Sub-Saharan Africa

Tell me about Sub-Saharan Africa history Veeky Forums!!!

Other urls found in this thread:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu_Manuscripts
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6mz4AK-lTo6KOzj309JKOzssfFArBxiQ
metmuseum.org/toah/hd/zimb/hd_zimb.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemba_people
whc.unesco.org/en/list/364
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>Do nothing for 70,000 years
>1200 A.D
>Suddenly build some primitive kingdoms
>1500 A.D
>Euros show up and take some niggers sold by primitive kingdoms to pick crops
>1900 A.D
>Euros show up and colonize the place bringing prosperity to the continent and technology
>WE WUZ CIVILIZED AND SHIT
>2016 A.D
>Have the most horrible countries in human history

There was that west African king who wanted to invade an enemy city with his river fleet, so he ordered his men to dig a new river leading there.

Swahili's were aight, other than them's they were kinda the shit dindu's /pol/ makes them out to be

Not really true at all but ok.

The white parts were pretty good

No they weren't

Swahili are subhuman.

Good books on it:

>Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology
Exactly what the title says, this book is a fantastic introduction to archaeology in the continent. Archaeology is especially valuable to the study of Africa because, with the exception of the Sahel, Ethiopia, and the Swahili Coast, Sub-Saharan Africa lacked true writing.
>Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500 - 1800:
John K. Thornton is a respected scholar in the field and this book is a good introduction to warfare and politics in Atlantic Africa - the West African forest and coastal Central Africa - in the "contact period" between Europe and Africa.
>UNESCO's The Origins of Iron Metallurgy in Africa Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550-1750
Thornton discusses Kongolese population, concluding that the population demographics of the kingdom was significantly more stable and less catastrophic than previously supposed.
>Islands of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa: Past & Present
For more on agriculture in Engaruka and East Africa in general

>prosperity to the continent and technology
ebin
I bet you think brits were a blessing to india because they built 'muh railroads'

kek nerd think for yourself for once instead of parroting what """""scientists"""""" are saying.

Jokes aside, you know any short boosk that works as an introduction to the Mali Empire?

which country has a higher standard of living than South Africa

>Swahilis
ARAB'D

We don't know anything about it because they didn't write anything down. Most of what we do know is speculation

Botswana, and Equilateral Guinea.

Do you speak French? Most books about Mali are written in that. If not, 'Ancient Ghana and Mali' by Nehemia Levtzon and the UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: 'Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century" is also worth looking at.

This is wrong, I don't know why people still say this.

Dank but largely accurate.

Throw something in there about being converted from their shit animism "religions" to christianity and islam (as much as dindus can ever 'follow' a religion made by smarter people) modified to involve their shit animism and you'll be done.

>do nothing for 70,000 years
Makes sense, the groups that built them didn't exist for 65,000 if those years.

Blacks have existed for 70,000 years.

depends on your definition of "black"

Not really

And most africans weren't animist in the sense that Siberians and Native Americans were

Define black

We've only been here for like 12,000 years

Before then it was pygmies and bushmen

>This is wrong, I don't know why people still say this.
Where are those records then? How did they write the history down if in the entirety of Sub-Saharan Africa only two writing systems (not even fully developed for their own needs) were discovered?
How come that the first dictionaries for Zulu, one of the most well known African languages, were compiled in the NINETIES?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu_Manuscripts

For instance

We have a bunch of writings from the western sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and swahililand

And I should note we've had grammars of Zulu since the British first arrived

>animism
Read: I get all my history from EU4

>Timbuktu
>western sudan
>Ethiopia
>Somalia
>swahililand
Which one of these is Sub-Saharan again? I forget.
I'm also tired of people listing the Timbuktu University, an amalgamation of three Mosques as a quintessential african achievement. If this is the case, we should list the emergence of firearms as an essential European achievement.

Timbuktu became a permanent settlement only after arabic influence increased in North Africa. As it faded and the city was left to the declining Mali empire, it lost importance.

>think for yourself
You mean reading a brief wikipedia article and post some hugely opinionated low quality shit like everyone else?

Pretty sure the Portuguese produced some dictionaries.

I was imprecise about that, Wikipedia says the first grammar book was compiled by a Norwegian in 1850. The first written document in Zulu is a translation of the Bible. The first novel came out in 1930. What I was trying to reference was that a zulu-zulu dictionary didn't exist till well after the 50s, there was no need for one, as a native speaker could memorize the entire language. I couldn't find the date, I'd be surprised if it was before the seventies, as it's directed at people who want to academically research the language.

