The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800

by Christopher Ehret

With his focus on precolonial Africa, Christopher Ehret provides in The Civilizations of A History to 1800 a remarkably complete and original overview of African history during the long periods sparsely covered in most other general histories of the continent. He examines African inventions and civilizations from 16,000 BCE to 1800 CE from the northern tip of Tunisia to the Cape of Good Hope in the south. Logically organized by topic and era, Ehret’s heavily illustrated and easily accessible text reveals the diversity of African history. It explores the wide range of social and cultural as well as technological and economic change in Africa, and it depicts African agricultural, social, political, cultural, technological, and economic history in relation to developments in the rest of the world. Designed to address the glaring lack of texts concentrating on Africa before 1800, this book can be fruitfully combined with histories of Africa since 1800 to build a full and well-rounded understanding of the roles of Africa’s peoples in human history.

Genres: History, Africa, Nonfiction, Ancient History, World History, Medieval

480 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2002

About the author

A scholar of African history and African historical linguistics specializing in efforts to correlate linguistic taxonomy and reconstruction with the archeological record, Christopher Ehret was Distinguished Research Professor in History at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he taught from 1968 until his retirement in 2011.

Reviews

[Roger Wadleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

They don't teach this in school at all. What was happening in Africa when the Romans were doing their thing? A lot, and some of the ancient ruins in Africa are as impressive as those we see in Europe. One of the most important things this book makes clear, is that Africa is not the monolithic block we think of in the US. It was a tremendously varied and diverse place, with more languages and cultures than Europe ever had. 500 year old empires larger than Rome thrived in Southern Africa during the Dark Ages of Europe. Almost all of Africa was conquered and enslaved by European culture due to one, significant difference... Who invented cannons and firearms first. And who was morally bankrupt enough to use them for personal gain.

[Vela Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up Civilizations of Africa for a (maybe) unusual reason: I'm a fantasy author doing research for worldbuilding.

Problem #1: The fantasy genre likes to pretend people of color didn't exist before the 1800s.

Problem #2: I got a "good education" in the US, which taught me exactly nothing about Africa.

I'm a white author of European descent on a quest to include respectful and detailed African-coded characters and settings in my Blood Grace series. My only certainty on the journey is that I will make mistakes, and the law I live by is DYFR (Do Your...Research).

When I started educating myself about Africa, I went looking for a book that would meet a few criteria:

* A good introductory overview for a clueless white person
* A book not written by clueless white people
* A book not written by racist white people

Civilizations of Africa is that book.

This author, Ehret, is a professer at a major university who has dedicated his career to African history, so in that sense he's qualified to write this book. It's important to point out that he's not a person of African descent or a person of color. Reading what Africans or people of the African diaspora write about their own history and culture is always the best way to do research. But Ehret's tone makes is clear he is a respectful ally of people of African heritage.

I really appreciate his approach to racism. In his introduction, he confronts possible biases his readers may have. It's not a political discussion, but a historical one. He combats racism with powerful ammunition: facts and logic.

After that chapter, he focuses on the civilizations of Africa in stunning detail. This book starts with human evolution and continues to 1800, covering a vast stretch of historical periods, such as:

* Hunter-gatherer societies
* The transition to agricutlure
* The African Classical Age, when ancient civilizations laid the foundation for the African cultures we know today
* Medieval African civilizations and their accomplishments in trade and state-building
* When the Europeans arrived and screwed everything up (be prepared for this part to be a painful read)

Africa is a much more complex and diverse continent than Europe. For example, in one African country, Cameroon, there are around 250 different ethnic groups. One of these ethnic groups, the Bamileke, comprise 90 different peoples speaking 11 different dialects. Let that sink in.

Here are just a few of the facts presented in this book that challenge assumptions about Africa:

* African women invented ceramics
* African women invented textiles
* Multiple independent inventions of agriculture took place in various parts of Africa
* There were monotheistic religions in Africa before Judaism, Christianity or Islam existed
* Egypt was not an exception. Many ancient African cultures accomplished great things in architecture, the arts and more.

Ehret covers peoples, technologies and themes that you just won't find through a web search. If this information even exists on the internet, it's locked behind a paywall in academic journals. If you have access via a university library, that's great, but for a $35 book you can grab at Amazon, Civilizations of Africa is an amazing resource. I got the paperback because that's all that existed when I first bought it, but I'm very excited to see a Kindle edition is on it's way in only two weeks as of this review!

This is a college textbook, so a pretty dense read. It can be a challenge to understand and remember all the people, places and dates. But given the huge time period covered and the complexity of Africa, there's not really any other way the author could present this.

Some tips for enjoying the book:
* Make notes!
* Try to focus on learning big patterns rather than memorizing specific details
* Pick out the peoples/cultures that most interest you and do extra research on them. Find visuals about them online if you can, such as maps or photos of their art.
* Learn from the modern-day descendants of the historical peoples mentioned in this book. Go to Youtube and watch people from Kenya or Nigeria or Burkina Faso talk about their beliefs, languages and experiences. Support the content they're creating to thank them for educating us.

I promise the challenging journey is worth it. This book will completely change how you think and feel about Africa. You'll be stunned at the fascinating and beautiful cultures you'll discover.

I'm very grateful to Ehret's amazing resource, which has taught me so much, and I'll be reaching for it often as I continue to write diverse fantasy novels.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book was drinking new information with a fire hose. There is so much here that I didn't know and so much that I wasn't able to absorb because it was all new. But I do feel that I came away from this book with a strong overview of the early history of Africa and a much greater appreciation for the place of Africa in world history. I have read a lot of books of history for nearly every era and every part of the world but there was a huge gap in my knowledge of Africa, which is now at least partly filled.

The one thing that I kept asking myself that the book never answered is how could historians possibly know so much about societies that were preliterate and that left very little archeological record. I'm sure that there is some archeology and some linguistic evidence and some oral tradition, but it would be hard to tease out of that the extensive descriptions of early societies that are in this book. Also, given what I believe must surely be sparse historical evidence, I would expect that much of the information about early African societies is controversial and there must be differing interpretations and disagreements among historians about things that are presented here as established facts. I would have enjoyed getting more insight into the historical sources and the differing interpretations, though that would probably have turned a 450 page book into more than a thousand pages, so I can understand the choice not to do this in a broad introductory survey book.

[Avery B-Z]

DNF. Read about 43% for class, didn’t feel motivated to finish it, so it is not counted in my reading challenge

[Elain Salas · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting