Ancient Africa & African empires timeline

New Crisis, The, Jan/Feb 2000 by Agatucci, Cora

750-600

Kush or Nubia (upper or southern reaches of Nile River) rules Egypt from capital Meroe; with metal technology, widened economic influence in subSaharan Africa.

500( to CE. 200)

Ancient Nok culture thrives in forests of central Nigeria. Ancestors claimed by the Yoruba peoples, the Nok are justly revered for their art and terra cotta sculptures.

AFRICAN ORATURE: Ancient writing traditions exist on the African continent, as shown earlier in this timeline, but most Africans are primarily oral peoples, and their art forms are oral rather than literary. In contrast to written "literature," African "orature" is orally composed and transmitted, and often created to be verbally and communally performed as integral part of dance and music. Oral arts and traditions of Africa are rich and varied, developing with the beginnings of African cultures, and continuing to flourish today.

THE POWER OF THE WORD: In traditional African cosmologies, the spoken/performed word animating the creative process, is considered to have special powers to evoke spiritual and communal forces and ferment inner life. African oral arts often combine religious, artistic as well as social functions: e.p., to convey wisdom, teach ethics and social codes of conduct; teach religious beliefs and communal values, celebrate cultural heroes and revered ancestors, & explain the origins, history, and development of states, clans, and other important social organizations. Mutere calls African oral arts "art for life's sake."

WHAT IS CULTURE?: Consider an Anthropologist's definition: "Culture consists of the abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world that shape people's behaviors and are reflected in those behaviors." Shared by members of a society, "[c]ultures are learned, largely through the medium of language, rather than inherited biologically, and the parts of a culture function as an integrated whole.' "People maintain cultures to deal with problems or matters that concern them. To survive, a culture must satisfy the basic needs of those who live by its rules, provide for its own continuity and an orderly existence...," "strike a balance between the self-interests of individuals and the needs of the society as a whole," and "have the capacity to change in order to adapt to new circumstances or to altered perceptions of existing circumstances" (William A. Havilland, Anthropology, 7th ed, Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1994; p. 303).

ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE: As Africa's peoples established themselves and diversified in response to local conditions, they developed distinctive cultures and oral traditions. Africa's hundreds of ethnic groups are often defined by the language they speak. Spoken African languages indigenous to the continent are variously estimated to number from 700 to 3000. "Apart from Arabic, which is not confined to Africa, the most widely spoken African tongues are Swahili (an Arab-influenced Bantu language) and Hausa, each with more than 20 million speakers today. Several languages (often inaccurately termed dialects simply because they have few users) are spoken by only a few thousand people. On the average an African language has about 200,000 speakers; only a few dozen languages have more than 1 million speakers. Scholars group African languages into four language families: AfroAsiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, and NigerCongo...[A language family is defined a group of related languages assumed to derive from a common origin, and often subdivided into branches composed of more closely related languages.] "At least some of the African linguistic families are believed to have a history of more than 5000 years" (Microsoft Encarta 97 Encyclopedia, Microsoft Corp., 1993-96).