Pre-colonial Tropical Africa did not know writing. Therefore, of the two types of historical thinking - historical writing and historical speaking, the second was inherent in them. In a non-literate society, as D.P. Ursu notes, oral tradition was simultaneously a form of existence of historical knowledge, collective social memory and self-awareness of a traditional society; a mechanism for transmitting, preserving and accumulating information, a means of ethno-social cohesion based on preserving historical memory in a similar way (historical tradition played an especially important role among peoples who had statehood - for them, the court epic served as a strengthening of the central government and socio-political structures).

So, the role of history in traditional African society was played by oral tradition - however, ignoring its role and contrasting two types of historical thinking led Europeans at one time to the erroneous conclusion about Africa as a “continent without history,” which begins there only with the beginning of European expansion. Historical speaking, professionally passed on from generation to generation, has a number of significant shortcomings as a source: - it combines both fact and its interpretation, truth and fiction. As a result, history is mythologized; - oral history is predominantly political and personalized (for example, it gives us the names of 74 rulers of Ghana before the 3rd century AD), but can give little insight into socio-economic processes; - it lacks a calendar and absolute chronology (oral tradition conveys the movement of time, but has a specific system of counting it according to natural-ecological cycles and eras of government). Therefore, the “search for time” is one of the main problems of pre-colonial African history.

The prerequisite for the formation of African historiography in Africa was initially the struggle to restore the dignity of the black man and the Negroid race of its individual representatives at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The first educated African Americans used historical reasoning, both reliable and unreliable, to achieve their goals. This is M. Garvey, the ideologist of the “back to Africa” movement (“black Zionism”); Sylvester Williams, lawyer from Trinidad; W. Dubois, author of the book “The Soul of a Black Man” and others. When encountering manifestations of white racism, they allowed exaggerations and overlaps in their argumentation in the spirit of “anti-racist racism.” Thus, W. Dubois even classified Aesop and Andromeda as black. In his interpretation of human history, “Africa observed the heavenly bodies, Asia observed the human soul, and Europe saw and sees only human body, which she cherishes and cherishes, and it has become corpulent, rude and cruel."

The need to maintain social harmony after decolonization has led to the desire of African historians and politicians to use the historical past in the appropriate interpretation as a “main lever” (Ki Zerbo). In the spirit of this trend, S. A. Diop agreed to statements about the “civilizational-cultural priority” of Africa in literally all spheres (Egyptian civilization was created by Negroids; Negro-Egyptians civilized the whole world...) Up until the 70s, the approach of African historians to The continent's past was distinguished by its ideologization and politicization, exaggeration of the thesis about the "ancestral home of humanity", statements about the absence of class stratification and exploitation in pre-colonial African society. European researchers who sympathized with the struggle of its peoples for political and spiritual decolonization also showed an uncritical approach and a tendency to idealize the past of Tropical Africa. Thus, B. Davidson put forward the thesis about a certain “complete harmony” of African culture with social relations(it is not clear, however, what then gave rise to the slowness of development and all-round stagnation of traditional African society).

Europeans have always known little about Tropical Africa. After the Arab conquest of North Africa, European contacts with the regions south of the Sahara completely ceased, and minimal historical and geographical knowledge about them was lost (Europeans seriously believed, for example, that “the Nile flows directly from paradise”). There were no racist prejudices about the “inferiority” of the Negroid race in pre-colonial Europe: when the first “black lady with sensual lips” came to Scotland in 1460, a knightly tournament was organized “for the sparkle of the eyes and the caress of the lips of the treacherous.”

With the beginning of colonial conquests and the development of the slave trade, the attitude towards Africans became established as “savages who were passed over by history,” non-historical peoples at the level of wild animals. At the stage of the territorial division of the continent, the results of the works of travelers and missionaries, regardless of their subjective honesty, were interpreted by colonial circles in their own way. Hegel, based on the fact that Africans do not have a written history, characterized Africa as “a closed, childish country, which, being outside the day of independent history, is clothed in the black veil of night,” and came to the conclusion that “it is not a historical part of the world: there is no movement or development in it."

The colonial activities of European countries undoubtedly had a great influence on traditional African culture. Nevertheless, Africa also made a huge contribution to many European cultures.

For the vast African continent, it is quite natural that there is a large gap in the level of social progress of its various regions. The periphery of the continent had more opportunities and, earlier than other inland areas, followed the path of development and progress. For all the uniqueness of African cultures, many of their most important elements are borrowed from other and sometimes very remote non-African areas. The average level of socio-economic development of African societies decreased from North to South and partly from East to West (this is partly due to the landscape zonation of the continent). Proof of this thesis can be the specific division of labor between the above regions within the framework of the Trans-Saharan trade, which provided the south with finished goods.

African civilizations and cultures were less connected with each other than with the Islamic world as the main mediator in relations between them and between Africa and the rest of the world (later Europe would take on similar functions).

The use of the term "civilization" with different meanings attached to it requires clarification in the case of Tropical Africa. Until the advent of Europeans, there were no full-fledged civilizations in this region. There was a complex of primitive cultures and “focal civilizations” with an incomplete set of civilizational signs or weakly expressed signs of civilization. What they have in common with pre-civilizations is the lack of writing, cities, monumental construction, and developed religious systems; what they have in common with civilizations is the presence of an early class society and political structures - to call such societies civilizations would be redundant, to call them pre-civilizations is not enough. Therefore, the term “protocivilization” is most appropriate here. The most famous among the proto-civilizations are Zimbabwe, Cuba, Congo, Ngola. If pre-civilizations are not very susceptible to external cultural influences (they can destroy them), then proto-civilizations even need such influence for their own strengthening and development.

In Tropical Africa during the era of the decomposition of the patriarchal system, slavery and other softer forms of dependence appeared simultaneously, and slavery was not dominant and decisive in a complex multi-structured society, either as a form of unfreedom or as a form of exploitation.

The defining feature of the development of the multi-structured society of Tropical Africa was the formation of feudal relations. The components of this process were: the formation of “bonds of dependence” of vassals and overlords within the feudal hierarchy; transfer of land to vassals “for use” for merits, especially military ones; the rise of the professional warrior class; dispersal of political power and the constant threat of political instability. It was an early feudal (and feudalized) society, burdened with many patriarchal components and remnants, and developing at an extremely slow pace - this is how the Europeans found it.

The life of African society in all its manifestations is permeated with religious ideas and religious rituals. This contributed to the development of the stability of African society into stagnation (religion lags behind the development of society and holds back progress in all spheres), the preservation of tribal relations and prejudices (for example, the cannibalistic custom of eating the most respected enemies, interpreted as eating the enemy’s strength).

European culture gradually spread into the wild areas of Africa, and the first empires arose along trade routes linking already fairly civilized neighboring areas.

After the end of the First World War, in which detachments of colonial troops of African origin took part, the habitually disdainful manner of Europeans began to change to an ever-growing curiosity and interest in so-called “primitive” cultures. Interest in African heritage developed with such speed that already between the two world wars, the first international exhibitions in New York, Antwerp and Paris drew attention to the artistic merits of these monuments. During this period, it became fashionable to collect objects of African art, and this allowed them to expand beyond the circle to which they were originally limited and gain greater fame among the cultural and social elite of the Western world. Until the 1980s It was quite rare to have exhibitions that concentrated on just one category of objects or around the artistic production of one tribe. Their purpose was encyclopedic, since they united monuments originating from very different areas. Only recently have private institutions, such as the Musee Dapper in Paris, begun to open exhibitions dedicated to a particular Fang or Dogon tribe, or to a specific topic, such as body ornaments.

Collectors in Western Europe and North America refer to the art of Africa in connection with artistic movements such as cubism and abstract art. Indeed, it allowed European and American artists to free themselves from stereotypes associated with the traditional view of the composition and color scheme of canvases. Before talking about African art, its specifics and main types, it is necessary to agree on the content of the very concept of “monument of African art.” Taken literally, this term would unite all objects created by African craftsmen. These statements prove not only the influence, but also the mutual influence of European and African cultures.

