Africa’s Contribution to Contemporarily Western Civilization

Africa’s Contribution to Contemporarily Western Civilization

1. The Greek’s are often credited with developing much of the educational and cultural developments of western civilization. According to this article, who should be given credit and why?

• The Egyptians. The Greeks brought Egyptian education and influences to Europe and the western world. (Pythagorus- brought much of the math and science that would influence the west)

2. What Enlightenment scientists were influenced by

ancient African ideas and developments? • Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton

3. Before colonizing the America’s, many Europeans were

dependent on Ghana for what? • Imports of gold • - very advanced system of trade and taxation

4. How did Ghana prove to have a highly organized system of trade?

• Taxes on every load entering or leaving

• 5. Describe two developments during the Songhai Empire

• Timbuktu became great center of learning.

• Universities attracted scholars from all over the Muslim world, Europe and Asia.

• Trade flourished – gold to Europe in return for manufactured goods, clothes and salt.

• Disciplined government departments to oversee justice, finance, agriculture and others

• Before European explorers reached Timbuktu, the city was known mainly through a myth that beyond the vast and inhospitable Sahara stood a great city covered in gold.

• It was a place, people said, where gold was as common as sand and where wealth, beauty, and culture combined to create a great civilization.

• European rulers spread this myth to encourage explorers to fulfill Europe's economic ambitions for West Africa, which was producing two-thirds of the world's gold supply.

• The fact that before the nineteenth century no European had survived the journey to Timbuktu only helped secure its reputation as a legendary place of wonder and wealth.

• By the sixteenth century, Timbuktu had become legendary in the European imagination, representing all the wealth of Africa.

http://z.about.com/d/architecture/1/0/J/l/timuktusankore01.jpg