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Writing and the wheel in Africa
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: [QB] [b]If you look at Africa without looking at it through the eyes of a African, you will never truly understand Africa. Stop comparing them to Europe, Asia, or the Americas, all that does is cause everything to become convoluted. Especially when you try to measure Africa up to the standards of European or Asian civilizations. [/b] There is nothing wrong per se in comparing civilizations, as long as you are clear on what parameters you are using. The key point to keep in mind is that (a) Africa has produced civilization equal to any of the other continents, and (b) Africa need not follow various European or Asian models to validate its civilizations. Africa stand by itself in head to head comparisons, AND African civilizations stand on their own as unique expressions of the African environment or peoples, without necessarily adhering to some Euro models. For example, a neat linear shift from hunter-gathering, to herders, to farmers need not define every African development. There were large sedentary African cultures in place and eating quite well in the Nile Valley BEFORE intensive one-place agriculture came along. Likewise the ancient religions of Africa do not need to borrow patterns from the "Middle East" to become more elaborate. The king as divine priest, the numerous animal gods, regalia like grass skirts, masks and other trappings, etc etc are from the deep cultural foundations of Africa. No allegedly "universal" Eurasian "mother goddess" and such is needed as claimed by some Euro writers. [b]As for the wheel, here is where things get tricky, ancient egypt and nubia are both documented with using the whell, but I've found little info on the maghreb, the Sahel, East Africa, Ethiopia, or Southern/Central Africa. [/b] What's tricky? The wheel is old news in Africa. It is old news in Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Sudan, and the Sahara. As for the Maghreb, well the wheel is known there as well- Tunisia and Libya- not only Carthage but Saharan rock art in Libya shows wheeled vehicles with skeletal remains resembling Upper Egyptians (fentress 1997). It is old news in the West African Saharan kingdoms like Mali. Indeed art reliefs showing wheeled vehicles are found in Mali, in Goundam, about 50 miles from Timbuktu. And ox-drawn carts appear in the central Sahara. All this is BEFORE the Islamic incursion, so "Arabs" aren't needed to explain the appearance of the wheel in Africa (Robin Law, The Horse in West African History, 1980). The wheel is/was independently invented or spread to many different cultures in the Old World- in Africa as well as Europe and Asia. Ancient Greece did not invent the wheel- it comes from someplace else- outside Greece. Furthermore the spread of the Sahara desert southward obscures the nature of developments in Africa, making numerous places NON "sub-Saharan" that once had been "sub-Saharan." Pyramids for example are found in the Sudan, but the shift of the desert now moves such pyramids "out" of "sub-Saharan" Africa. [b]Here's the thing, topography may prevent diffusion, deserts, tropical forests(with crippling diseases), mountain ranges, large bodies of water, so that may just be the answer.[/b] ^^True, and old news indeed to students of Africa. The wheel is just another tool, and like any tool unless it can find practical use, it is not of much value. Hunters in West Africa's deep rain forest have little need of the wheel, and slash and burn horticulturalists or flood plain, or hoe terrace farmers nearby likewise do not need it much. The wheel for transport depends on large load-bearing draught animals, AND even when such are in place if you don't have to haul a lot of stuff for shelter and food its has little utility. The Tsetse-flybelt in Africa limited the use of such load-bearing animals in many places. Without them, the wheel is of little value, even more so when shelter could be easily and quickly built from materials close at hand such as grass or reeds for making huts. Zulu cattle herders for example could easily erect shelter including building thorn-bush barricades from materials right at hand with no need for carts piled high with tenting and building material. Likewise in Egypt, the massive pyramid blocks did not move on wheeled carts, although such were known. Such carts would break, or sink into sandy terrain. 20-ton blocks of stone move by sled much more efficiently. It is actually more efficient to float the massive blocks into place down the Nile or various canals and then use sledges, ramps, and even the circular motion of logs which provide part of the rotary motion of the wheel played a part. And Nubians and Egyptians are old hands at the wheel as in their use of pulleys and the lathe for example [b]If I'm wrong, and if anyone knows of the wheel being used outside of Egypt and Nubia(I do know of saharan rock paintings that are thousands of years old depicting chariots and the wheel, as well as the Garamentes civilization using them as well) please feel free to add to what I hope will be a stimulating and long-lasting thread. [/b] Use of the wheel outside Egypt and Nubia is nothing special. Ethiopia, the savannah/ Saharan kingdoms towards the West like Mali, etc, all used the wheel. They used it like any other tool, when it was practical. [b] Also, navigable rivers also help with diffusion. The three greatest in Africa are the Niger, Nile, and Congo, but large swathes of the continent are without rivers and the tsetse fly kills horses and cattle as well.[/b] True to a certain extent. Africa does not have the navigable rivers, or the natural harbors other continents have. Many African rivers are blocked by cataracts and sandbars, hindering the movement of ideas, people and technology. This has in part limited the diffusion of knowledge from elsewhere into certain parts of Africa. Europe by contrast has a network of rivers spanning cross peninsula routes, including the Rhine and the Danube. Also of critical importance that allowed Europe to borrow, copy and adapt technologies and ideas developed outside is Europe's favorable coastline, almost 23,000 miles, more than enough to gird the earth, with numerous natural harbors. Added to this would be the broad highway belt of the Mediterranean. Good water transport is one reason Europeans have been able to borrow and copy from elsewhere so successfully from others. Nevertheless, when Africans have good water access they have made the most of it. The Nile River is the foremost case in point. This does not mean Africans elsewhere did not use the rivers- they surely did, just that compared to other places with long navigable rivers leading to the sea, Africa did not have similar advantages. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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