The extraordinary diversity of African languages ​​also speaks to the influence of European colonization. Portuguese, Spanish, English and French are the most popular languages, along with indigenous African languages.

The study of the historical past of these states and peoples was dictated not only by purely scientific interests, but also by the practical needs of cooperation with them, including to increase the effectiveness of the policy of neocolonialism.

This had a beneficial effect on the development of West African studies. Soviet researchers of ancient Africa also made a great contribution to the strengthening of this new historical discipline. Assessing the knowledge of the African Middle Ages as a whole, we can state the following: - the greatest knowledge of external, rather than internal aspects and patterns of African history; - primary knowledge of ethnographic and political aspects of life in African society; - lack of unity of opinions, major generalizing works and dominant concepts on the patterns and periodization of African history.



The history of the peoples of Africa is still little studied. Written sources that reveal the distant past of this continent cover the history of only Northern and Northeastern Africa. The history of Egypt has been known to us for almost five thousand years, starting from the 3rd millennium BC. e.; the history of North Africa, that is, present-day Tunisia, Algeria and partly Morocco, starting from the 9th century. BC e., Ethiopia - from the 3rd century. BC e. The history of the peoples of tropical Africa is even less known. It is based largely on reports from European travelers. These messages became more or less reliable only from the 15th-16th centuries. and relate only to the peoples of the narrow coastal strip of the African continent. Information from that time about the countries lying in the depths of the continent is random, full of inaccuracies and largely fantastic. The history of the countries of Western Sudan and the eastern coast of Africa is somewhat better known: we have received messages from Arab and Berber merchants and travelers who visited these countries, as well as historical chronicles of local chroniclers - Songhai and Hausa in Sudan, Swahili - on the eastern coast. These chronicles, written either in Arabic or in the Hausa and Swahili languages, describe events starting around the 9th-10th centuries. n. e.

In addition to written sources, there is data from archaeology, ethnography and linguistics, and for the most ancient eras of human development - paleanthropology and archeology. The combination of all these sources makes it possible to reconstruct in general terms the history of the development of the peoples of Africa. The materials available to science allow us to assert that the peoples of Africa have gone through a long historical path, created their own unique culture and contributed to the world treasury of culture.

Studying African History for a long time was exclusively in the hands of scientists, officials, and missionaries of the largest imperialist colonial powers. Among them there were and are many honest, progressive scientists who tried to study the peoples of the colonies as objectively as possible, as far as bourgeois methodology allows. However, the vast majority of anthropologists, ethnographers and partly linguists expressed openly reactionary, racist views, aiming to prove the inferiority of the peoples of Africa and in every possible way justify the policy of colonial oppression.

All constructions of bourgeois historical science that deny the independent role of the peoples of Africa in the development of world culture are falsified from beginning to end. The basis of all these falsifications is a misanthropic racist theory brought to life by the imperialist policy of enslaving backward peoples.

For more than a hundred years, reactionary anthropologists in capitalist countries have been trying to substantiate the false theory of racial inferiority of the main population of Africa - blacks. All of Sudan, all of tropical, Western, Eastern and Southern Africa are inhabited, as is known, by the Negroid race, the distinctive features of which are dark, almost black skin color, curly hair, a rather wide nose, etc. White colonialists and modern slave owners are trying to represent not only backward, but generally incapable of development. Almost all the “research” of most Anglo-American and German anthropologists is subordinated to the task of justifying the colonial regime and all its horrors.

The pseudoscientific theory of inequality of races was formulated in the mid-19th century by the French writer and amateur anthropologist Gobineau. The doctrine of racial inferiority has turned out to be a very convenient weapon; it can very cleverly cover up any political goals and justify any violence. Racist propaganda acquired particular scope in the North American United States during the Civil War between the North and South. Southern slave owners in the 50s of the last century were diligently engaged in the “scientific” justification of their rights to the inhuman oppression of blacks. The political essence of these pseudoscientific theories was perfectly understood by N. G. Chernyshevsky. He wrote: “The slave owners were people of the white race, the slaves were blacks; therefore the defense of slavery in learned treatises took the form of a theory about the fundamental difference between the different races of people” 1. Publicists from among the southerners, taking into account the protest of public opinion against slavery and the inhuman oppression of “blacks,” tried to justify the right to slavery by asserting the mental inferiority of blacks compared to white people; they referred to features of physical type, skull structure and skin color. All the characteristic features of the Negro’s physical appearance, in their opinion, supposedly prove the Negro’s closeness to the ape-like ancestors of man. All these arguments have nothing to do with science. If we talk about the proximity of one or another racial type to our ape-like ancestors, then we have to admit that according to some characteristics, Caucasians are the most primitive of all, according to others - Mongoloids, and according to others - Negroids.

Soviet anthropologists, as well as progressive foreign scientists, including, for example, Franz Boas and many others, with their works proved the absurdity of all these racist and psychoracist teachings. But, despite the fact that the scientific inconsistency of these “theories” has long been exposed, their propaganda from the pages of the bourgeois press continues.

With the help of various racist theories, especially developed in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, some German anthropologists “proved” the superiority of the German Nordic race over all others. After the National Socialists came to power, these theories became the official dogma of the Hitlerite state. Considerable importance in co-

Temporary bourgeois anthropology and ethnography also include the theories of the Austrian psychiatrist Freud, who dealt with the problems of psychoanalysis and laid the foundation for a whole movement called Freudianism. Its supporters put in first place the study, on the basis of racist provisions, of the “subconscious” in dreams and in sexual matters. The problems of psychoanalysis in modern bourgeois ethnography, especially in the USA, occupy a dominant place, and with the help of psychoracist methods, colonial peoples are now being “studyed” and their inferiority is “justified”. North American “scientific” magazines present such “theories” often with reservations, while newspapers present them brutally frankly. But their essence is the same. The press of the United States and the Union of South Africa is especially zealous in this regard. The desire of the authors of all these “theories” to justify colonial policies and racial discrimination against blacks in the USA and in the colonies is quite obvious. After the Second World War, when fascist tendencies intensified in America and the Union of South Africa, racism received fertile ground for its development. Various kinds of racist concepts are taught under the guise of science in universities and colleges. Currently, the newest varieties of Freudianism and racism have become especially widespread among American ethnographers and anthropologists. American ethnography for last years shows great interest in the peoples of Africa. One after another, works appear on North Africa, Western Sudan, Liberia, Nigeria, Angola and Madagascar.

This interest in the ethnography of African peoples reflects the growing expansion of the United States and its interest in the economy of present-day Africa*.

Ethnographic study of the African continent before the second half of the 19th century V. It wasn't particularly intense. Only some areas of the coast of Guinea, Congo and Angola were studied, and the study of the interior regions of Sudan and South Africa began. Ethnography at that time was considered a branch of anthropology and constituted one branch of knowledge, one natural historical discipline. Ethnographers stood on the philosophical positions of positivism and evolutionary theory. From their point of view, the level of development of modern Australians, Africans and Indians of North and South America represented a picture of the childhood of humanity. Evolutionary ethnographers used examples from the ethnography of these peoples to substantiate the history of the development of humanity and human society. Appeared in the middle of the 19th century. The works of Bachofen, Taylor, Maine and many other ethnographers were undoubtedly a progressive phenomenon at that time. The works of anthropologists and archaeologists Boucher de Pert, Mortilier and others date back to the same period. During these years, the foundations were laid for the further development of ethnography and archeology. The highest achievement of bourgeois science in the field of studying the social structure of primitive peoples was the work of Morgan, a researcher of North American Indians. The founders of the materialist understanding of history, Marx and Engels, positively assessed Morgan’s work “Ancient Society”. Fulfilling Marx’s will, Engels completed the work begun by Marx on the study of primitive society by writing the book “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.” It sums up all the previous achievements of ethnography and shows the history of human development from the era of the primitive communal system until the emergence of the state.

