Thank you Isaac your articles are always well received across Quora Spaces, dispelling ignorant and often racist assumptions about the African past, not only that, but it help others combatting ignorance on those spaces who tend to use ancient Egypt to combat these negative assumptions, as the only go to area of research, one of the eye opener for many is the Dar Titichitt complex , I always look forward to Mondays, again thank you.
I was also very intrigued by Dhar Tichitt when i first encountered it, which is when i realized how little was known about ancient Africa outside Egypt and nubia, and the need to highlight the history of the entire continent.
What a dazzlingly comprehensive overview. Perhaps you have already written this elsewhere, but I would love to get a recommended reading list from you the covers all the varying and disparate parts of this story at some point
I have 12 of the UNESCO books. Mannnn lemme just recommend you lol. My substack is tiny, but if I can help uncover our past even a bit, I'll do what I can, whether you reciprocate or not. <3 Thank you for uncovering our history.
Always appreciate your work. Keep it up! It’s such a precious resource for amateur historians like myself. As an African and a writer it gives me an alternative pathway for creative expression rather than just the usual European mode. Maybe one day knights and castles will share the stage in the popular imagination with griots and adobe desert libraries. And it won’t be simply another ‘exotic’ setting.
Forgive me for the confusion, but I just have a question about the Timeline. I have been reading recently, and it seems that some of the scientists agree that human life originated in the east of Africa and then migrated to other regions within Africa. Using this logic, it makes sense that the oldest of civilizations are residing eastward.
What was the West of Africa doing during the 3rd millennium BC? Were the populations during that time concentrated only in the east and then spread to other parts (like the Yoruba), or were you counting just the complex civilizations known? Was there anything else happening in other parts of Africa during that time or was the population concentrated within those regions ?
There's like a very long gap between the emergence of anatomically modern humans around 200,000 BP and the first 'civilization' around 12,000-8000 BP ( Gobekli Tepe, predynastic Egypt, etc), a lot of climatic shifts altered patterns of human settlement and migration, even the mighty Sahara was a still in its wet period by the time Egypt was in the neolithic era about 8000-6000BP, infact, its thought that most present-day populations of west Africa were deep in the Sahara, eg the kiffian culture of Niger (10,000 BP), and it's very likey that African cereals like millet and sorghum were domesticated somewhere in the Sahara because the builders of the Tichitt civilization (4200BP) arrived with already-domesticated pearl millet, and these grains take long to domesticate.
so there is a lot we don't know and cant know about what was happening during this deep time of history even the major language phyla of Africa are only about as old as the first civilizations (eg the Niger-Congo family is only about 10,000 years old), so we cant even speak of distinct, recognisable groups of people (like the Yoruba who'd come much, much later), historical linguistics (and the reconstruction of proto-language families) cannot possibly be stretched beyond the 10-15,000 year limit, all we have to rely on is archeology and we've barely scratched the surface of that. But I believe Stone Age Africa has seen plenty of research, especially for the period between the emergence of the 'homo erectus' 2 million years ago and the dispersal of modern humans about 70,000 years ago. scholars then lose interest for the period after that, so there's a big gap between that 70,000 years 'out of Africa' date, and the neolithic period of West Africa (about 2000-1000BC), or the Bantu expansion and its related neolithic culture (800BC-1000CE)
you'll find a few spectacular sites that were continuously occupied, like Shum Laka in Cameroon dated to about 30,000 BP, or the Kumbi cave in Zanzibar dated to about 20,000BC but those are exceptional, specifically because these are cave sites and are thus relatively well preserved compared to the more common open-sites in the forest and savanah regions that are hard to find and are very poorly preserved (even those that are barely a few centuries old). so we have no idea what African populations were doing at the time because archeologists have yet to find their settlement sites, and probably can't because they are poorly preserved.
Unless technology improves significantly to enable archeologists to scan and locate such sites on a larger scale, we can only hope some rural farmers stumble upon a group of well-preserved burial sites across West Africa that are atleast older than 10k years.
