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For those who like stone cities in Africa
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sundjata: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Djehuti: [qb] I hope you guys are not making the mistake of judging African cultures by Western standards. Many African cultures built cities; however very few of them were constructed by stone. In African cultures, large monuments and structures constructed of permanent and endurable material such as stone was built for spirits of the dead or the gods and meant to last for eternity, whereas large monuments and structures constructed for living yet mortal people were constructed of more temporary and perishable materials such as adobe (mud-brick) or wood. The same was true for ancient Egypt, where most of the stone monuments in the form of temples and tombs were dedicated to gods and pharaohs. Virtually all cities in Egypt were constructed of mud-brick and wood and even then such cities were few and far between throughout the country of Egypt. This is the reason why Egypt was popularly called by archaeologists a civilization "without cities". Ironically, West Africans built many cities yet their civilizations tended to be ignored by Westerners as part of propaganda to demoralize and denigrate them. [/qb][/QUOTE]What I've learned is different about African towns is that many were indeed made out of more perishable material. For example, what we know most about the Swahili towns are the marvelous stone ruins, however, recall when Ibn Battuta traveled to the Swahili coast he described houses and structures that were made of wood. Also, polities through out central Africa had traditions where whole cities were even relocated due to the ease of deconstruction and reconstruction with such perishable materials during famine or war. There are no signs for example of Buganda in the state it was in when first depicted by the Portuguese, but it is preserved in illustration. I was watching a documentary in one of my classes which brought up a good point. The documentary shows the simple construction of a bridge by the Biaka that took three days to construct and after it was used, the bridge was destroyed. The question was posed asking how old the technology was and what evidence can we use to indicate this? The thing is, the materials used to build the bridge, basic rope, would disintegrate over time to the point where there'd be no trace of the material or material found wouldn't be recognized later as an component of an ancient bridge. Perishable material is a big problem in archaeology. It seems Africans may have been big on using these kind of materials due to hostile/diverse environments and different resource availability, such that much of the architecture and technology from certain regions are lost. The Great Mosque at Djenne for instance is retouched every year so imagine the resilience (or more correctly, lack of resilience) of an abandoned site made from mostly perishable materials. There is a ton of work and a million more things to find within Africa through the archaeology. It is like a new frontier right now. I'm just glad to hear of Loropeni, it is actually a pretty big discovery IMO and should provide a lot more data for a better understanding of the dynamics occurring in the West African Sahel zone (and the regions straddling south of the Sahel) around this time. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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