By the end of the 19th century. capitalism entered the stage of imperialism, the division of the world was completed. The largest colonial powers - England, France and Germany - captured vast territories with a population of millions. At the same time, the African continent was divided and almost all the peoples of Africa were converted into colonial slavery. From the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Intensified study of Africa and its peoples began. The era of imperialism saw the end of the dominance of the evolutionary trend in ethnography. New ethnographic directions and schools, which revised the theoretical principles of previous evolutionary ethnography, represented a bourgeois reaction to the philosophy of Marxism. The most prominent place among these schools involved in the ethnography of the peoples of Africa belongs to the so-called cultural-historical school, the ideologist of which, the German geographer Ratzel, attached exceptional importance to the geographical factor and the role of the individual in history. In his opinion, the influences exerted by external conditions shape the spirit of the people, and individual outstanding minds develop these external stimuli and thereby determine progress. The smaller the people, the less often outstanding people are found in it, and the slower the progress. From here Ratzel came to the conclusion that the most numerous peoples are capable of the greatest progress.

Many biographers of Ratzel point out that he did not attach any importance to racial differences. This is incorrect: these differences are veiled in Ratzel, racism is transferred from the field of anatomy to the sphere of spiritual life. Ratzel replaced the study of the history of peoples and ethnic groups with the study of the spread of individual cultural elements, which in their totality, in his opinion, constituted a certain cultural cycle. Ratzel tried to substantiate his views, among other things, on examples taken from African ethnography. Ratpel's theoretical positions were further developed in the works of a number of German Africanist ethnographers, mainly Frobenius and Ankermann. The most prominent theorist of the cultural-historical school, Graebner, tried in 1910 to substantiate the main provisions of this direction. The cultural-historical school, philosophically, took the position of neo-Kantianism. The Freiburg school of neo-Kantianism had a great influence on Graebner. Its head, Rickert, argued that there is no causal connection in social phenomena, that history is individual and unique, and that there is no pattern in historical phenomena. Following his views, theorists of the cultural-historical school abandoned the study of the real history of peoples: instead of studying objective patterns in the history of the development of society, they followed the path of studying the spread of cultural phenomena and individual elements of culture.

In the works of ethnographers of the cultural-historical direction, culture is considered in itself, as a kind of supra-historical entity that spreads through various migrations. Frobenius, for example, went so far as to assert that it is not the people who are the creator of culture, but, on the contrary, culture determines and shapes the character of the people. Frobenius discards the real history of peoples, replacing it with pure mysticism, speculation about the migration of souls of different cultures. In his presentation, culture is a biological being: it is born, spreads across the globe like a living being, flourishes and dies. These views have become widely known in modern reactionary ethnography. There is no need to present them in detail, suffice it to say that Frobenius ultimately reduced the entire history of African peoples to the struggle of two cultures - Hamitic and Ethiopian. These two cultures, in his opinion, are opposite. Hamitic culture is active; This is the culture of the dominant peoples, the “male” culture. Ethiopian, i.e. Negro, culture is essentially “feminine” - passive and prone to submission. Thus, in this reactionary theory, colonial slavery finds its justification.

The frank mysticism characteristic of Frobenius's views clearly demonstrates the theoretical impasse into which foreign ethnography has reached. More moderate representatives of the cultural-historical school, creating all sorts of cultural-historical circles and layers, try to connect them with the data of archeology and anthropology. Despite some correct conclusions, all these studies are fundamentally flawed, since they are based on purely idealistic concepts of Rickertianism, and the cultural and historical circles they study have nothing in common with the true history of peoples.

A special branch of the cultural and historical direction is the Viennese school, headed by Father Schmidt. Trying to put ethnography at the service of the Vatican, Schmidt used the concepts of cultural-historical circles and built a rather complex scheme of development and gradual replacement of some circles by others. Arbitrary constructions and exaggerations in Schmidt's reasoning caused sharp objections even among bourgeois scientists. However, despite the complete groundlessness of his constructions, Schmidt, using the financial support of the Vatican, organized dozens of expeditions to remote areas of Central Africa, Malacca, Tierra del Fuego, where his students Guzinde, Shebesta and others worked. Schmidt led the work of an entire army of Catholic missionaries, scattered all over the globe. The journal Anthropos, published by them, became the theoretical organ of this trend. After the Second World War, the Viennese school moved the center of its activities to Switzerland and carried out widespread propaganda in America, where all the most reactionary ideas - Freudianism, racism, etc. - found refuge.

The views of the cultural-historical school were reflected not only in related fields of science - archeology, linguistics, but also found a response among botanists and zoologists studying the history of the origin of cultivated plants and domestic animals. Bourgeois archaeologists transferred the principles and research methods of the cultural-historical school to their field. Based on the belief that each people is the bearer of a certain form of culture, bourgeois archaeologists, only on the basis of changes in the form and nature of the processing of stone tools, often make hasty, very bold conclusions about the emergence of a new people, a new wave of settlers who brought a different, higher technology. Thus, the history of the development of material culture, the history of the development of technology for processing tools, turns into the history of migrations of various archaeological “cultures”. Such views are still often found in foreign African studies and lead to the replacement of actual history with speculation about mythical migrations.

How researchers who try to apply the provisions of the cultural-historical school imagine the history of the peoples of Africa can be seen in the example of the traveler and geographer Shtulman. Based on the works of Ankerman and Frobenius and supplementing them with data from botany and zoology, Shtulman tried to recreate the history of the peoples of Africa. In his opinion, the original population of Africa were nigrites, in physical appearance - peoples of the Negroid race. These supposed Nigrites led a very primitive way of life and, in essence, had almost no culture: they were engaged in collecting roots, fruits and seeds wild plants; without building dwellings, they took refuge in the shade of bushes; not knowing either bow or arrows, they had the crudest stone tools. Then the first stream of settlers came from Asia, who brought with them the domesticated dog, taught the Nigrites to build domed huts, and introduced them to the use of bows and arrows and more advanced stone tools. Then new settlers, primitive farmers, appeared from somewhere in southern Asia. They brought the first cultivated plants to Africa: banana, taro and dagussa and taught the Nigrites to make clothes from bark, build quadrangular huts, use polished stone axes and wicker shields. This migration, according to Shtulman, took place in ancient times, > when Europe was covered with glaciers, and Africa was experiencing a pluvial period. The settlers of this period were the creators of the West African cultural circle; Shtulman called them the ancient Bantu.

Many thousands of years passed, and new newcomers appeared from southern Asia. They brought with them zebu bulls, sheep, and introduced grain crops: sorghum, millet, spelled and beans.

The next wave of settlers, according to Shtulman, consisted of people dressed in leather, armed with spears and clubs, more advanced bows and arrows. They taught the Nigrites the art of basket weaving. This resettlement, according to Shtulman, occurred several tens of thousands of years ago, at the end of the pluvial period, when forests began to give way to steppe spaces. Even later, the Hamites came from southern Asia, bringing again a new, more developed culture, and after them the Semites, or proto-Semites, who taught the Africans plow farming, the use of fertilizers and the cultivation of new grain crops. The last in a series of these migrations was the appearance of white colonialists, who brought with them an even more “high” culture. Thus, based on the concepts of the cultural-historical school, Shtulman draws the history of Africa.

It is not difficult to see in these arguments the desire to present the colonial regime, with all its horrors, racial discrimination and colonial oppression, as a new benefit that introduces Africans to European culture. The establishment of the colonial regime is portrayed as simply a process of spreading culture on earth. It is quite obvious that Shtulman’s theory and all similar arguments do not correspond true history. The complex process of the development of culture, the development of the creative abilities of peoples, the struggle of man with the nature around him, when he gradually subjugated and put into his service the forces of nature previously unknown to him - this whole process is replaced by reasoning about borrowing. On the one hand, there is the African who passively perceives all the good deeds, who has been continuously taught by various “bearers of culture” for many tens of thousands of years; on the other hand, it is opposed by active conquering peoples, it is unknown when, where and from whom they received this culture.

