ENVIRONMENT AND HISTORY

Food Production and Technology— Gilbert Chapter 3

Africa's diverse climates and landscapes both enabled and stymied human progress. Fertile croplands, and volcanic soils encouraged human settlement. But deserts,

malarial lowlands, poor soils, and unreliable rains in other parts limited where people could live, forcing competition, conflict and migration

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African Landscape: Plateau, Waterfall, Savanna/ Plain, Rainforest, Coastline, and Desert played double roles acted as shield and barrier: Sahara and Atlantic Ocean-unfavorable wind system screen Africa from ferocities of competition and diffusion of technologies

• Plateau – high tableland– Highest in:

• Ethiopian Highlands• East African Highlands

• Drakensberg Mountains

Major Rivers1. Niger

2. Congo

3. Blue Nile

4. Victoria/White Nile

5. Zambezi

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Not in innocence, and not in Asia was mankind born. The home of our fathers was that African highland reaching north from the Cape to the Lakes of the Nile. Here we came about –slowly, ever so slowly—on a sky-swept savannah glowing with menace [Robert Ardrey in African Genesis ]

"Our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the Monkey."--Mark Twain.

River mouths with sandbars, mangrove forest walls, and steep slopes towards the sea and infested with predatory crocodiles &hippos prevented alien penetration

THE MAN-EASTERS OF TSAVO illustrates Competition and conflict with

Nature

The man-eaters of Tsavo in a lifelike mount at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, USA

First obligation was to Master their Environment

• By taking a single ecological zone, understanding its complexity with a thoroughness incomprehensible to even a rural westerner, developing a rich and subtle language with a profusion of terms for the understanding of the local ecology, planting dozens of crops to which the environment was peculiarly suited, the farmer sought to defeat famine, to cheat death. [Steven Feierman, The Shambaa Kingdom,1974]

Metalwork and Environment

Smiths as founders of African Civilization: The Ndongo King at the Forge 1670s

• We smiths are indeed the ba mama of the consecrated chiefs. Without us no chiefs (Kongo).

• The King sets up the forge, In Cyirima’s rear courtyard, And pumps the bellows 4 times, He instructs the descendants of Muhinda, to beat the iron 4 times (Rwanda text)

Wildlife and human development: The Savanna

Hooved Wildlife became reservoir of food, clothing, medicine and aesthetics

BIG GAME

Rhino • Horn used as aphrodisiac in Asia became items of international trade—shields, clothes, medicine and so on

What were the implications of Iron technology? Mass migration, spread of farming and pastoral

activities

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Majority adopted economic life around livestock

What were the implications of farming for African society Before the Christian Era?

Began to live in larger & permanent settlements

Situated settlements on fertile land that could support cultivation

Reproduction became more frequent & ensured increased labor force for production

Lived in simple structures of mud, sticks, poles, wooden reeds & grass thatch Sometimes houses or enclosing walls built of stone

Cultivation not suitable in every environment: droughts and pests threatened farming communities. Therefore arid areas raised livestock

as food source

• 1500 BCE Zebu species of cattle appeared in Africa

• Developed a tolerance for arid conditions

The Kuri, humpless breed of Chad

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Taming Deserts by locating early settlements in close proximity to them is revealing: The Sahara and Kalahari were Probably the first to be settled. Are Deserts good or Bad?

1000-100 BC Horses and Chariots appear; Towards Christian era drying up pushed the horse out of Sahara; Camel became basis of Sahara socio- economic

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Camel were used for plowing and carrying fuel wood for home consumption and for

sale