What would be the greatest city to have ever existed on the African continent?

Carthage.

Fucking Romans.

Yknow the Romans didn't destroy the city of Carthage? It was an important administrative center and trading hub until the Arab conquest

They did destroy it and then rebuilt it.

Where the hell did you read this bullshit?

that might very well be the single most roman thing ever

>hm we need to show these folks we're serious, and destroying their city would accomplish just that
>but on the other hand, it is a really strategic location and having a city here would vastly simplify our administration
>Also, haven't built nearly as much as most of us want to

LETS DESTROY IT, THEN REBUILD IT

Alexandria. Memphis if you want one of African origin.

Johannesburg during apartheid.

Alexandria by far

Its not bullshit, there are clear South Asian connections to the sites and peoples that inhabited Great Zimbabwe including the Mapungubwe Rhino (which most be noted is of Asian Rhinoceros form, not africa), the genetic data showing Indian heritage in the Quena aka Nama a khoe-indian peoples. it also explains the proliferation of and complete replacement of both bos africanus the long and short horned humpless cattle for the South Asian Zebu.

The african Komati river is a direct Sanskrit derivative either "konu-ammu-atti" meaning "persons engaged in the exchange of goods" or Gomathi/Komathi meaning possessor or keeper of cows or cattle-minded.

The Nguni languages that is the bantu languages of eastern Southern Africa deviate DRAMATICALLY from the broader proto-bantu root -ombe found everywhere else for goma- and koma- also meaning cow

beyond that the great enclosure (that people see as some sort of palace) had no roof, the mines found remains not of works but small children and women that goes against historic examples of autonomous indigenous practices throughout africa and "blacksmith castes". The layout and design techniques do in fact align to older examples found in South India.

Sanskrit is still found in Malagasy, South Asian and sabaki influences remain in Malagasy populations and there is clear evidence of a direct link between Mapungubwe and the Sakalava who dominated the island for centuries until the late 18th century when Merina turned into the islands power.

The list goes on, there is so much out there. As someone who's studies and research focuses of the ethnic inter- and intra- dynamics in Africa, the Atlantic and Indian ocean african diasporas as well as the Mesolithic and Neolithic Subpluvials in Africa and Eurasia + Southeast Asia/Japan/South Asia/Oceania dynamics its quite clear.

Nah Johannesburg wasn't that good back then. there's better cities in SA Apartheid period.

Post sources boy.

>all these plebs naming cities based on how famous they are

Anyone with tastes knows the answer is Marrakesh. Post a more aesthetic city.

>greatest

Ayo we used ta stack stones n shiet

that's not even Marrakesh you thot

WE WUZ AZN N SHIET
literally only borneo fell on madagascar somehow 2-3k years ago and everything else you're on about is utter crap.

Aït Benhaddou, easy Google m8

All of Africa: Carthage / Alexandria / Thebes
Subsaharan Africa: Timbuktu

This is actually not all that accurate.

While Matthew Hurles quoting Dahl and Adelaar states Malagasy "shares 90% of its basic vocabulary with Maanyan" and therefore states a settlement at about 1,500-2,000k years ago he makes a couple oversights 1. He doesn't bother contextualizing sanskrit in Malagasy and 2. He makes no attempt and explaining how inland hunters and farmers with no seafaring tradition ended up in Madagascar.

1 is tackled by J. Innes Miller who compared the degree of Sanskrit terms in Malagasy to Malay. The terms are not prestigious, they are words of "common objects affecting everyday life" and that these words denote that they were "probably brought by Kalingan traders long before hinduization by settlement began".

He contrasts this with the Sankrit found mostly in the courts, -terms of prestige-

a comparison I make is how people with money and "worldliness" might pepper their language with French.

Kalinga fell to Asoka around 255bc this is along the lines of settlement of Kalinga Indians into Indonesia and the adoption of religious and high caste terminologies.

2 is complex. Genetic testing unilaterally with Y-dna haplotypes shows O1b and O2a* which on the surface confirms a Bornean origin BUT as a stated that is Unilateral.

The maternal Mtdna provides an extremely different picture.