Cultural-historical concepts have given rise to many different theories. The racist reactionary Hamitic theory is particularly well known abroad these days. It is based on Ratzel’s concept of the superiority of active and militant pastoralists over peaceful agricultural peoples who are passive in nature. Supporters of the Hamitic theory are trying to prove that the light-skinned peoples of North Africa, who spoke Hamitic languages, allegedly brought a higher culture to the primitive black farmers of Africa, created states, and brought with them cattle breeding. All Bantu languages ​​supposedly originated from the mixture of Hamitic and Nigritic languages. This theory does not stand up to scientific criticism. Many bourgeois scientists - linguists, ethnographers and anthropologists - spoke out against it.

In English ethnography, the cultural-historical school was not successful. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when a “revision” of the theoretical positions of classical ethnography had long been underway in Germany, the evolutionary school continued to flourish in England. Its leader was Taylor, whose disciples all the most prominent English ethnographers, including Hartland and Fraser, considered themselves to be. Only a few English scientists, such as Elliot Smith, his student Perry and partly Rivers, paid tribute to cultural and historical theories of migration. But we do not dwell on their works, devoted primarily to the ethnography of the peoples of Oceania. The “functional direction” in ethnography, which developed in England after the First World War, is associated with the study of the peoples of Africa. This new direction is connected in its entirety with the tasks of imperialist colonial policy. In bourgeois literature it is often called the functional school. In fact, functionalism does not represent any school that has any theoretical foundations or views. Functionalism is a blatant attempt to justify colonial policy in a "scientific" way,

The reasoning of the functionalists and their leader, Malinowski, is based on psychoracist concepts about special properties different races. Each race, according to Malinovsky, has its own mental characteristics, due to which the races cannot be considered equal. Malinowski's theoretical reasoning is entirely based on behaviorism - one of the reactionary directions of modern American psychology. Malinovsky tried to put ethnography at the service of colonial policy. Scientific ethnography must be practical, applied - these are Malinovsky’s insistent instructions.

The emergence and flourishing of functionalism was entirely determined by the political situation in the English colonies. First World War had a serious impact on the colonies. Colonial oppression intensified. The exploitation of the population of the colonies grew, but at the same time the forces of resistance of the working masses to imperialism grew. The Great October Revolution had a huge influence on the national liberation movement in the colonies. socialist revolution. The struggle of the oppressed masses of the colonies for independence began to take on organized forms. Various types of organizations arose everywhere, trade unions and political parties appeared; Communist parties were organized in North Africa and the Union of South Africa.

In the context of the growing national liberation movement, functionalism came to the aid of British colonial leaders. Functionalists, “studying” African society, found out which layers should be relied upon, pursuing a policy of “indirect control,” that is, control through leaders, emirs, sultans and other servants of the colonial administration. Functionalists argued for the need to preserve tribal life, pointed out the danger of providing the people of the colonies with education, hypocritically praised the advantages of the ancient system of education from sorcerers and healers, etc. There is no need to list all the provisions of functionalism.

Under the leadership of Malinovsky, the culture of all colonial peoples was studied. His students and followers worked in Australia, Polynesia, Melanesia and most of all in Africa. Many works have come from the pen of functionalists, among whom we find mainly English and American ethnographers.

Functionalism received a wide response in the circles of ethnographers not only in England and America, but also in fascist Germany and Italy. At the direction of the functionalists, the British Ministry of Colonies introduced new requirements for colonial officials: mandatory knowledge of the languages ​​of the local population and familiarity with ethnography. In the colonies, special positions of full-time ethnographer officials were established. The “Government Anthropologist” (as this position is called) must collect information about the customs of the local population, describe them and study them. In England, a special institute for the study of African languages ​​and cultures was organized, and an African department was opened at the London School of Oriental Languages.

After the Second World War and the victory of the Soviet Union in this war, the struggle of the colonial peoples against imperialism intensified. The British colonial authorities, forced to take into account the growing self-awareness of the masses, resorted to new tricks. Having made a solemn promise in the Atlantic Charter to liberate the peoples of the colonies, the imperialists do not intend to fulfill it. A new theory is now being put forward to justify the colonial regime that Negroid race cannot be considered complete only because it is supposedly two thousand years behind in its development. Only after two thousand years, with the preservation of colonial orders, will the peoples of Africa become equal to the whites in their mental development and then they will receive complete freedom. These are the official positions of many bourgeois scientists on issues of colonial administration. The cynicism and impudence of these statements are obvious.

About all these theories, racist at their core, J.V. Stalin said that they are as far from science as heaven is from earth. Soviet ethnographic science, which is based on the ideology of the equality of all races and nations, contrasts them with a truly scientific, Marxist-Leninist concept of the historical process.

How does the distant past of the peoples of Africa seem to us? What materials can we base our restoration on?

To do this, you will have to dwell, in addition to historical sources, on the presentation of materials from archaeology, paleanthropology, anthropology, linguistics and ethnography, as well as partly botany and zoology. Only the totality of all this data makes it possible to at least in general outline the ancient history of the peoples of Africa.

Ifriqiya is the Arabic name for the Roman province of Africa (roughly corresponding to present-day Tunisia without the Sahara). The capital of Ifriqiya was Kairouan. The name of this small territory became the name of an entire continent (in Arabic, modern Africa is Ifriqiya). There is a version that the Roman “Africa” is also. And the Arabic “Ifriqiya” goes back to the name of the aboriginal Berber tribe Ifren (Ifran), who lived in the Atlas.

Or: The name "Africa" ​​probably comes from the Latin "afrigus", which means frost-free, not knowing the cold, which was the name the Romans gave to a small tribe and its habitat south of Tunisia.

Africa is the only continent that lies almost evenly in the northern and southern hemispheres. Cape Ras Engela is the northernmost point of continental Africa (37 0 21 /). It is often confused with Cape El Abyad (Cap Blanc), located 10 km to the east and less protruding to the north. (Ras – cape, protruding part).

The southernmost one is Cape Agulhas – 34 0 52 // S. Africa stretches from north to south for almost 8,000 km, lies between the tropics, and partly in the subtropics. Due to this geographical location, the sun stands high above the horizon all year round. As a result, Africa experiences more or less uniform lengths of day and night throughout the year and high temperatures throughout most of the continent.

From west to east in its widest part, Africa has a length of about 7400 km, its western point - Cape Almadi - 17 0 32 // W, and its eastern point - Cape Ras Hafun - 51 0 23 // E. in the south the continent narrows greatly.

Africa is second only to Asia in size and occupies 29.2 million km2, and with the adjacent islands about 30 million km2.

Africa is washed by the Indian Ocean in the east, the Atlantic in the west, in the north Africa is separated from Eurasia by the Mediterranean Sea, and in the northwest by the Strait of Gibraltar, which is 14 km wide. Africa is separated from Asia by the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Only at the site of the Isthmus of Suez is the mother connected to Arabia. This isthmus was cut by a canal in 1869. However, the history of its development Africa is closely connected with Arabia and Southern Europe.

Coastline.

The coastline is poorly developed, the mainland has a fairly simple outline. Africa has one large Gulf of Guinea, which in turn, jutting into land, forms the Gulf of Benin and Biafra. The coastline is slightly dissected by such bays as Delagoa, Sidra, Gabes, and Tunisian.

The only major peninsula is the massive Somali Peninsula, connected to the mainland by a wide base.

The absence of bays protruding deep into the mainland and peninsulas protruding into the open sea determines the massiveness of Africa and the remoteness of its central parts from the coasts - 20% of the territory is 1000 km away from the coastline.

Africa includes a number of islands, the total area of ​​which is about 2% of the continent's area. With the exception of the island of Madagascar, which has an area of ​​about 590 km 2, all the islands are small, significantly removed from the mainland, only some have a common origin - Mafia, Zanzibar, Pemba, Socotra, and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea. The islands of Madagascar, Comoros, Mascarene, and Seychelles are part of the land that once connected Africa with other continents. The most distant islands from the mainland - the islands of Tristan da Cunha, Saint Helena, Ascension, Cape Verde, Canaries, Madeira - are mainly of volcanic origin.

The coasts of Africa are predominantly abrasive and steep. Especially where the mountains come close to the coast along the Atlas Mountains, where the Cape Mountains rise. Low accumulative shores stretch where the coastal lowlands reach their greatest width - the Nile Delta, on the coast of the Côte de Voire, in places on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, the Mozambican lowland, on the Somali Peninsula, on the coast of the Indian Ocean.

Along the coast of the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean, coral structures develop in warm tropical waters, sometimes rising in the form of coral reefs. The eastern shores of Africa, washed by the warm Mozambique Current, are framed by mangrove vegetation, which prevents ships from entering river mouths, where they form particularly dense thickets.

In the Mediterranean Sea, in addition to abrasive shores, there are bays, along the coasts of Gabes and Sidra - low-lying flat shores. The mountainous coast of the Red Sea belongs to the shores of the sherma type (shores characterized by the presence of short bays, angular outlines, separated from one another by straight sections). Lagoonal shores are characteristic of the Gulf of Guinea and the Bight of Biafra.

3. History of the formation of the territory of Africa.

The continent of Africa, with the exception of the Atlas Mountains in the northwest and the Cape Mountains in the extreme south, as well as the island of Madagascar and the Arabian Peninsula adjacent to Africa in the northeast form the African (African-Arabian) platform. Individual cores of this platform arose at the end of the Archean era (about 2 billion years), such cores are known in the Sahara, in the southern part of the continent.

Archean structures are also exposed in the eastern half of Madagascar. In the Sahara and along the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea, the ancient Archean basement was broken into blocks.

At the beginning of the Proterozoic, the main contours of the African Platform, except for its marginal parts, had already emerged. However, soon a new geosynclinal belt arose within the newly formed platform, extending through Zaire, Uganda, Tanzania, i.e. almost through the middle of the continent. This (Karagwe-Ankoli) geosyncline was filled mainly with sandy-clayey sediments, later transformed into quartzites and partly limestones. Its development ended 1.4 million years ago with folding, metamorphism and the intrusion of granites.

In the Late Proterozoic, parallel to this geosynclinal belt, another one, the Katanga, developed, covering part of the territories of Zambia and Angola, closing at Kinshasa.

Geosynclinal formations of the Late Proterozoic (Baikal folding), which experienced folding and metamorphism, turn out to be widely developed along almost the entire periphery of the most ancient, post-Archean part of the African Platform. They are established in the Anti-Atlas Mountains, distributed on both sides of the Red Sea graben, appearing within the so-called Mozambican belt, forming a continuous strip along the western coast.

At this time, sediments accumulated in the already formed Taoudenny syneclises in the western Sahara and Sudan, the Kalahari depressions, and along the entire northern and eastern periphery of the Congo depression.

Caledonian folding. At this time, almost the entire platform, with the exception of the extreme northern and southern extremities, as well as the Archean massifs - Ahaggar and others, remained elevated and retained the continental regime. The seas covered northwestern Africa and the western half of the Sahara. At this time, the Atlas Gesyncline was actively developing.

Hercynian folding. At this time, the sea left the platform depressions. Folding and intrusion of granites occurred in the Atlas geosyncline. The Congo, Kalahari, and Karoo depressions took final shape. These depressions were filled with “karroo” deposits - glacial below, coal-bearing above, and even higher - desert red deposits and massive basalt outpourings.

In the Permian, the Mozambique Trough formed, separating the island of Madagascar from the mainland. The formation of a depression in the western Indian Ocean began. By the end of the Triassic, folding and uplift affected the Cape zone in the extreme south of the continent, where the Cape Mountains formed.

Mesozoic. Its beginning is characterized by the dominance of the continental regime and the gradual leveling of the relief. But from the beginning of the Jurassic, starting from the region of the Atlas Mountains, the territory was covered by transgression, the maximum of which occurred in the Late Cretaceous. At this time, the sea covers the northern part of the continent, penetrates deep into the Sahara and connects the Mediterranean basin with the Gulf of Guinea basin through the Benue depression in Nigeria. For a short time, the sea also intrudes into the Congo Trench. Large faults and subsidence marked the beginning of the formation of the Atlantic Ocean depression and shaped the configuration of the western part of the continent.

Cenozoic. Starting from the end of the Paleogene (Oligocene), Africa entered a phase of general uplift, especially vigorous in the east, where it began earlier (at the end of the Cretaceous) and was associated with the subsidence of the Mozambique Strait and the western part of the Arabian Sea. The largest fault zone has finally taken shape, dividing into several branches with grabens located along them. The Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the largest lakes in Africa - Tanganyika, Nyasa, etc. are confined to these grabens. Movements along the faults were accompanied by intense volcanic activity - first of the fissure type (plateau-basalts of the Abyssinian Highlands), and then in the Neogene - central, with the formation of powerful volcanic cones - Kilimanjaro, Kenya, Meru, etc.

Young (Neogene-Quaternary) volcanism also manifested itself in the western half of the continent, in the strip following from the Gulf of Gabes through the Ahaggar massif to Cameroon and further to Angola. Young volcanoes are also known on the coast of West Africa (Sinegal). Another strip of volcanoes follows from the volcanic islands of the Gulf of Guinea to the Tibesti volcanic massif.

During the Pliocene-Quaternary era, the Atlas was uplifted as a whole and split to form a graben system. At the same time, volcanic activity began, both effusive and intrusive. As a result, the volcanic Comoros and Mascarene Islands arose.

Among the geological events experienced by Africa, it is worth noting the glaciations that repeatedly affected the southern part of the continent, as evidenced by tillites - ancient glacial boulder clays. The question of the number of glaciations is controversial. In southern Africa, clear traces of continental glaciation that took place in the Proterozoic have been found. In the Lower Devonian, South Africa underwent secondary glaciation. The nature of the sediments from this time indicates the presence of a thick ice sheet. The third glaciation took place in the Carboniferous. This glaciation covered vast areas of Gondwana and spread throughout South Africa. In Quaternary times, glaciation in Africa apparently did not spread to any significant extent.

At the end of the Pleistocene, natural zoning acquired characteristic features on the African continent.

4.Minerals of Africa

The abundance and diversity of Africa's mineral resources is due to the geological history and tectonics of the continent, due to which ancient rocks containing valuable minerals were exposed or lying close to the earth's surface. The abundance of minerals is explained by active volcanic activity, accompanied by the release of lavas and the formation of mineral-rich metamorphic rocks.

Africa occupies an outstanding position in the production of diamonds, cobalt, gold, manganese ores, chromites, lithium, antimony, and platinum. Africa occupies far from the last place in the production of tin, zinc, lead, beryllium, iron ores, and graphite.

The largest gold deposits are concentrated in South Africa in the Transvaal, which are confined to Late Archean formations. Gold deposits are also known in the Congo Basin, in a number of countries on the Guinea coast, in Kenya, and on the island of Madagascar.

Africa produces more than half of the world's total diamond production. The largest diamond deposits are located in South Africa - in the vicinity of Kimberley. Here the diamond-bearing rock is blue breed- kimberlite, a type of volcanic breccia, fills channels - “explosion pipes”, penetrating the thickness of sandstones, clayey and quartzite shales included in the Karoo formation. But in addition to these primary deposits, diamonds in southern Africa are also found in placers - clay, sand and pebble deposits of river valleys. In addition to southern Africa, diamond deposits are found in equatorial Africa and the countries of Guinea.

Copper ores are confined to the Riphean deposits of Katanga, where the so-called “ore series” occurs, containing the richest deposits of copper and copper-cobalt ores in southern Katanga and the northern part of Zambia. The origin of these ores has not yet been fully elucidated: some scientists consider them sedimentary, others hydrothermal. Vein deposits of uranium and cobalt are also associated with the intrusion of granites into the Riphean in this area.

In the second half of the Paleozoic, folding and intrusion of granites occurred in the Atlas geosyncline, which created vein deposits of lead, zinc, and iron ores. Tin and tungsten deposits are associated with the development of the Karagwe-Ankoli geosyncline and are located mainly in Nigeria and the upper reaches of the Congo.

There are significant reserves of manganese and chromite ores. Manganese deposits are found in Morocco, South Africa, Equatorial and West Africa; chromite deposits - South Africa. The richest deposits of iron ore are located in the Atlas Mountains, in the countries of South Africa and Upper Guinea.

Of the energy deposits in Africa, there are coal reserves. The largest of them are in South Africa, Atlas, and Nigeria.

Deposits have been explored in the south of Algeria and the west of Libya, where oil and gas are confined to Paleozoic sandstones. Within the peripheral basins filled with chalk deposits, large oil fields were also discovered, especially in Libya, Nigeria, Gabon, and Angola.

Among non-metallic minerals, phosphorites should be noted, the extraction of which is of global importance. Their deposits are confined to shelf deposits of the Upper Cretaceous - Lower Eocene of northwestern Africa, especially Morocco and Tunisia.

In recent and modern times, in the tropical zone of Africa, especially along the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea, as a result of intense chemical weathering, rich deposits of aluminum ores - bauxite - have arisen.

Graphite is mined on the island. Madagascar.

History of Africa since ancient times Büttner Tea

Chapter I IS AFRICA THE CRADLE OF HUMANITY? DEVELOPMENT TRENDS IN ANCIENT AND ANCIENT HISTORY

Chapter I

IS AFRICA THE CRADLE OF HUMANITY?

DEVELOPMENT TRENDS IN ANCIENT AND ANCIENT HISTORY

Apparently, the first people on earth appeared on the African continent, so it occupies a very special place in the study of the entire history of mankind, and the history of the most ancient and ancient periods of our civilization in particular. Discoveries of recent years in South and South-East Africa (Sterkfontein Taung, Broken Hill, Florisbad, Cape Flats, etc.), in the Sahara, especially in East Africa, have shown that the past of mankind is estimated at millions of years. In 1924, R. A. Dart found the remains of australopithecines (man-apes) in South Africa, whose age is approximately a million years old. But prof. L. Leakey, subsequently his son and wife after lengthy and difficult excavations in Kenya and Tanzania - in the Olduvai Gorge south of Lake Victoria, and in the Koobi Fora and Ileret areas (1968), as well as the burial of Laetvlil in the Serengeti (1976) - found bone remains, the age of which is estimated to be from 1.8 to 2.6 million, and in Laetvlila - even 3.7 million years.

It has been established that only on the African continent bone remains have been discovered, representing all stages of human development, which obviously confirms, on the basis of the latest anthropological and paleontological data, the evolutionary teaching of Darwin, who considered Africa the “ancestral home of mankind.” At Olduvai Gorge in East Africa we find remains of representatives of all stages of evolution that preceded the emergence of Homo sapiens. They evolved (partly in parallel and not always receiving further development) from Australopithecus to Homo habilis, and then to the last link in the evolutionary chain - Neoanthropus. The example of East Africa proves that the formation of Homo sapiens could have occurred in the most in various ways and that not all of them have been studied.

Climatic changes that occurred during the Quaternary period and lasted more than a million years, especially the three great pluvial (wet) periods, had a major impact on Africa and turned areas that are now deserts into savannas, where prehistoric people successfully hunted. Pluvial-related displacements and changes in water levels can be used, among other methods, to date primitive finds. Already among the archaeological materials dating back to the first pluvial periods, along with the bone remains of the primordial man, the first stone, or rather pebble, tools were found. In Europe, similar products appeared much later - only during interglacial periods.

Findings of the oldest pebble and stone tools of the Olduvai and Stellenbosch cultures, as well as numerous remains of thick and thin processed cores and axes with handles dating back to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic (about 50 thousand years ago), now discovered in many regions of the Maghreb (ater, capsian), The Sahara, South Africa (Faursmith), East Africa and the Congo Basin (Zaire), testify to the development and success of Early and Late Paleolithic people on African soil.

A huge number of improved stone tools and rock carvings dating back to the Mesolithic (middle stone age), speaks of significant population growth and a high level of prehistoric culture in certain areas of Africa starting from the 10th millennium BC. e. The Lupembe and Chitole cultures of the Congo Basin, as well as the Mesolithic centers in northeastern Angola, parts of Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea, represent an important stage in the further progress of the culture. The people of the Lupemba culture were able to make chisels and hollow objects, broken-backed points and stone leaf-shaped points for spears and dagger-type tools that stand comparison with the best stone points found in Europe.

The Capsian culture on the territory of Kenya (approximately the 5th millennium BC) is characterized by high technology for processing incisors, the use of ceramics and elegant vessels made of well-processed stone. At the same time, isolated ceramic items appeared in certain areas of Zimbabwe, South-West Africa and the Cape Province (Wilton culture). The bearers of this civilization continued to engage in hunting and targeted gathering, but at the same time, for the first time in history, fishing became an important sector of the economy, which led to an increase in the settled population, especially in some coastal areas. Already during the Mesolithic period, rock art in the form of reliefs and paintings on hunting themes reached a high level of development. In many areas of Africa - in the Maghreb, the Sahara, the Nile Valley, Nubia, in Eastern Sudan, Ethiopia, East Africa, in the central Congo Basin (Zaire) and in South Africa - beautiful architectural images have been preserved, which most often show wild animals of the steppes and savannas, as well as people hunting, dancing and performing religious ceremonies. With the onset of the Neolithic, rock art continued to develop, and some of its traditions survived into modern times.

Now historians and archaeologists already have a clearer idea of ​​the immediate prehistoric period of African history (Neolithic). During this time, new branches of the economy arose - agriculture and cattle breeding. Thanks to the use of more advanced techniques, such as grinding, Neolithic people could more skillfully shape stone into the desired shape. As a result, many stone products appeared that were previously unknown or known only in rudimentary form. The bow and arrows were improved, making hunting easier. The appearance of drilled and polished products, the invention and improvement of pottery, the wider distribution of ceramics - all these achievements sharply separate the Neolithic from previous periods, when man lived mainly by hunting. Now the basis of its existence is agriculture and cattle breeding. Naturally, from this period came the first signs that a sedentary lifestyle had become widespread. People were already building huts for themselves; several huts made up settlements.

The transition from hunting, gathering plants and occasional fishing as the only sources of food to farming and raising livestock was a major step forward. The general rise of productive forces during the Neolithic period was the basis for the development of new forms of social structure. The essence of the changes was that the structure of the clan community and the connections between individual groups of this type were strengthened. Tribes arose everywhere, representing the highest level of organization of clan society, which took shape in the depths of the Late Paleolithic on the basis of consanguineous ties. The production and appropriation of its products continued to be of a public nature, and public ownership of the most important means production. Individual appropriation and personal ownership of tools had a very limited distribution.

In some areas of Africa, the use of millstones and ceramics, closely associated with the transition of former hunters to a sedentary lifestyle, began earlier than in Europe.

Of course, development was not a uniform process and gave rise to many transitional forms. Some tribes, even during the mature Neolithic period, continued to lead the life of hunters and fishermen. These tribes lived in more or less unfavorable conditions, which made it difficult to transition to new forms economic activity. At the same time, particularly favorable conditions developed in the Nile Valley, in the Schott regions of North Africa, such as Tunisia and Algeria, as well as in the Sahara of that era. It is precisely the difference natural conditions explains the huge chronological gap in the dating of the Neolithic.

As will be clear from the description of the most important finds, a pronounced Neolithic culture and agricultural settlements were inherent in Egypt already in the 5th millennium BC. e., North Africa - in the 4th century, and to the south of the Sahara, typical Neolithic finds date back to the 1st millennium BC. e., and by the 1st millennium AD. e. In this region, the development of various Neolithic farming and herding cultures continued over several millennia, and they partly absorbed and partly destroyed or displaced older hunter-gatherer cultures. In some areas south of the Sahara, stone processing techniques developed at the end of the Hamblian (XII-X millennium BC) were preserved, and the decisive step towards the Neolithic was never taken. For many areas of South Africa, the example of boskopoid Bushmen is typical. These are hunters and gatherers, descended in a direct line from primitive man and not beyond the Mesolithic stage. Their historical development has reached a dead end and partially stopped. The Bushmen became famous for the tens of thousands of rock carvings they owned, testifying to a highly developed hunting culture. On the contrary, in other areas of Africa, as a result of an exceptionally favorable combination of circumstances, including good natural conditions, accelerated development is observed.