Better than getting his history from the Civopedia, I guess.

Needs to fucking step it up to post here though.

>Sub-Saharan Africa history

>Sub-Saharan Africans have no history
>mfw
How come Basil Davidson was able to write several books, and produce an 8 episode documentary on the subject? Anytime the too comes up, every comment seems to stem from ignorance disguised with racism.it's easier to say "them damn niggers weren't up to shit, " instead of "I don't know, and I don't care. "

And if course I forgot the picture of this sexy bastard. African History is very niche and muddled in feel good fantasy when it's discussed in the main stream. I recently had to discourage the we wuz stuff my brother was implying when the subject came up

It only became a desert in recent times

They don't technically have a history since history refers to the historical record, i.e. recorded events. Sub-Saharan Africans never developed a written language, so much like the various North American natives their "history" is a huge blank spot you have to guess at based on the archaeological record and what literate cultures had to say about them as far back as you can find accounts relating to them.

The British united India in a way it has never been before and gave it the tools to carry on

they didn't have written language, generally didn't have numbers over 3, and didn't have the wheel

The Mughals had already politically united the subcontinenn before them.

A lot of people point out what Africans failed to develop, but I'm interested in how they managed to get by without those developments. I'm not going to argue they did anything ground breaking, but some groups managed relatively large settlements among other things I can't wrap my head around with their failure to record language and limited understanding of numbers.

> Asking murican people about a continent they don't know.
Kill yourself.

Were they not south of the sahara?

Were they not states of the natives?

Using your logic we could hand wave europan history as middle-eastern and east asian knockoffs
Timbuktu was a permanent settlement since the Mandinka claimed it from the local nomads as an ecampment, irrigated it, and began construction as well as intensive farming and trading
We used modified Arabic script, and in the bight of biafra symbolic characters

Even during the age of Asanteman we had dagomba and mossi scribes

Much like how the Japanese used modified chinese script, and the southeast asians & tibetans used Indic script

>didn't have numbers over 3
OK now I'm pretty certain you're that guy who makes up bullshit about african languages
Yeah, now I'm certain

Dude if you hate black people that's cool, but don't pretend you're being academically motivated

The birth of mankind.

That... was actually a pretty good summary.

bump for more info

What actually constitutes a history worth discussion?

To most, the British merely presented a paler face of authority in what we now call India. They took advantage of warring kingdoms and principalities for their own gain, like innumerable nations before and after them.
Were there benefits? Yes. Were there drawbacks? Yes.

...

>thing I like in flattering manner
>thing I don't like in unflattering manner

I think most of these images are a response - and a far more rational and reality-centred one - to the Afro-American images about stargates in the Nubian pyramids and whatnot.
Let's be honest, sub-Saharan Africa has its stories to tell (Ethiopian history is fascinating, the Kingdom of Benin, Bantu expansions, Zulu Empire, etc) but great civilisations are few and far between in comparison to even North Africa, never mind Europe or Asia.
In my opinion, African-Americans have ruined black history, first by attempting to claim all of sub-Saharan Africa and its people as 'theirs', and then by inventing the concept of 'people of colour', so that they can respond to rebuttals of their nonsense by talking about how Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt 'were not white' and thus somehow connected to them instead.

That's false tho

But they aren't a response, you retard.
The we-wuz shit is a response to those kinds of ideas and images, not the other way around.

Why do racists actively try to feel persecuted as if it makes their own racism any more legitimate.

>I think most of these images are a response - and a far more rational and reality-centred one - to the Afro-American images about stargates in the Nubian pyramids and whatnot.
The people who post images like the one above are usually just racists who can't stand anyone discussing African history. If it was posted on realhistoryww, then maybe what you're saying would be true. Posted here, where nobody is claiming any kind of 'WE WUZ' shit, is just pointless.

Afrocentrists and stormfags are both a bunch of vapid cunts and both have ruined any possibility to discuss Africa seriously on the internet.

Veeky Forums was a pretty good place to discuss historical africa without shitflinging

One time I offhandedly mentioned ritual honor based suicide among the Yoruba on /pol/ so they sperged out and said WE. As if the Japanese were the only people to do so.

Okay all discord aside, can we deal with the subject? He's been mentioned, has anyone seen Basil Davidson's 8 part documentary on African History? It's the most compelling documentary on the subject to date. There is a bit of broad strokes given that he's covering a whole continent. The docs are up on youtube, and being wary of the comments section.