Thank you Isaac your articles are always well received across Quora Spaces, dispelling ignorant and often racist assumptions about the African past, not only that, but it help others combatting ignorance on those spaces who tend to use ancient Egypt to combat these negative assumptions, as the only go to area of research, one of the eye opener for many is the Dar Titichitt complex , I always look forward to Mondays, again thank you.
Appreciated.
I was also very intrigued by Dhar Tichitt when i first encountered it, which is when i realized how little was known about ancient Africa outside Egypt and nubia, and the need to highlight the history of the entire continent.
What a dazzlingly comprehensive overview. Perhaps you have already written this elsewhere, but I would love to get a recommended reading list from you the covers all the varying and disparate parts of this story at some point
thank you, that is an interesting suggestion, I think I could compile the footnotes I've added below each article and arrange them chronologically.
I have 12 of the UNESCO books. Mannnn lemme just recommend you lol. My substack is tiny, but if I can help uncover our past even a bit, I'll do what I can, whether you reciprocate or not. <3 Thank you for uncovering our history.
thank you
This is amazing! I can't wait to dive in!
thank you
Always appreciate your work. Keep it up! It’s such a precious resource for amateur historians like myself. As an African and a writer it gives me an alternative pathway for creative expression rather than just the usual European mode. Maybe one day knights and castles will share the stage in the popular imagination with griots and adobe desert libraries. And it won’t be simply another ‘exotic’ setting.
Forgive me for the confusion, but I just have a question about the Timeline. I have been reading recently, and it seems that some of the scientists agree that human life originated in the east of Africa and then migrated to other regions within Africa. Using this logic, it makes sense that the oldest of civilizations are residing eastward.
What was the West of Africa doing during the 3rd millennium BC? Were the populations during that time concentrated only in the east and then spread to other parts (like the Yoruba), or were you counting just the complex civilizations known? Was there anything else happening in other parts of Africa during that time or was the population concentrated within those regions ?
Thank you for your work!
There's like a very long gap between the emergence of anatomically modern humans around 200,000 BP and the first 'civilization' around 12,000-8000 BP ( Gobekli Tepe, predynastic Egypt, etc), a lot of climatic shifts altered patterns of human settlement and migration, even the mighty Sahara was a still in its wet period by the time Egypt was in the neolithic era about 8000-6000BP, infact, its thought that most present-day populations of west Africa were deep in the Sahara, eg the kiffian culture of Niger (10,000 BP), and it's very likey that African cereals like millet and sorghum were domesticated somewhere in the Sahara because the builders of the Tichitt civilization (4200BP) arrived with already-domesticated pearl millet, and these grains take long to domesticate.
so there is a lot we don't know and cant know about what was happening during this deep time of history even the major language phyla of Africa are only about as old as the first civilizations (eg the Niger-Congo family is only about 10,000 years old), so we cant even speak of distinct, recognisable groups of people (like the Yoruba who'd come much, much later), historical linguistics (and the reconstruction of proto-language families) cannot possibly be stretched beyond the 10-15,000 year limit, all we have to rely on is archeology and we've barely scratched the surface of that. But I believe Stone Age Africa has seen plenty of research, especially for the period between the emergence of the 'homo erectus' 2 million years ago and the dispersal of modern humans about 70,000 years ago. scholars then lose interest for the period after that, so there's a big gap between that 70,000 years 'out of Africa' date, and the neolithic period of West Africa (about 2000-1000BC), or the Bantu expansion and its related neolithic culture (800BC-1000CE)
you'll find a few spectacular sites that were continuously occupied, like Shum Laka in Cameroon dated to about 30,000 BP, or the Kumbi cave in Zanzibar dated to about 20,000BC but those are exceptional, specifically because these are cave sites and are thus relatively well preserved compared to the more common open-sites in the forest and savanah regions that are hard to find and are very poorly preserved (even those that are barely a few centuries old). so we have no idea what African populations were doing at the time because archeologists have yet to find their settlement sites, and probably can't because they are poorly preserved.
Unless technology improves significantly to enable archeologists to scan and locate such sites on a larger scale, we can only hope some rural farmers stumble upon a group of well-preserved burial sites across West Africa that are atleast older than 10k years.
Thank you so much! This clears up many questions for me. I'm still new in the study of history, so a lot is not known. Thank you!