Customer Reviews

Early Africa

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It has been nearly a half century since acclaimed British historian and Africanist Basil Davidson proposed that the history of pre-colonial Black Africa has been overlooked, largely because of Western bias (if not outright racism). To this day, the history of early Africa is still given scant attention in history books and courses. For this reason, this book provides a valuable and much-needed resource for teachers of students in grades 5-9 in world history courses. (To wit, my school's world history textbook is a tome of 525 pages, of which only 7 are devoted to pre-colonial Africa.)

This slender volume covers early African migrations, prehistoric rock art, the Nok sculpture of the Bantu-speaking people in modern-day Nigeria), Ancient Ghana, the ancient and contemporary Asante people, and Mali and Songhay. Each unit includes a map study and a short review. This is a decent survey, but it could have been stronger had the authors included Kush (with Meroe), Axum (Ethiopia), Benin (for its priceless bronze sculpture and ties to contemporary Haiti), and Great Zimbabwe. The short chapter on Asante art is strong on the plastic arts but weak on the famed Anansi trickster tales. I agree with Dr. Davidson that Ancient Egypt was as much a black African as Middle Eastern civilization; while it is beyond the scope of this book to include a thorough history of Ancient Egypt, it should have at least been mentioned in a chapter on Kush.

The black-and-white illustrations are attractive, but a teacher would do well to supplement these with photos from art books and the Internet; a well-rounded unit on pre-colonial Africa should include hands-on art activities, for which the instructor should consult educational art books and the Web. I would also recommend teaching something about the oral traditions passed down through families of griots, especially the Mali epic of Sundiata; after all, much of what we know (at least until the arrival of Muslim scholars in Timbuktu and elsewhere) has been passed down orally, much as with much of African American slaves in the US. The Internet is also a handy source of African music and travel videos.

Nevertheless, this book provides a much needed framework for constructing a decent unit on African history, a fascinating topic too long neglected.