My point was that sub-Saharan Africa has had few major civilisations, and none that have substantially impacted on the rest of the world in terms of science, technology, philosophy, warfare, etc. That is merely a statement of fact, and not an effort at denigrating blacks.
Of course, the same can be said of major Amerindian civilisations (Inca, Maya, Aztec & Olmec in particular), whose societies developed entirely independently of African or Eurasian influence. They are fascinating and worthy of great respect, and I do think the same is true of nations like Ethiopia, or of the Kingdom of Benin, etc.
(But that doesn't change my being frustrated at Afro-Americans ruining what could be a pleasantly enlightening learning experience with their desperate claims to societies with which they had/have no connection)

Anyway... what about this Davidson documentary, chaps?

Thats like asking about Asian history, way to fucking broad

I agree with this

But unfortunately this website is full of extremists. Either nazis who say everyone in Africa was a hunter gatherer caveman or KANGZ tier lefties/shitposters who think Africa was better off than everyone else

I'd place sub-saharan africa in Native American/Southeast Asian tier

A nice blend of civilization and less advanced tribes

Ranging from extensive empires, to agricultural chiefdoms, to nomadic herding tribes, to actual hunters like the pygmies and San

>lefties... who think Africa was better off than everyone else
I think most are more intent on removing unsavoury aspects of African history. In the UK it's common to say that the British were wrong to conquer the Kingdom of Benin and 'steal' their bronzes, but don't mention the fact they eradicated slavery and human sacrifice.
In the US it best not to mention the descent of virtually every Afro-American from white slavers, or that black Africans were complicit in their being sold - sorry, 'stolen' - in the first place.
It suits liberal types to think of non-whites as a kind of well-tanned boy scouts group, where everybody was sat around reading to each other and eating marshmallows around a campfire. And of course there's the failure to distinguish between the ages of slavery and colonialism.

Sudan

Valid point

I'm black myself and got shut down HARD by my history professor when I mentioned the gruesome aspects of the coastal african kingdoms like human sacrifice

For those interested in the documentary:
Africa - Basil Davidson: youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6mz4AK-lTo6KOzj309JKOzssfFArBxiQ

Davidson's beef with his fellow Europeans generally concerns the idea that Africans weren't up to anything. There's a bit about a European essentially performing a "it's just a prank bro," and starting a war with natives. As with most things, you should draw your own conclusions on the information presented.

southeast asians developed complicated star navigation, the wheel, built pyramids, boats, intensive agriculture, rudimentary food storage, written language, etc.

you're delusional if you think ssa was anywhere naer their level of development

malayan tribes spanned from formosa to fucking madagascar, and discovered madagascar 1k years before the first africans, and africans couldn't make simple wheels or boats.

>islanders knew how to make boats
Wow, who'd have thunk it?

>wheel, pyramids, agriculture, written language, etc.
All derived from India and China. Sub-Saharan Africa developed agriculture, possibly metallurgy and in some areas civilization independently. Southeast Asians developed nothing independently.

In a way it seems remarkable that anybody today, looking back, would think of slavery as anything other than normal, given its prevalence in societies around the world throughout history.
Human sacrifice, and the cannibalism that sometimes accompanies it, is something that was more readily jettisoned in Europe post-Christianisation. Likewise in North Africa and the Middle East, and the East Asians don't seem to have had much of a taste for it either over the last few thousand years. So it's not really hard to see why people would have viewed sub-Saharans as primitive, given that a large part of their cultures were centred around such violent acts, as alien to 16th and 17th century Europeans as the idea of walking on the Moon. It's one thing to seize a piece of land through violence, but to kill a man in the belief your crops won't fail? Deus definitely doesn't vult!

PS. Are you African, Afro-American, Afro-Caribbean or Afro-European mixed?
If you're an Afro-American, what is your experience of Kangz bruthas and sistahs?

ah, so you're an apologist for not being able to figure out the wheel?

I guess a real kang doesn't have a use for curved surfaces

We whiteys were here since 30,000 B.C,the dude that we and asians came from started in around 57,000 B.C, and the race Abos came is 65,000 B.C meaning due to the genetic distance between you and us the blacks would have to have started around 70,000 years ago. The Bushmen started 120,000 years ago.

>It's an ESL episode

Anyway

>star navigation
Everyone who sailed long distances did

>wheel
Adopted from east asians

>pyramids
Nubia says hi

>boats
Africans too

>intensive agriculture
Africans too

>food storage
Africans too

>written language
Adopted from India and China

Stop embarrassing yourself

Bonus points: Who independently discovered iron metallurgy?

Can someone explain the derail into competition over historical events? They happen quite frequently in African History threads. I recall an extensive thread a while back about the Aztecs, the Spanish wrecking them up made a small percentage of the thread.

