Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CEpor Distinguished Research Professor Christopher Ehret
Ninguno Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. A solid, sweeping overview of deep African history: from tens of thousands of years ago up to Late Antiquity. Christopher Ehret draws on archaeological and linguistic evidence to show that Africans and African societies have always been central to global history and to the story of human progress. He marshals evidence to show that Africans made key early discoveries in fields such as weaving, ceramics, and iron smelting (in central Africa there's evidence for iron smelting occurring at least 400 years before the technology was independently developed in western Asia), and that what we can glean of social organisation gives the lie to the idea that social stratification and gender subjugation are inevitable. There are a couple of times where I felt that Ehret was pushing the evidence up to the limit of what it can with validity support—I'm thinking here primarily of his arguments to do with belief systems—but overall I thought this was an impressively deft introduction to a topic vast in its scope. Recommended if you have even a passing interest in the topic. ( ) sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"A deep history of Africa, from 70,000 BCE to 300 CE, that synthesizes the archeological and historical linguistic evidence to tell an integrated global history of the continent. A framing chapter introduces the historical goals and issues of the book, recounting the terrible histories of recent centuries that led to Africa being wrongly treated as a peripheral other in the history of us all. Chapter two, "African Firsts in the History Technology," brings to light the histories of the independent inventions by Africans, living in different regions in the heart of the continent, of ceramic technology, more than 11,000 years ago; of the earliest cotton weaving technology in World History, 7,000-plus years ago; and of the earliest iron smelting, 4,000 or more years ago. Ehret then turns to agricultural innovations between the ninth and seventh millennia BCE, introducing the evidence that shows that Africa helped usher in the "Age of Agricultural Exchange," and was, on the whole, a net exporter of agricultural innovations into Eurasia (including twelve early essential crops, and domesticated donkeys). Chapter four, "Towns and Long-Distance Commerce in Ancient Africa," turns attention to the roles of Africans (particularly the regions of Sudan and the Congo Basin) in the development of new systems for trading over distance, which facilitated an emerging class of merchants, during the second and first millennia BCE. Next, "The Africanity of Ancient Egypt," summarizes the evidence of intensive cultural interaction between the lands several hundred kilometers south of the confluence of the White and Blue Niles in modern-day Sudan all the way north to Middle Egypt. Finally, a closing chapter, "Africa and Africans in Global History," takes up the problem of how to bring what we have learned about 'ancient' Africa integrally into how we tell World History and proposes a new periodization of African and World History over the ages from around 68,000 BCE-when true, fully modern humans all still lived in eastern Africa-down to the first three centuries CE"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNinguno
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)960.1History and Geography Africa AfricaClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |