Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Diverse Societies In Africa - Coggle Diagram
Diverse Societies In Africa
West African Iron Age
What are some possible reasons that Djenne-Djeno was abandoned?
The main reason Djenne-Djeno was abandoned was because of the drought, the drought also caused famine and war. Although it was the first trading city in West Africa, After time went by all the towns people slowly started leaving.
After they abandoned the first trading city they moved where the current city is located due to the spread of Islam and the building of the Great Mosque of Djenne.
LInk
MIgration
How do artifacts provide a picture of daily life?
The tools reveal how people worked and helped them identify their daily work or tasks
Iron had a much higher melting point than bronze, which meant that, unlike bronze, iron could not be melted and poured into a mould to form weapons or tools for everyday use.
What major changes affected societies during Africa’s Iron Age?
The people of Africa, south of the Sahara seem to have skipped the Copper and Bronze Ages and moved directly into the Iron Age. When Iron was developed in Africa, societies could then start making more effective weapons, and tools.
Invention
A Land of Geographic Contrasts
What problems might the expansion of the Sahara Cause?
Africa is the second largest continent in the world. It stretches 4,600 miles from east to west and 5,000 miles from north to south. With a total of 11.7 million square miles
The Sahara isn't stable for human life and it keeps taking over more land every year pushing people farther back
Stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, the Sahara covers an area roughly the size of the United States
Escalation
The Sahara increasing its size every year is escalation because its making more problems for life to grow or be kept in the spot it took over
Desert Facts:
The Sahara’s record high temperature was recorded at 136 degrees Fahrenheit
20 percent of the world's land surface is desert.
Link
Why might the rain forest be called “Nature’s Greenhouse”?
The dense tree's cover created a shelter area underneath, it was much like a greenhouse.
Most people in Africa live on the savannas, or grassy plains. Africa’s savannas are not just endless plains. They include mountainous highlands and swampy tropical stretches. Covered with tall grasses
Rainforest Facts:
Giant bamboo plants can grow up to 9 inches a day.
1 out of 4 ingredients in our medicine is from rainforest plants.
The trees of a tropical rainforest are so densely packed that rain falling on the canopy can take as long as 10 minutes to reach the ground.
Link
The Rainforest produces mahogany and teak trees up to 150 feet tall
The northern coast and the southern tip of Africa have welcoming Mediterranean-type climates and fertile soil. Because these coastal areas are so fertile, they are densely populated with farmers and herders.
Isolation
Isolation is a Concept because the rainforest is always raining and its out in the middle of nowhere so they are stuck in their group of people and inside its hard to live there because there is barely any top soil
Stateless Societies
Power
In African societies families were organized in groups called lineages.
Members of lineages believe that they are all descendants of a common ancestor
Lineage members are very loyal to one another
Lineage groups took some places of rulers. Those societies are known as stateless societies, they had no centralized system of power.
How is lineage important to stateless societies?
Answer: Power gets spread among all families, so not just one family has too much power.
Family
African societies trace their decedents by lineage, because it determines how possessions and properties are passed on.
Members of a patrilineal society trace their ancestors through their fathers.
In a matrilineal society, children trace their ancestors through their mothers.
Children stay close with other kids by using the age-set system. An age set consists of young people within a region who are born during the same time period
Societies like the Igbo use the age-set system to
teach young people discipline, community service, and leadership skills.
Religion
Many local religions were polytheistic
African religions included elements of animism, a belief system that spirits play a very important role
Animists believe that spirits are present in animals, plants, and other natural forces.
In African religions nature spirits and spirits of ancestors were responsible for many of life’s events, such as a plentiful harvest or an illness.
Africans did not separate religion from other areas of life.
Instead, spiritual beliefs and practices were integral to all of life.
What were some religious beliefs of many early Africans?
Answer: Belief in a Supreme Being with the worship of other gods and ancestors.
Culture
Not many African societies had written language, they instead shared orally the History and literature of a culture.
Storytellers were known as Griots
Why were oral traditions important in early Africa?
Answer: To keep the History alive by passing it from parent to child
Archaeologists believe that early peoples
from the north moved into West Africa as desertification,
Desertification
Early Humans Adapt to Their Enviroments
The first humans appeared in the Great Rift Valley, a deep gash in Earth's crust that runs through the floor of the Red Sea and across the eastern Africa.
People moved from this are which gave place to the world's first migration.
Social Systems
They developed technologies and social systems that helped them survive in and then alter their surroundings
Hunting-Gathering Societies
Nomadic hunting-gathering societies were the oldest form of organization in the world which it began in Africa. Nowdays, hunting-gathering societies form a small percentage of the population
These groups speak their own languages and use their own hunting techniques often.
The Efe are one of several hunting-gathering societes in Africa. They live in the Ituri Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
1 more item...
To what might the Efe attribute their long success as a hunter-gatherer society?
1 more item...
Transitions to a Settled Lifestyle
Experts believe that agriculture in African began by 6000 BC. Between 8000 and 6000 BC, the Sahara recieved increased rainfall and turned into a savanna but then it began to dry up again
To survive, many moved away into the Nile Valley and south into West Africa. Others moved to the svannas. Grain grew well in the savannas. Africans began to rise cattle,
Agriculture
Agriculture changed the way Africans lived. They were able to grow their own food making them able to build permanent shelters in one location. The increased food supply also freed some members of the cummunity to practice activities such as...
Making poetry
Crafting jewerly
Working Metal
Why would complex settlements require more government than smaller communities?
1 more item...
Other early Africans eventually learned to domesticate and raise a variety of animals for food. They were called herders or pastoralists
The herders or pastoralists kept
Goats
Sheep
Cattle
They were nomads who drove their animals to find water and good pastures for gazing during the dry season. Millions of modern Africans are pastoral herders as well.
The Masai of Tanzania measure their wealth by the size of their herds. The Masai diets consists on mostly meat, blood, and milk. They live in small bands and they can make their own decisions but multiple bands work together to oversee use of grazing and watering facilities
What happened to the pastoralists of the Sahara 8,000 years ago?
Why did this happen?
Pastoralism collapsed because the Sahara went into a terminal decline towards the desert we have