The Neolithic cultures of Egypt have been especially thoroughly studied. Periodic floods and subsequent deposition of silt made the Nile Valley extremely fertile. During excavations in Central Egypt, in particular in Deir Tasa, along with bone remains, rich archaeological material was found, from which it can be concluded that the population of Egypt during the Neolithic period, in some places even from the 6th millennium BC. e., in addition to hunting and fishing, he was engaged in agriculture or, according to at least, collected wild cereals. Polished axes, small bone harpoons, and many primitive pottery items were found. Using a fairly reliable radiocarbon method, it was possible to accurately date finds from the shores of Lake Fayum and a large depression in Northern Egypt (4500–4000 BC). The inhabitants of Fayum were engaged in hunting, fishing, farming and cattle breeding. They sowed einkorn wheat, barley and flax, and knew primitive irrigation. Wooden sickles with flint inserts were found here. When hunting and in war, residents used bows and arrows and battle maces. They knew pottery and weaving. They made clothes from fabrics and skins. Many other settlements of the Neolithic period have been discovered in Egypt (El-Omari, Amrat and Badari cultures).

The last Neolithic culture that preceded the historical era of Egypt was the Gerzean (Negada II, north of Thebes) with its characteristic more advanced forms of household utensils, tools, and ceramics. Here in Upper Egypt, the best examples are preserved in a huge necropolis containing more than 3 thousand burials. The stone tools still in use at that time - hoes, sickles, millstones - were distinguished by their high quality of processing and retained their former appearance in the historical period. Flint processing has reached true perfection. Along with flint axes, copper products appeared in Upper Egypt (though for the first time and most likely as a by-product), but stone tools still formed the basis of the equipment of Egyptian farmers. The entire material culture developed rapidly and achieved an exceptional wealth of forms. The exchange of labor products has intensified. This entailed differentiation of society, and between 3500 and 3000. BC e. Ancient Egyptian despotism arose, based on the first state formations. Image signs (hieroglyphs) appeared - the first form of writing.

The need and possibility of constructing irrigation structures in the Nile Valley and regulating their operation has accelerated; the process of uniting individual nomes (regions) of Egypt and the use of state means of coercion. True, we do not have direct data on the organization of irrigation work during this period of the emerging ancient Egyptian state, but there is no doubt that the highest leadership was concentrated in the hands of the head of state - the king, who was revered as a god.

It is not surprising that Egypt crossed the Neolithic threshold relatively quickly. The wider use of metals, the appropriation by the narrow elite of the clan aristocracy and priests led by the nomarch's family of an ever-increasing share of the surplus product, the emergence of relations of exploitation and dependence of one person on another - all this accelerated the economic and social differentiation and division of society into classes. Subsequently, in the eventful history of Egypt, it developed into specific form early class society, so typical of the ancient East.

Using the radiocarbon method, it was possible to date numerous Neolithic settlements to the 3rd–2nd millennium BC. e., discovered in the now inaccessible or completely uninhabited desert. The Berliet expedition, which worked from 1959 to 1961 east of Air in the Tenere region (Niger Republic), excavated settlements of people who lived on the shores of large lakes and, like the predynastic Egyptians, earned their living by hunting, fishing and partly by farming. One of the expedition members wrote: “In the depths of the erg (sandy desert), in Tenere, I discovered traces of ancient fishermen’s camps: large piles of fish bones (they occupied several two-wheeled carts), skeletons of hippopotamuses and elephants, stone tools. Five hundred kilometers to the south, on the border of the Sahara and Sudan, I found a good dozen more sites. There were heaps of fish bones, turtle shells, mollusk shells, bones of hippopotamuses, giraffes and antelopes, among which lay human skeletons.”

In recent years, very valuable archaeological materials have been discovered on the territory of the Republic of Sudan, where ancient Nubia was once located. The discovery of the earliest of them is associated with the name of E. J. Arkell. During excavations near Khartoum, he discovered traces of Neolithic settlements. Drilled flint axes reminiscent of finds from Tenere and Fayum, bone tools, and remains of wicker baskets with traces of cereals were found. When dating, these villages were attributed to the first half of the 4th millennium BC. e. In the same layers, parts of the bones and skulls of people of a clearly Negroid type were discovered - another proof that already in such a distant period the main anthropological types were formed on the soil of Africa. Further finds on the territory of Nubia were divided into cultures A, B, C and dated. During the C culture period (2400–1600 BC), the population of Nubia repelled the attacks of the Egyptians. Finds dating back to this time—stone weapons, rich pottery, copper and bronze jewelry, and valuable stone axes—show that the first metalworking centers arose in Nubia, as in Egypt.

The Neolithic is also widely represented throughout North Africa and the Sahara. The cultural layers uncovered here contained polished stone axes, maces, grain grinders and remains of clay vessels. Tools and entire settlements of the Neolithic period have been discovered in the Atlas zone, where people lived in caves. Interesting drawings remained on their walls, for example in the Oran region (Algeria). The tools recovered from the surface of the earth allow us to conclude that tribes of pastoralists and farmers settled in North Africa already in ancient times.

Between the 8th and 3rd millennia, the Sahara had an exceptionally good climate. Heavy rainfall created favorable conditions for cattle breeding, hunting and, to some extent, agriculture. The Saharan savannas and areas around lakes and rivers attracted numerous peoples who were at the Paleolithic or Mesolithic stage from the marshlands of Sudan, the Lake Chad region and the Maghreb mountains. Thus, in many parts of the Sahara, the Neolithic developed, the bearers of which were hunters, shepherds, fishermen and farmers. From them came the particularly beautiful rock paintings and frescoes, from which we draw important information about the way of life of the population of this area during the Mesolithic period.

The discoveries of the French researcher A. Lot in the Tassili (Ahaggar) mountains in Southern Algeria and the Italian F. Mori in Fezzan (Libya) became world famous. These and other scientists discovered tens of thousands of drawings on the now almost waterless hills of the Central Sahara and in the Atlas Mountains, which are not only important evidence of the past, but also amaze with their high artistic merits. Paintings, frescoes, and reliefs carved on rocks are creations of developed realistic art . The later ones are somewhat stylized. The oldest images of animals - elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, giraffes, lions and other predators - date back to approximately the 10th–8th millennia. Images of people, often with animal heads (later, numerous figures are barely outlined in thin lines or even strokes), combined with scenes of hunting or the performance of cult ceremonies, reflect the highly developed activity of Mesolithic hunters. This is to some extent influenced by the traditions of the North African Capsian culture.

Realistic painting, which at first was dominated by contour images, over time became more stylized and abstract and acquired features characteristic of plastic art. The content of the paintings suggests that since the 4th millennium, in these mountainous regions, as well as in the vast expanses of the Sahara, the basis of the economy was the breeding of livestock with long and short horns. In beautiful colored frescoes we see bulls with curled horns. However, hunting for wild animals, which were found in abundance here, has not lost its importance. Rock art complements our understanding of the various periods and stages of Neolithic development in the densely populated Sahara, where fishermen and farmers living in the savannah, near numerous lakes and rivers, played no less a role than pastoralists who roamed with their herds in areas suitable for grazing. A. Lot counted about 80 prehistoric settlements in the south of Ahaggar, at the foot of the In-Gezzam plateau.