Researchers Sodyall, Jenkins and Stoneking all point out that the markers from women lines ("Polynesian" motifs and endemic Malagasy motifs) "occurs in some parts of Borneo and East Indonesia at low frequencies" they go on to say "It is not found in Indonesians from the Barito River area (Borneo)" which shows "a lack of concordance between the linguistic and genetic data concerning the origins of the Malagasy".

Also the we wuz thing meme is so trite, especially when you've clearly been unable to provide explanations for these occurrences.

Anyways in gonna do a part two on this.

>Anyways in gonna do a part two on this.

Include links to sauces

The Settlement of Madagascar: What Dialects and Languages Can Tell Us

Maurizio Serva
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0030666

Quoting Adelaar
>"In Malay influence persisted for several centuries after the migration. But, except for this Malay influence, most influence on Malagasy from other Indonesian languages seems to be pre-migratory. (…) "

>"I also believe it possible that the early migrants from south-east Asia came not exclusively from the south-east Barito area, in fact, that south-east Barito speakers may not even have constituted a majority among these migrants"

>came not exclusively from the south-east Barito area, in fact, that south-east Barito speakers may not even have constituted a majority among these migrants

This is what I mean bruh, history ain't simple

>"but rather formed a nuclear group which was later reinforced by south-east Asian migrants with a possibly different linguistic and cultural background (and, of course, by African migrants). Whatever view one may hold on how the early Malagasy were influenced by other Indonesians, it seems necessary that we at least develop a more cosmopolitan view on the Indonesian origins of the Malagasy. A south-east Barito origin is beyond dispute, but this is of course only one aspect of what Malagasy dialects and cultures reflect today. Later influences were manifold, and some of these influences, African as well as Indonesian, were so strong that they have molded the Malagasy language and culture in all its variety into something new, something for the analysis of which a south-east Barito origin has become a factor of little explanatory value."

Ugh. I can only do some links, many are in old books I have or have access to.

I'll try and focus on open access stuff for you though

Anyways part three is next

This has no ties to what we are talking about currently

It actually does.

The formation of Great Zimbabwe is one rooted within the Western Indian Ocean littoral but it is contrary to OP not a city, rather a slaving and mining operation by proto-malagasy. user stated 1. I was wrong and 2. The formation of Madagascar did not involve the peoples of Great Zimbabwe.

My point is to clarify.

There is literally 0% chance Malagasy people founded Great Zimbabwe.

>great city
>Africa
Pick one.

Considering there's be massive remnants of their presence allover the place and genetically.

Except that's a compete lie.

Considering there would those traces if they did do those things that user was saying but form what I've heard and read Proto-malagasy weren't a thing in Southern Africa.

Where is the lie?

There to this day remains a Khoisan population that retains Indian/South Asian ancestry deep in the Karoo after the collapse of the slave center.
journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004393.g002

There is linguistic evidence of Malay in Swahili nautical terminology along with boating technology/innovation (Google Roger Blench "Swahili Malay")

There is a very deep and international history of trade between Middle Eastern populations, Asian populations and Indian populations in Southeast Africa.

The buba clan of the Lemba shows this with a very rare and specific middle eastern markers both T1b and J, as does the genetic variations within Malagasy society showing Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and African genetics.

It also explains the diffusion of Southeast Asian crop Banana which revolutionized Bantu migrations from the miombo to the Equatorial rainforests, the diffusion of Zebu, the linguistic adoption of goma/koma from Khoisan via Indian sanskrit speakers (anthropologists have been duking it out for decades regarding the root switch for cow from the supposed conquered Khoi).

This is so fascinating, imagine it as the world's greatest slave rebellion beyond the scope of Haiti. Bantu who fought off Arab, Indian, Indonesian and mixed people.

Again, I'm not /pol/ all my opinions are backed with archeo-linguistic and genetic information. You say it's a lie but you've not countered on thing.

No people; not Europeans, not Asians and not Africans developed in a vacuum. The heritage of the Indian Ocean is mixed beyond belief all informing and influencing one another for thousands of years.

With that come exploitation. That is the foundation of the Great Enclosure, perfectly smooth from the inside no way to enter or exist save for a tiny sliver of space. It was a slave holding pen until they rose up and pushed the foreigners to Sofala where shortly after Somalia and Arabs conquered it.