>Africans couldn't make boats
and yet they were trading with native Americans for years in the "new world"

Just comes with the territory of the forum of discussion. Blacks, Jews, and Turks are the holy trinity of Veeky Forums's scapegoats. Any discussion involving them is naturally going to involve more instances of derailing than in other kinds of threads, especially since a good portion of their threads are bait to begin with.

Ghanaian

I think african-americans are cute, if a little insane

WE
U
Z

Lots of folks hate black people

Any discussion involving black people will inevitably incur vitriol

Like Natuto on /a/

False flagger
Yes user, yes

Anyone who points out common knowledge is a kang

>Ghanaian
A colonial! Greetings from Merry Old England!
What are your thoughts on us? Most Africans living here seem OK enough, provided they're Christian and untainted by US hip-hop culture

Didn't Africans have a space program and technology comparable to 20th century America before whitey came along

Sarcasm aside - you would though, wouldn't you?

I would, and I would enjoy every second of it.

Wouldn't we all, Tarquin. Wouldn't we all.

There's no hard feelings about the conquest (anymore) if that's what you mean.

You guys won fair and square, we used to be warriors and you used to be warriors. And the better warriors won.

If we weren't stopped the annual massacres in honor of the spirits would have continued.

Wish I could find a gf as pretty as her. Would make my parent's not view as such a massive disappointment.

These threads are total cancer to be honest.

tell me about the ZIMBABWE KINGDOM Veeky Forums

for example how does pic related exist?

You have to admit that for a continent consisting of people who were believed to be up nothing , that's a relatively impressive find.

A centralized political entity formed. Conducted lots of trade. Constructed the Zimbabwe's for it's royalty to live in by heating up stone to high temperatures then pouring water on them to crack the stones easily into even rectangular brick thus building the Zimbabwe's without mortar. This happens over the course of the 11th to 14th century.

Kingdom fell apart because it was losing trade, running out of resources ave been suggested as due to a decline in trade compared to sites further north, the exhaustion of the gold mines, political instability and famine and water shortages induced by climatic change so people left to other areas that had trade going through it and the Zimbabwe's fell into ruin. There's many Zimbabwe's but the the biggest one is kown as the Great Zimbabwe.

Like it's been in ruins for like 500 years so what you see know is it in immense decay. Decay phenomena have occurred due to variations in temperature, soil moisture content, and tourism pressure, encroaching invasive vegetation and improper preservation methods.

Hue controversy when it was confirmed to exist. Before that only 2 Portuguese men wrote the ruins.

It's right in the deep south of Africa too, near the bottom. Usually I'd assume if there's a sub-saharan African kingdom it's near the top where they get formed from Arab influences and whatnot.

Cucks.

Great Zimbabwe was built by arab jewish slave/gold traders. They race mixed with local bantus to form the Lemba people. DNA analyses confirm it.

It was NOT built by locals.

>Cucks
You have to go back

You have to educate yourself and stop spreading lies.

Never

metmuseum.org/toah/hd/zimb/hd_zimb.htm

It was built by the Shona, moron

No it wasn't. It was built by jewish arab traders who eventually became the Lemba. GTFO with your Mugabe propaganda lies.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemba_people

whc.unesco.org/en/list/364

Yes yes

Anyone who disagrees with conspiracy theories is wrong

>conspiracy theory
DNA analyses are not "conspiracy theories" you stupid faggot.

What's next, DNA itself is a "conspiracy theory"?

Not everything is a conspiracy theory, user.

They were kings

Lemba people are distantly related to middle eastern Semites

They didn't build great zimbabwe

It's a conspiracy theory that stormfags have clung to for about 10 years to fit their Nazi theories

>Lemba people are distantly related to middle eastern Semites
Yes, they are descended from arab jews who migrated to the region around the time Great Zimbabwe was built.

I wonder how you explain the fact that the Lemba people trace so much of their ancestry to Jewish DNA. I guess the DNA tests must be a "conspiracy theory" according to you.

But by all means, I'm sure the Shona, who told early explorers that the ruins of Great Zimbabwe were the work of the devil because no man could build such a thing, are really the true builders of Great Zimbabwe, whereas the Lemba, who have always claimed to have built Great Zimbabwe and who have recently been confirmed as harboring significant arab jewish ancestry, are just a bunch of liars, members of a giant conspiracy to smear the noble Shona, acting in league with stormfags, /pol/, the altright and pepe the frog himself.

Thank you for correcting the record.

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