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Writing and the wheel in Africa
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Son of Ra: [qb] @Zaharan Great post! :) I loved it! Do you have sources where it states West Africa specifically Mali had the wheel before the arrival of Arabs??? Because man this will be the final nail to the so called [i]Arab contribution[/i] to Sahel Africa So far we know. <<file://C:\Users\quango\AppData\Local\Temp\bkbqfy31.bmp>> 1. Arabs didn't bring civilizations. Around 2000 BC or earlier there were urban towns/cities like Tichit Walate and Gao. 2. Arabs didn't bring Islam but North Africans like Berbers and even still Muslim were an elite minority. 3. Arabs were not responsible for the education or writing. [/qb][/QUOTE]Ra see Robin Law, The Horse in West African History, 1980- pg 160, 155-163) [i] "Heavy draught work in these early times had therefore to be done by oxen rather than horses; and there are, in addition to the horse-drawn chariots, numerous rock engravings depicting ox-drawn carts in both the central and the western Sahara. However by the Islamic era wheeled transport had apparently gone completely out of use in the Sahara... " then it talks about the engravings in Mali: "The most southerly depiction of a wheeled cart in Saharan rock art is an engraving at TOndia, near Goundam to the northwest of the Niger bend: unfortunately the engraving is too stylized for it to be clear whether the draught animals shown are intended to be horses or oxen." [/i] And you are right- Africa had writing and education long before Arabs showed up. A lot of people seem to think that EUrope invented writing, but this is not so. Europe copied the invention from non-Europeans elsewhere. Egyptian writing systems appear before that of Mesopotamia, and variants of this were modified by Phonecians (a Middle Eastern people) to produce their version of alphabetic script (see book by Yale scholar David Sacks 2003, Language Visible) It is from this Middle Eastern variant that European alphabets are derived. Europe never invented writing. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- lioness said: [b]Nubians from after about 400 BC used wheels for spinning pottery and as water wheels.[9] It is thought that Nubian waterwheels may have been ox-driven[10] It is also known that Nubians used horse-driven chariots imported from Egypt.[/b] Keep in mind that Nubians are the closest cousin of Egyptians and were involved in Egypt since pre-dynastic times. Limiting "Nubia" to 400 BC is probelmatic, for Egyptians were deploying wheeled vehicles long before then. "Interestingly, the earliest representation of wheeled vehicle from Egypt (tomb of Sebeknekht at El Kab, Dynasty XIII) shows sledges, mounted on four disk wheels rather than rollers." -- Wheeled vehicles and ridden animals in the ancient Near East (1997), By M. A. Littauer, J. H. Crouwel. p14 -------------------------------------------------------- "Little is known about the raising of loads using ropes, but stone grooves and pulleys, around which ropes would have passed, are preserved from the 4th Dynasty, and wooden wheels for simple rope pulleys existed from the Middle Kingdom onwards." ------------------------------------- [i] "Much earlier forerunners are shown in tomb paintings of the late Old Kingdom and the 11th Dynasty showing siege towers with wheels; depictions of movable siege towers exist from the 6th Dynasty onwards.) This indicates that the wheel was used in the transport of heavy loads more frequently than assumed.. The use of wheeled equipment in building is not yet attested to but may have been fairly common. The soft surface of the desert sand and the mud of the cultivation may have been a serious obstacle for heavy carriages but not so much for sledges."[/i] --The encyclopaedia of ancient Egyptian architecture By Dieter Arnold. 2002. p 195 -------------------------- [i] "In all probability wheels would have been of little practical use, for the building blocks used were far too large and too heavy to be carried on a wooden-wheeled cart. The relative scarcity of wood in ancient Egypt would have made the building of such carts difficult and overcoming the practical and technical difficulties of building carts to carry and move great weights would have probably proved impossible. Wheels would have been, in any event, a far from practical method of transport on either agricultural land or the desert where they would have become quickly bogged down in either mud or sand."[/i] --R. Partridge. (1996) Transport in ancient Egypt. p76 -------------------------------------------------------- CLyde says: [b]The absence of navigable rivers in Africa is a recent phenomena, that is why we find engravings of boats throughout the Sahara dating to periods before the Sahara became a desert. [/b] Climate/enviro factors no doubt has changed the watery landscape once allowing boats in the Sahara. The time periods & amount of change varies over time. Africa has always had navigable rivers but the crucial point is (a) how far they were navigable internally before being interrupted by sandbars, rapids or cataracts, and (b) their access to the sea without continual interruption. Other factors include unpredictable rainfall that makes water levels fluctuate problematically. Another is how navigable by large vessels. It has been estimated that long stretches of the Niger Riger can only handle barges below 20 tons during the low-water level dry season. Whereas the Yangtse River in China can handle huge barges weighing in at 10,000 tons going hundreds of miles inland without interruption at any time. All the above just points out that substantial movement of materials and technology is not as easy in many parts of Africa as in other places. It does not mean Africans did not master boat technology. They did, long before others. And it is true that Africans had navigation knowledge as well. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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