All you're saying is that Austronesians influenced East Africa a bit. This slave colony shit is just pulled out of your ass. There's no historic evidence for an East African slave trade at the time Great Zimbabwe was built (the Zanj of the Zanj Revolt were West Africans/Sudanese), there's no archaeological evidence that Great Zimbabwe was built by anyone other than the Shona, there's nothing about the architecture of the site suggesting it emerged from anything other than local traditions of building stone enclosures and walls (found across East Africa) and the idea that something as imposing as Great Zimbabwe, with massive, thick, decorated walls enclosing a fairly small area, was built as a 'slave pen' is absolutely idiotic; it's obviously not a utilitarian building.

It's obvious that you've read a lot on this but your interpretations are delusional.

My definition of southern Africa is derived from the SADC.

Tanzania and Mozambique are a part of that and it is there that the Waq-Waq are mentioned.

They were raiders, traders, slavers, they sacked Zanzibar and formed a number of important ports along the coast.

Of course this is an exonym describing possibly dozens of groups speaking say a trade language like Sabir/Lingua Franca (yes that word we use was the name of a trading pidgin) in the Mediterranean and Rea Sea. That we don't know for sure but what we do know is that they were collectively expansive, powerful and had a significant realm on mainland Africa and of course Madagascar.

You haven't disprove anything I've said. All you are doing is changing goal posts and saying I'm wrong.

Every single boat found in the East African coast from Somalia down to Mozambique utilizes Indian and southeast Asian designs.

The biggest food crops of southern Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania is the banana brought by southeast and South Asian sea farers. It was instrumental in the Bantu Expansion.

The waq-waq are universally recognized as South and Southeast Asians who progressive mixed with Africans and had such a power and influence that the language of the entire island of Madagascar is Austronesian.

The slave revolt is not the "Zanj" Revolt of Iraq. I am talking about the collapse of Great Zimbabwe and the wellspring of kingdoms that developed afterwards like the Torwa Dynasty and Mwene Mutapa who migrated by choice but also as slaves to Madagascar.

The roots of Great Zimbabwe involve Mapungubwe an originally Khoe (Bushman and Cushitic) trading peoples linked to Asian and Middle Eastern traders in Rhapta utilizing inland and foreign labour. This is along the line of zebu herding peoples found throughout East Africa, this aligns with the migration of Horners into Khoisan populations genetically in southern Africa, the genetics of Khoisan retaining Indian ancestry.

Ptolemy spoke of an Indian merchant blown by monsoonal winds into Rhapta, Pliny the Elder wrote of Asians who migrated upon great rafts across the Indian Ocean trading cinnamon in East Africa, the Periplus of the Red Sea speaks of Azania being under the thumb of Arabian Felix rule.

East Africa is and always has been complex, show me how these researchers are wrong.

desu idc if this africaboo is right or wrong I like the way he talks and what he says. it's like dnd material stuff.

too bad they didn't fucking write anything down.

Monrovia

I think you have some misconceptions about certain historical occurrences and the genetic evidence they would certainly leave behind, but I also can see that you have a somewhat thorough education that is very rare in western society, and you likely know a lot of things that is largely unknown to the west and that could potentially be forgotten. especially if you are learning things in a language other than english, you should record some of these things down somewhere in academia in english. maybe it's redundant information for you, and others might just see things you've said where the evidence isn't so great or and attempt to dismiss all you say, but I personally think that histories particularly ones with a large oral background don't get enough attention from the west, and there is potentially important information contained within oral and regional histories that doesn't get recorded well because of occasional conflicts or things that seem unrealistic.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Empire

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_City

You can thank the eternal anglo for the shithole it became later:

>The first English expedition to Benin was in 1553, and significant trading developed between England and Benin based on the export of ivory, palm oil and pepper. Visitors in the 16th and 17th centuries brought back to Europe tales of "the Great Benin", a fabulous city of noble buildings, ruled over by a powerful king. However, the Oba began to suspect Britain of larger colonial designs and ceased communications with the British until the British Expedition in 1896-97 when British troops captured, burned, and looted Benin City, which brought the Benin Empire to an end.

Axum

Arabs and Persians did write about them and they did use a sanskrit based writing but it's all but lost. All that remains is the arabic script sorabe (it's meaning implies there was once a script that used larger likely sanskrit letters) and is from the late coming Antemoro. The Arab descended people were specialists; paper makers, doctors, scribes and fortune tellers who aligned themselves with prestige castes of all Malagasy groups which ended sanskrit script
There was so much interaction in the Indian Ocean. There is the Janjira state formed by an enslaved African that staved off Portugal and was recognized by the British Raj. In the time of Ibn Battuta Maldives was ruled by Somali. In Western Australia a coin from kilwa was found on the beach connected to Indonesian traders.

New research showing the bases of Asian maritime civilization coming from Negritos/melanesians that Moken, Moklen and Orang Luat descend from (these were specialists aligned with Asian and Indian traders and conquerors after they were forced out of the international routes the formed that connected Africa and Asia) and maternal Malagasy and Polynesian lines show.

Bajra Pearl Millet and Ragi finger millet both African crops are found in Indus Valley and feed India to this day.

There are deep roots, some recorded, some oral or genetic but its there and researchers are coming together to bring it to light.

The formation of Zimbabwe I firmly believe is that of slavery but it was cushitic-sandawe khoe who bridged the gap with Asian seafarers and ruled with an iron fist for centuries.

Through the demise of their reign dozens of Bantu nations developed and spread. They spread east to Madagascar and brought cultural institutions to Malagasy that still exist today.

When I first began my research I had preconceived notions of what was and was resistant to evidence that challenged it, but now I see the tapestry woven with every new discovery and dating and test.

...

You haven't given any evidence to back up this bullshit about Great Zimbabwe being a slave pen ruled by Austronesians. You keep droning on about Malagasy influences in East Africa, which nobody is denying, and act like this is enough to support your ridiculous fantasies. You don't seem to understand how evidence works. You can't just dump a bunch of irrelevant information about East African interactions with the Indian Ocean and act like these indicate the existence of some massive slave empire. All they indicate is that East Africa interacted with the Indian Ocean, which is pretty obvious. You seem to want to attribute everything that ever happened in East Africa to these interactions, which is completely at odds with the archaeological evidence. It's just plain hyperdiffusionism.

Archaeologists have done plenty of studies into the origins of Great Zimbabwe. It was only one of dozens of such sites in Zimbabwe, a part of a larger 'Zimbabwe culture', which shared the Zimbabwe plateau with another closely related culture called the 'Khami culture'. Both had origins in much earlier local traditions; the former grew out of the local Gumanye tradition and built stone enclosures, the latter grew out of the Leopard’s Kopje tradition and built terraced platforms. These cultures were contemporary but showed large divides in material culture, rather than the uniformity you'd expect if there was an immigrant Austronesian elite. Both are attributed to the Shona people, the former to the Karanga subgroup and the latter to the Kalanga subgroup. Neither has any Austronesian origins or influence.

Dry-stone building long predates the construction of Great Zimbabwe at sites like Mapela Hill going back to about 1000 AD. The increasing size and complexity of such sites after about 1200 AD is related to an increase in the export of gold and an expansion of cattle-rearing (not bananas), made possible because of Zimbabwe's relative lack of tsetse flies; there is however no evidence for political unity, and it was likely competing chiefdoms rather than a single power controlling trade, and certainly not a Malagasy colony which somehow left no evidence (like square house, artifacts, language, etc). Slavery plays no significant part here; there's no evidence for a significant slave trade at this time (that's why I mentioned the Zanj Rebellion, which seems to have gone over your head). Slavery probably existed and was utilized in mines as it was in most complex societies, but to think of the whole culture as based on one huge slaving operation is ridiculous and baseless. I know you're not a /pol/fag, but you do seem to be influenced at some level by the idea that Africans could only interact with non-Africans as subordinates; of course there's just no way they were mining and exporting gold themselves. God forbid Africans have any kind of agency.

South of the Sahara, in terms of architecture, Aksum.

Timbuktu?

Carthago or Alexandria.

hard mode: what would be the greatest city to have ever existed in middle or south Africa?

North Africa: Cairo
Sub Saharan: Lagos
European: Cape Town

You mean Bantu Africa? Probably Kilwa. There was very little urbanism in Bantu Africa though, owing to the fact that sedentary agriculture was introduced only after 1000 BC.

