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41796 results in Collections

Page 2041 of 2090

  • 2 - Origins and evolution of African Hominidae

  • Edited by J. Desmond Clark
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 February 1982, pp 70-156

  • Summary

    This chapter presents the primary evidence for the evolution of Hominidae in Africa since the upper Miocene. The oldest occurrences of Hominidae are restricted to sub-Saharan Africa. In eastern Africa all known occurrences are related to the Rift Valley System, in Ethiopia, in Kenya and in Tanzania. The type specimens of most Pliocene-Pleistocene Hominidae derive from cemented infillings of fissures, sinkholes and caves of the South African Highveld and the Transvaal plateau basin. The chapter presents an overview of the documentation in Africa of the fossil record of the family Hominidae, which is not always either straightforward or well defined, so that it is necessary to stress the tentative and even uncertain nature of interpretations and inferences. Fragments of hominoid fossils of Upper Miocene age from Kenya have been considered by several workers to be attributable to Hominidae. The small species (africanus) of Australopithecus occurs in deposits of Pliocene age in southern and in eastern Africa.

  • Bibliographical essays

  • Edited by J. Desmond Clark
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 February 1982, pp 941-970

  • Summary

    This bibliography presents a list of titles that help the reader to understand the African prehistory from the time of the first hominids in the Plio-Pleistone up to the spread of iron technology after c.500 BC. The Greek school at Alexandria gathered important records and it was there that Eratosthenes, about 2000 BC, made the first scientific measurement of the circumference of the earth. Neolithic man has left behind him fewer skeletal remains than did his predecessors whose large Epi-Palaeolithic cemeteries at Afalou bou Rhumel, Taforalt and Columnata have each been the subject of important research. The sole work concerned with the physical anthropology of the Neolithic peoples deals only with the Saharan regions and, in addition, devotes considerable space to the protohistoric populations. Both in the Atlas and the massifs of the Sahara, the Neolithic saw an extraordinary flowering of rock art.

  • 8 - Beginnings of pastoralism and cultivation in north-west Africa and the Sahara: origins of the Berbers

  • Edited by J. Desmond Clark
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 February 1982, pp 548-623

  • Summary

    Africa is truly Mediterranean only along its northern coastal fringe. During Palaeolithic times, similar or comparable lithic industries are found throughout both the countries of the Maghrib and the regions which today are desert. In North Africa and the immediately adjacent peripheral zone of the Sahara two great cultural traditions, namely Iberomaurusian and Capsian, succeeded one another without, however, occupying identical areas. The oldest phases of the Saharan-Sudanese Neolithic has led to an examination of the origins of agriculture, so that of the pastoral phase, chiefly known from the rock-art style referred to as Bovidian should begin with an analysis of the origins of animal domestication in the Sahara. There are a considerable number of paintings of the pastoral or Bovidian phase in the Tassili n'Ajjer and also in Ennedi, Tibesti and Tefedest in the northern Ahaggar.

  • 4 - The cultures of the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age

  • Edited by J. Desmond Clark
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 February 1982, pp 248-341

  • Summary

    The 'Middle Palaeolithic', or the 'Middle Stone Age', is part of the prehistoric cultural record that follows the Lower Palaeolithic or Earlier Stone Age, and precedes the Upper Palaeolithic or Later Stone Age. The Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age makes its first appearance more than 100000 years ago during the Last Interglacial, in Africa a time of somewhat increased rainfall, warmer climate, and transgressive sea level. The Middle Palaeolithic of the Maghrib and Sahara is usually divided into two broad complexes, the Mousterian and the Aterian, though at many sites it is not always possible to be certain which of the two is represented. The Middle Stone Age in Ethiopia and the Horn resembles in general, therefore, the typical Mousterian of Levallois facies of Europe though there are, in addition to the Levallois cores, an important percentage of core forms for the production of non-Levallois flakes.

  • 9 - The origins of indigenous African agriculture

    • By Jack R. Harlan, University of Illinois College of Agriculture, Urbana, Illinois
  • Edited by J. Desmond Clark
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 February 1982, pp 624-657

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses ethnographic, archaeological and linguistic evidences for the origin of indigenous African agriculture, and also the development of indigenous African agriculture in the most general and tenuous terms at the present time. The direct evidence from actual plant remains to date has been very disappointing and contributes little to a solution of the problem. Indirect archaeological evidence is more abundant but always subject to errors or interpretation. The chapter focuses on a theory about plant domestication and agricultural origins, which is based on generalized models. The most characteristic feature of indigenous African agriculture is its adaptation to the savanna. Even the plants grown in the forest are largely of savanna origin, and by far the most important contribution of African crops to the world are plants adapted to the savanna zones. A small group of crops, essentially endemic to Ethiopia, was domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands.

  • 12 - Egypt, 1552–664 BC

  • Edited by J. Desmond Clark
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 February 1982, pp 830-940

  • Summary

    The history of Egypt between 1552 and 664 BC, as for earlier periods, is conventionally divided up into usually sequential, numbered dynasties. These are derived from later Epitomes of Manetho's history of Egypt and usually do in fact coincide with real breaks, alterations or divisions in the line of dynastic succession. Several major factors contributed to the shaping, sustaining, and social pervasiveness of the Egyptian world-view. Tradition was an extremely important one. The governmental system enjoyed great authority because of its antiquity and supernatural implications. It was adequate to meet the perennial social and economic needs of the population and it was adept at reinforcing and enhancing its own political power. The period between 1552 and 664 BC is conventionally divided into two main phases, the New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period. New Kingdom and later relations with Libya, the other main African contact area, are one of the most intriguing and least studied aspects of Egyptian foreign relations.

  • 10 - Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period in Egypt

  • Edited by J. Desmond Clark
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Africa
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 February 1982, pp 658-769

  • Summary

    The Old and Middle Kingdoms together represent an important unitary phase in Egypt's political and cultural development. Divine kingship is the most striking feature of Egypt in these periods. In the form of great religious complexes centred on the pyramid tombs its cult was given monumental expression of a grandeur unsurpassed anywhere in the ancient Near East. Kerma in the Second Intermediate Period came to be an African counterpart of Byblos: an independent state beyond Egypt's political frontiers, with a court looking to Egypt as a source of sophisticated court fashion. If one considers the historical developments in Nubia in the Second Intermediate Period and the possibility that the position of Kush in the lists is a tribute to its political importance, then one might conclude that Kush was, from the outset, centred at Kerma. The implication is that Kush had emerged as a kingdom of considerable strength and importance, a counterpart to the Hyksos kingdom of the north.

Page 2041 of 2090