjFmYzIwMmNiMTBmZTA0OWZlNGQ4ZmI5MzNlNmMz Men who were spared death were set to work as laborers, miners or porters; or, if they had suitable skills, as craftsmen. Together with freedom it is an important element of the economy, culture and social structure of a country. The environment of sub-Saharan Africa is one of the hardest environments for human populations to thrive in. Underpopulation meant that disgruntled people could always seek new land beyond the reach of royal authority. Some communities, especially those in rain forests, had a sacred barrier to keep the wilderness at bay. Reading Passage Compare And Contrast Teaching Resources | TPT African cultivators have generally taken great pride in their skills. However, all African cities were to some extent religious centers, as rulers were closely associated with local shrines and rituals. Together with drought, famine, epidemic, violence, and an unforgiving food-producing environment, it is easy to see how African populations struggled to grow. Village clusters would be located in areas suitable for intensive crop production river valleys, floodplains, lakesides and other well-watered places. The magnificent sculptures of the West African societies of Ife and Benin, for example, depict human figures in an idealized yet deeply moving way, and possess a serene majesty unsurpassed in human art. Ghana | historical West African empire | Britannica This process started to happen at different times according to region. Facts about Ancient Africa 1: the great civilization Africa is the home to some great civilizations. But it was ancestors with whom these people directly interacted, and approaching them with sacrifices of cattle. The trading classes were predominantly, perhaps exclusively, Muslim. Such famines were usually caused by drought, but plagues of locusts or unseasonably heavy rains could also devastate crops. In river floodplains communities have constructed mounds raised above the flood level from which to take advantage of the rich silt deposited by the river waters. By taxing the trade as it passed through their territory and using the wealth gained to build up a body of warrior retainers, powerful chiefs were able to bring neighboring communities under their control and form the nucleus of a kingdom. They had done this by the start if the first millennium BCE. All this has left African societies comparatively isolated from the great developments affecting other regions of the Eastern Hemisphere, and indeed from each other. The earlier populations were either absorbed into the incoming populations, or pressed, either further and further south or further and further into the rain forests. The Islamic Revolution was a disaster for Persia in general, I've spent some time in Iran touring the historical sites, Mt Bisitun, Persepolis, Pasargedae, etc, it's a beautiful country with a cultured and ancient people, they've suffered a lot under the Ayatollahs since the Shah was driven out, despite negative Western stereotypes I found . As warriors they would cultivate a military ethos and be sent out to military outposts to guard the groups cattle and territory. The most spectacular practitioners of this were kings and chiefs, which gave rulers swarms of sons to contest the succession or fragment the state. The contemporary political history of Africa is marked by imperialism, the expulsion of foreign powers and settler elites, and the post-independence travails of its roughly fifty states. A West African Social Hierarchy: The Caste System The specifics of the caste systems in Africa vary among . In the forests of West Africa and the Congo Basin, yams and plantains were the staple crop. Its primary engagement with great-power rivalry, and universalisation of realist ideas of power, order, security, and national interestsprimarily built on Western Christian foundations of state and statecrafthave marginalised the significance of knowledge production in non . ZDQwYTliY2VjMzM2YmIyZDM1ODQ4Zjc4NzY2ZWQ4NWU5YTliYzE4N2FhMTQw Under Muslim influence the game of dara became popular. In some cases such children were castrated as a further measure to reduce ambition they would not then be able to establish an independent dynasty. Egyptian culture has six thousand years of recorded history. Perhaps the highland areas which have had most impact on the history of Africa have been the Ethiopian Highlands, which have sheltered Africas only historic Christian state; and the highlands of southern Africa, which have played a key role in that regions history. The surviving examples re terracotta, though there may well have been a much more substantial tradition of wood carving which lay behind these. 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. 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. Art, literature and culture At a much higher level, some kingdoms gave high status to female members of the royal family. The 25th dynasty was a line of pharaohs who originated in the Kingdom of Kush that reigned in part or all of Ancient Egypt for nearly a century, from 744 to 656 BC. The earliest kingdoms we know of in West Africa, such as Ghana and Mali, were located at strategic points in the trans-Saharan trade network. 10 Facts about Ancient Africa - Fact File The poor The most productive salt mines were located deep in the Sahara desert, and the miners lived isolated lives working in appalling conditions. Ancient Civilizations are typically taught focusing on the key areas of: Geography, Religion, Achievements, Politics, Economy and Social Structure using the acronym G.R.A.P.E.S. Surrounding this would be rings of less and less dense settlement and fields, eventually merging into the surrounding bush. Female slaves were employed as domestic servants or concubines. Not a few chiefly dynasties traced their ancestry back to such a figure. In that case, though not always, the excluded group has the propensity to oppose the incumbent extractive governance system. South of the forest the grasslands resume, having skirted around the Congo Basin; but further south, on the western coast of south-central Africa, lies the Kalahari desert, smaller than the Sahara but perhaps even more arid. Indeed, in some areas, particularly where grassland and forest met, all three modes were practiced locally, resulting in a particularly fruitful exchange of produce. Famine was another source of slaves, causing people to sell themselves, or their children, into slavery in order to survive. Moreover, away from areas especially favored with plentiful rainfall or rivers, the grasslands which cover much of Africa do not make ideal land for crop growing, and are prone to droughts and famines. Keywords population phratries gene citizenship metics slavery Type Chapter Information Everyone on the community would take part, but the central roles were reserved for the mediums with their trance-dancing. A popular form of leisure was a board game called mankala. Sub-Saharan Africa was therefore never able to develop an original civilization with the material culture on the scale of, say, an ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt. In these, men did the more highly valued work of herding, protecting or raiding cattle, while women did the household chores and cultivated crops a lowly occupation in such societies. Ironically, this attractive landscape posed a barrier to the spread of traditional farming southward, as sub-Saharan agriculture had adapted itself to tropical conditions. In many cases, however, craft production was devoted to local, regional or long-distance trade. African farming has relied on a thorough understanding of local environments, to an extent which has astonished Western observers. YzZiNWViMjQ5Iiwic2lnbmF0dXJlIjoiNTc2NWJhZDg5MGU4Y2RkZTIxYTFi Sumer SOCIAL CLASSES - 8 CHARACTERISTICS OF A CIVILIZATION Highly advanced and sophisticated African civilizations, cultures, societies, and statessuch as Ancient Egypt, Kush/Nubia, Axum, Ghana, Mali, and Asanteevolved throughout the continent from the ninth century before the Christian era (BCE) to the nineteenth century CE.African political systems and institutions were traditionally based on kinship and lineage (i.e., common ancestry . NTNjZjkxMjQ0YmE1NWYxYzRjOTRkMTFjNWZkYWE5MjRjMWE1NjA0Mzk5Yzhh Society - Ancient Africa - Kingdom of Kush - Weebly On the other hand, everyone, regardless of sex or age, was required to work in the fields in times of peak activity such as harvest, and in some societies men prided themselves in their diligence as farmers. ZWQ2YjhiMDdhMDFlMTNjNjE4OWFkMjBlNjMwYzRjZDFhNjY5OGI2YjhmZDc0 YWQxYjBmNjljZmEzOTNlOTg4YTZiZmI4M2NkMzZmZTM0MGYzYjRlZmE2Zjk1 If the demands of royal authority became too onerous, in the form of heavy taxes, say, or the demands made for public projects or service in the royal army, people could (and did) simply up and leave. The Europeans then made use of existing (African) political structures, which proved themselves not primitive at all, to run the colonies. Difficulties in transport encouraged local self-sufficiency, and most trade consisted of purely local exchanges, for example at river banks where fish was bartered for vegetables, or where forest and savannah met, where the products of the two zones were exchanged. In times of famine, the people took to foraging, braving the wilderness to do so. Later, they faced competition from Hausa traders, who created an even more far flung network. MzE4Y2I3MDllMDBjODdjOGU4NDEwZGMxMWUzYzYxMDlmYmI2OWNiZmY1MGMw The gold miners of West Africa formed a hereditary, and in some ways privileged, group of workers. So too did the more widespread infestation of tsetse fly, which set a limit of animal transport. These have proved vital staging posts on the trade routes which cross the desert, allowing weary travelers to rest, and to water and feed their animals and themselves. Much craft work in Africa, as in all pre-modern societies, was done on a part-time basis by farmers, particularly women. Equality was very important in these tribes and all people were treated equally. It has captivated visitors since it was built as a royal burial chamber some 4,500 years ago. These operated as almost military organization, and required large investment to fund. To the south of the western savannah is the region of rainforest which encompasses the southern areas of West Africa and most of the Congo Basin. Except in favorable locations, especially where fishing, or gathering aquatic resources, could supplement diets, hunting and foraging groups needed a large area of land on which to sustain themselves. However, state-building was not a straightforward process in African conditions. (59) $14.99. Africa: History, Culture, Society | TimeMaps OTBhNmZkZTE4ZDBjMTQzMTljMWY4NDIyMjYxZmIwY2JkZjc4OTk4ZGE1OWMx African Politics - Political Science - iResearchNet However, at the very least these would have had a psychological impact which in many cases would have contributed to the healing process. As we have seen, the only major trading towns in these regions were on the Swahili coast of the Indian Ocean. Diving into that variation, a new analysis of 180 indigenous Africans from a dozen ethnically, culturally . These were societies that had no.

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