Alexandria or Carthage.

There was this one city in the Congo that stupefied European explorers because of how huge it was despite being in the middle of the jungle. It was the size of any European city. I forgot the name and am not caffeinated enough to look it up.

>the best city in Africa founded by Greeks
Many such cases. Sad

>Sad
Why do you keep doing that? Stop doing that.

That sounds more like Benin in modern Nigeria. At least before the civil war that destroyed most of it around 1700, Europeans described it as comparable in size and orderliness to the likes of Haarlem. Pic related isn't accurate (it's based on second-hand accounts) but it gives you an idea at least of how impressive Europeans found it.

Wasn't benin one of the largest slaver states on there?

No, compared with other states like Dahomey, Oyo, Ashanti or Kongo, it only played a relatively minor role. They did take part, but they were never one of the major slave trading states and stuff like palm oil, ivory, pepper and textiles were generally more important. Slaves seem to have been an insignificant export until the 18th century, though ivory still remained more important, before dying off again in the 19th century.

That's probably why they managed to survive as a state until the 19th century, in contrast to states like Kongo or Oyo where the trade contributed to political and social collapse.

That said, some of Benin's tributaries like the Itsekiri and the port of Lagos did participate in it to a much greater extent, but these were mostly independent non-Bini communities (Benin being more a regional hegemon than an actual empire) which should be distinguished from Benin proper.

Why the arbitrary Bantu distinction?

You are very knowledgeable. Thank you.

I assumed that's what he meant by 'middle or south Africa'.

Salisbury

The oldest dry stone relics that exist within Easten Africa from Somalia down are related to pastoralist cushitic populations who made up the Savanah Pastoralist complex.

It was not Bantu who constructed these old sites, rather it was the same Cushitic-Khoisan populations that migrate from Tanzania mixing with xuu speakers and others in Southern Africa.

It should be noted this same social complex had an offshoot and constructed Engaruka in Tanzania around the 12th century before disease killed them and Bantu took over the sites merely maintaining systems because it was not their skill set.

The Periplus of the erythraean sea makes mention of these tall and red skinned people, not bantu who were spoken of differently.

In an account from 1552 Joao de Barros in his book Da Asia writes of Monomatapa and the "fortress in the centre of the mining country", said "Above the door of this building is an inscripition which some Moorish merchants, learned men who went there, did not know how to read, nor could they tell what lettering it was in. And almost all around this building on some hills were other buildings of the same fashion, all worked in stone and without lime, among them a tower of a dozen fathoms."
I might as well add a link as well showing the Shona in the 19th century who state they did not build these as well
books.google.com/books?id=oZy4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA238&lpg=PA238&dq=de goes lisbon great zimbabwe inscriptions&source=bl&ots=z6xmNTu8Uf&sig=xLAyp9mqjh-17gpwbhGS-WjudzI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq6YTK3PzRAhUHsFQKHXk3DqwQ6AEILTAE#v=snippet&q=de barros1&f=false

im going to keep going so more parts later.

I just find it so foolish that Funan of Southeast Asia and thus the predecessor of Chenla and Angkor can be seen as mass works and stone building seen as no where else but Great Zimbabwe under no-circumstance could.

100 small phallic figurines/linga of Shaivism that were found in around the great enclosure the hill-fortresses or even the very soap stone birds especially the soapstone bird carving with the crocodile that is to this day still seen in Sepik and among Bugis. It is no surprise that these carvings were found mostly in the Western valley closure a center of trade goods and foreign materials.

The stone door relic, found no where else in africa save for Madagascar away from the West Coast but only in the central highlands of post-Srivijaya Austronesian Merina society
books.google.com/books?id=2RxXAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA348&lpg=PA348&dq=harry posselt stone door&source=bl&ots=9cgazodAkr&sig=8zPwO90jvO39kbwzUnUm-d9G4I4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI_OO66_zRAhVDlVQKHUVBDFQQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

There are many players in this, purges and pulses of traders from throughout the Indian Ocean. By 900 the Cholas Shaivisist rebridged the internationa lsea trade in the face of Islamic domination of the seas. When Mogadisho, Mombasa, Kilwa and Zanzibar came to life.