World Literature Mr. Nurenberg AN INTRODUCTION TO AFRICA

REVIEW FROM FRIDAY Ethnic Group Culture Cultural Pluralism/Multiculturalism Ethnocentrism/Parochialism

When you think of Africa, what images and words come to mind?

Can you draw Africa? Do your best guess.

How many countries can you name in Africa? How many cultures/ethnic groups?

Don’t get too stressed - but don’t feel too proud, either. Most Americans know very little about Africa.

Here are some facts: Africa is the second largest continent on Earth. Even at #2, it’s bigger, in terms of sheer land, than the United States, China, India, and all of Europe…COMBINED.

Seriously? It doesn’t look that big on the map!

That’s because the Earth is round, but our maps are flat, so we see distorted images. Most of our maps were based on a 16th century projection that shows us the accurate shape of countries, but not their accurate size. (Lattitudes near the poles have to be spaced out - Greenland is not really that big!)

Peters projection: Accurate sizes, inaccurate coastlines.

Asia Centered Globe View Found in India, China, Japan

In the present day, Africa is composed of 53 independent nations, and over 3,000 ethnic groups. Nigeria alone ( where Chinua Achebe is from) is home to over 250 different ethnic groups.

Most anthropologists are pretty certain that human beings and human civilization began in Africa.

Many great civilizations spanned (and continue to span) the continent of Africa. The Axum Empire in present-day Ethiopia was one of the first Christian cultures in Africa. In the 7th century they allied with the Byzantines against the Persians.

The Soninke ( ) of Ghana developed a system of “silent barter” that allowed peoples from the South to trade gold for salt with Arabs in the North, even without the use of a common language… By collecting taxes on this trade, they became extremely wealthy.

The Mali empire ruled much of West Africa from AD. One of their emperors, Mansa Musa, once visited Mecca, and along the way visited Egypt…and while there, gave away so much gold that it unbalanced the Egyptian economy!

The Songhai Empire ruled much of West Africa from AD. They were a powerful trading culture that did business with the Arab world as well as Africa (and indeed even became Islamic themselves in later centuries).

They sponsored Sankore, one of the greatest universities in history, at Timbuktu, whose libraries became a center of learning for Muslims, Jews, Berbers, and all manner of other African peoples.

Today, 748 million people populate the continent, speaking over 1,000 languages.

Religions in African ethnic groups are too numerous to list. Islam, and later Christianity, converted millions of people on the continent to their way of life…but thousands of the “old religions” still exist, grouped (rather unceremoniously) under the category “tribal” or “pagan” beliefs by Western anthropologists.

Africa has changed a great deal in the last two centuries. Today, 70% of all people living on the African continent survive on less than $2 US per day, and 15 of the world’s poorest nations are here.

A large part of the reason for the famines, wars, and diseases that ravage the African peoples are a result of the legacy of Colonialism, when European armies took over the lands, disrupted time-tested systems of farming, and brought destructive technologies and germs.

Today, Africa is free of direct European influence, but not the indirect controls of Western economics…we’ll talk more about that later.

The first region we’ll be looking at is West Africa.

West Africa: Ethnic groups overlaid against national borders

HOMEWORK: 1.Read Things Fall Apart to p 29 for tomorrow. Required 2.Follow along in the study guide, filling out the questions. Optional - but all quiz questions will be taken directly from the study guides, which you will be able to use on your quizzes. 3.Map Quiz (no notes permitted) on Wednesday 9/17. Required