Created \t01\/31\/2006 6:43 am<\/p>\n
\tThe adaptations which facilitated the evolution and survival of humans
\n\tin Africa also pre-adapted the species for speech and language.
\n\tThe evolution of speech had important social implications for all
\n\tof humanity. The most ancient characteristics of language worldwide
\n\tare rooted in surviving African languages. — Khoisan: from the
\n\tphonetic point of view these are the world’s most complex
\n\tlanguages. To speak one of them fluently is to exploit human
\n\tphonetic ability to the full.<\/p>\n
\t148 is the group size at which human societies appear to function
\n\tmost effectively.<\/p>\n
\tHunting and gathering was the founding economy on which human
\n\tsociety is based, but hunters and gatherers were not “the original
\n\taffluent society” as is popularly supposed; their numbers and
\n\tdistribution were determined by the “law of the minimum.” —
\n\tNutritional Limitations kept the human population of Africa at
\n\tminimal levels for extended periods, but the population expanded
\n\trapidly when conditions permitted. Cycles of “boom and bust” were a
\n\tcommonplace factor of human experience. — Pronounced climatic
\n\tchange prompted cultural responses. Evidence of hunting first
\n\toccurs in Africa from 18,000 years ago, when the last ice age
\n\tbrought dry conditions to the continent, and the world’s
\n\tearliest-known evidence of organized human-on-human violence dates
\n\tfrom 14,000 years ago in Africa, when deteriorating conditions
\n\tprovoked competition for resources among populations whose numbers
\n\thad expanded during the intervening period of benign conditions.
\n\t— Deliberate control of plant productivity dates back to 70,000
\n\tyears ago in southern Africa, and the world’s’s earliest-known
\n\tcentrally organized food-Production system was established along
\n\tthe Nile 15,000 years ago–long before the Pharaohs–then swept away
\n\tby calamitous changes in the river’s flow-pattern. — Domestic
\n\tlivestock were present in the Sahara during a wet phase 9,000-7,000
\n\tyears ago, when African cereals were also domesticated in the
\n\tregion. The first villages are evident from this period, indicating
\n\tthe beginnings of a sedentary farming lifestyle, for which the
\n\tinvention of pottery was a crucial development. In particular,
\n\tpots enable people to make substitutes for mother’s milk, thus
\n\tshortening the weaning period and birth intervals and fuelling a
\n\tgrowth in population. — The domestication of livestock enhanced
\n\tearly food production economies, but lactose intolerance and the
\n\ttsetse fly reduced the spread of pastoralism among the people and
\n\thabitats of Africa. — In less than 3,000 years the Bantu-speaking
\n\tpeoples expanded from their cradle-land that straddles the borders
\n\tof present-day Nigeria and Cameroon and colonized virtually all of
\n\tsub-Saharan Africa. The development of iron-smelting technology
\n\tplayed an important role in their dispersal. — While
\n\tcivilizations rose and fell along the Nile, their influence on
\n\tsub-Saharan Africa was one of exploitation only– African
\n\tcommodities were traded north, but nothing of the Nile’s culture
\n\tand technology moved south.<\/p>\n
— electrum: a natural alloy of gold
\n\tcontaining about 20 percent silver<\/p>\n
\tA mariner’s handbook from the first century AD indicates that
\n\talthough trading vessels from Roman Egypt sailed to sub-Saharan
\n\tAfrica, the region offed meagre profits an attracted little
\n\tinterest. — The unique environmental circumstances of northern
\n\tEthiopia combined with the trading opportunities of the Red Sea to
\n\tfuel the rise of sub-Saharn Africa’s first indigenous state. —<\/p>\n
\tboustrophedon– script: as the ox turns in ploughing<\/p>\n
\tWhile Aksum was distinguished by the conspicuous consumption of a
\n\truling elite and its subjects toiled under the rule of despotic
\n\tkings, the large, complex societies of the inland Niger delta
\n\tdeveloped a more egalitarian and less coercive political system.
\n\t— If cities are founded by people from different social
\n\tand occupational backgrounds congregating to live in close
\n\tproximity of one another, is a hierarchical social system and
\n\tcoercive centralized control the only way of managing the group’s
\n\tincreasingly complex economic and social interactions? In the
\n\tclassic definition of the urbanization process, centralized-often
\n\tdespotic-control is deemed to have been the norm, with the many
\n\truled by the few and the ideology of the city state reinforced by
\n\tmonumental architecture. Does the prevalence of one interpretation
\n\tobscure even the possibility of an alternative? Is there perhaps
\n\tan alternative management strategy, more practical than
\n\tideological, that would direct the growth the complex societies
\n\talong routes than rendered monumental “signposts of permanence”
\n\t(totems of failure) unnecessary? The history of people exploiting
\n\tthe resources of tee inland delta of the Niger River in West Africa
\n\tsuggest that there is an alternative route. West Africa history was
\n\t“unshackled from the Arab stimulus paradigm” in the 1970s when
\n\tevidence of “cities without citadels” was uncovered, wherein the
\n\ttransformation to a complex urban society began 1,000 years before
\n\tthe arrival of Arab traders from across the Sahara, and a large
\n\turban center, Jenne-jeno, remained active for centuries… there is
\n\tno evidence of hierarchical social system and centralized
\n\tcontrol, no monumental architecture, no citadel.<\/p>\n
\tFoolish-African-Never-Takes-Alcohol FANTA<\/p>\n
\tThe demand for diversification is incompatible with requirements
\n\tof specialization; yet each is fundamental to survival. Special
\n\trelationships between specialists: People know how to behave
\n\tbecause they know they are different and this mutual respect
\n\tallows specialization to flourish and material symbols of group
\n\tidentity to develop. Together, myths and material symbols remind
\n\tall involved of the expectations that bind the regional community,
\n\tHerein lies the origin of in situ ethnic elaboration, and the
\n\tdevice that maintains ethnic boundaries. The counteracting forces
\n\tof ethnic identity where the demands of specialization pushed
\n\tgroups apart while the requirements of a generalized economy pulled
\n\tthem together– created a dynamism that ensured growth and the
\n\testablishment of urban settlements. And they were non-coercive
\n\tsettlements. Groups congregated by choice. This is an instance of
\n\ttransformation from a rural to an urban society that did not
\n\testablish a hierarchical society and coercive centralized control,
\n\twith the many ruled by the despotic few. The process in the delta
\n\tand at Jenne-jeno in particular, was once one of “complexification”
\n\trather than centralization. They settled within shouting distance of
\n\teach other, but avoided assimilation into a single urban entity.
\n\tClustering allowed a diverse population to congregate for
\n\teconomies of scale and to draw upon the services of other
\n\tspecialists without surrendering their independent identities,
\n\tthe whose thereby functioning as a city and provide a variety of
\n\tservices and products to a vast hinterland. In effect, the ‘push’
\n\tof specialization produced occupational castes and ethnic
\n\tdistinction, while the ‘pull’ of economic integration produced a
\n\tweb of share myth and belief that emphasized both individual ethnic
\n\tidentity AND mutual interdependence. Not a whiff of disaster is
\n\tevident at Jenne-Jeno throughout its 1,600 years of occupation.<\/p>\n
\tEdit | Delete | Back to Notep<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Created 01\/31\/2006 6:43 am The adaptations which facilitated the evolution and survival of humans in Africa also pre-adapted the species for speech and language. The evolution of speech had important social implications for all of humanity. The most ancient characteristics of language worldwide are rooted in surviving African languages. — Khoisan: from the phonetic point […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}