But first of all, the grandiose rock paintings convince us that at this time (IV–I millennium BC) the main anthropological types of the African population were basically formed, and it was on the soil of Africa itself. These researcher data decisively refute the legends, especially energetically spread by apologists of colonialism, that all the most important cultural achievements that determine social development were brought to Africa from the outside. Scientifically unfounded racist theories of the penetration of foreign cultures served nutrient medium to create entire systems dividing Africans into “superior” and “inferior” groups. Meanwhile, from the preserved human bone remains it can be established that already in the Mesolithic period there were serious differences in anthropological forms. Bone remains of the Neolithic period are easy to classify according to various anthropological characteristics. By this time, along with the formation of the main anthropological types, a pronounced racial differentiation had occurred. Most likely, many of the modern language families began to take shape from the Neolithic era. Rock painting, with all the power of realistic art, convinces us that during the humid period in the Sahara, all anthropological types of the population, which subsequently prevailed on the African continent, were more or less widely represented. Their distinctive features partly reflect differences in the way they obtain food.

Already in the early ancient Egyptian monuments of the 3rd millennium BC. e., as in the rock paintings discovered by Mori in Fezzan, tall, light-skinned people appear. These pastoralists, who roamed the Sahara and North Africa, became speakers of the Berber-Libyan dialects, which, along with Egyptian and Coptic, belong to the Semitic-Hamitic family of languages.

Both in their anthropological type and in language, they were the ancestors of numerous Berber and Libyan tribes of the Mediterranean, the Tuaregs living in the central highlands of the Sahara (Tassili, Ahaggar, Adrar, Air) and the Fulani of Western Sudan. In the savannas and plateaus of Northeastern Africa, in the upper reaches of the Blue Nile up to the Neolithic zone with the Capsian tradition of Kenya, tribes and clans of hunters lived, partly sedentary, but mainly pastoral, which should be attributed to the Ethiopian-Caucasian anthropological type. They were spread over vast areas of East Africa and spoke Cushitic languages. Very closely related to them in terms of anthropological characteristics and partly in language were many tribes of pastoralists who later inhabited Somalia, Ethiopia and the East African coast.

However, at the same time - at the beginning of the Neolithic - both the Sahara and the territory of Sudan were inhabited by settled farmers of the Negroid type. A. Lot reports mask paintings in the Tassili Mountains that have an undeniable resemblance to the Senufo paintings of the Ivory Coast dating back to a later period. Of course, the formation of the main anthropological types and language groups in the regions of the Sahara and Sudan, as well as in other Neolithic centers in Tropical Africa, provides exceptionally much material for important historical conclusions, if we ignore bourgeois apologetic theories about racial superiority.

The geological process of drying out the Sahara, which began in the 3rd–2nd millennia BC. e., put an end to the wet period of the Neolithic and, naturally, entailed a number of serious changes. True, numerous contacts continued to take place across the Sahara, and at the end of the 1st millennium AD. e. trade ties between North Africa and the states of Western and Central Sudan were even re-established. But the formation of a largely uninhabited desert belt, where nomadic pastoralists occasionally drove their herds only in the outlying areas, led to the fact that the economic, cultural and political development of the peoples of North Africa, on the one hand, and the population of Tropical Africa, on the other, henceforth took place in various directions. In the 2nd millennium BC. e. The Sahara was at least partially inhabited, but large population movements occurred in the 1st millennium. Light-skinned nomadic pastoralists advanced to the northern and eastern regions or found pastures for their herds in the savannahs in the south, and the agricultural, Negroid population retreated to the territory of Western Sudan. Only a small part of it still lived in the oases of the Sahara.

At this time, the migrations of the Bantu peoples began, which gave rise to many conflicting assumptions, which in one way or another penetrated science. It is now impossible to accurately establish the detailed routes of numerous tribes and the reasons that caused these migrations. Much still needs to be clarified. It is indisputable, however, that since the Neolithic period and the use of metals, the population of some centers increased sharply and gradually spread throughout the continent. Some researchers consider the reason for such movements to have occurred since the 1st millennium BC. e. until the late Middle Ages, usually in the direction from north to south, the relative overpopulation of certain areas, which invariably pushed the search for new areas for agriculture, cattle breeding, fishing and hunting. For tropical Africa, another circumstance is of great importance: there was an abundance of land suitable for cultivation, so there was often no incentive to introduce intensive farming methods and other methods of obtaining food, which in Egypt, the Middle East and India forced the population to crowd into the valleys rivers and irrigation systems.

Perhaps the migrations of the peoples of Tropical Africa were caused by a strong influx of Negroid inhabitants of the Sahara, who were at the Neolithic stage, into the zone of Western Sudan, where they mixed with local residents. Large human flows also moved from the centers of Neolithic culture that developed in Northern Nigeria, Cameroon, in the area of ​​Lake Chad, the present-day republics of Congo and Zaire, and eventually the entire continent began to move, which led to the spread of the most important food plants over large areas, such as millet and a variety of rice, to the introduction of new farming methods, increased mining of iron ore and increased use of metals.

When trying to explain these phenomena, one must decisively abandon the search for the ancestral home of the “proto-Bantu”, which is rooted in bourgeois literature, often used as a dues ex machina for the entire social development of the African continent south of the Sahara. These theories do not take into account that "Bantu" is a purely linguistic term for a relative community, suggesting close kinship among the approximately 350 Bantu languages ​​and dialects in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. Transferring this linguistic concept to anthropological and cultural characteristics is unacceptable and unscientific. The tribes and peoples of this language family have quite significant anthropological differences, are at different stages of social and cultural development and have characteristics that reflect the processes of fusion as a result of the migration of peoples.

After long, often intersecting movements in the 1st millennium AD. e. the regions of Cameroon, the Ubangi and Shari basins, Northern and Central Katanga, the territory of the future state of Congo and the East African coast to the Zambezi (Zambia, Mozambique) stood out as regional centers of the Bantu-speaking population.

This is evidenced by excavations of burials on the shores of Lake Kisale in Katanga, dating back to the 8th and 9th centuries. n. e. Arab travelers left reliable reports that Bantu-speaking tribes in the 7th and 8th centuries. n. e. reached the eastern shores of the great East African lakes and in subsequent centuries advanced into the territory of Southern Rhodesia. The tribes and peoples who inhabited vast territories here, under pressure from aliens, rolled back to Central and Southern Africa and displaced the inhabitants of these areas, mainly hunters and gatherers, who were still at the Late Paleolithic stage. The ancestors of modern pygmies lived in the virgin forests of Central Africa and on the banks of the Congo. Throughout South Africa lived hunters and gatherers of the “bushboskopoid” type, descendants of the Boskopian fossil man of antiquity. As recent studies show, it is possible that they even inhabited some areas of East Africa and here they came into contact with nomadic pastoralists of the Ethiopian-Caucasian type. True, many of these tribes, the ancestors of the Bushmen and Hottentots, who spoke Khoisan languages ​​at the time of their independence, were ultimately assimilated or displaced.

Another very ancient center of intensive settlement was the region of Nigeria. On the high plateau of Central Nigeria, near Jos, on the territory of the Bauchi plateau, to the southern border of the middle reaches of the Benue River, Paleolithic tools were found, made, according to B. Fagg, about 40 thousand years ago. Judging by some features, individual layers may indicate human presence in this area from the Paleolithic to the Middle and Late Neolithic. Near the village of Nok in the vicinity of Zaria, traces of a highly developed Neolithic were discovered. During the re-commissioning of the Jos tin mines, English mining engineers, and after them archaeologists, found the remains of a Neolithic settlement of sedentary farmers who knew pottery well. They left behind images of great artistic value. The finds were dominated by terracotta figurines depicting Negroid people, heads of elephants, and squatting monkeys. What attracted most attention were the uniquely stylized heads and life-size terracotta busts. The same English archaeologist B. Fagg excavated a large number of such figurines of the Nok culture in the adjacent area, where they were scattered over a radius of about 45 kilometers. They were probably originally distributed far beyond Central Nigeria.

Of greatest importance was the discovery that the partially stylized naturalistic terracotta figurines had much in common with the later art of Ife (14th-16th centuries) in Southern Nigeria and they were the forerunners not only of this movement, which experts consider “classical” in African art, but also of later African sculpture. B. Fagg notes that terracotta figurines from Ife are not much different from works of the Nok culture - only in the triangular shape of the eyes and “long-eared” heads. In other respects, both in techniques and in forms, there is a surprisingly large similarity. These findings helped to refute many apologetic theories that claimed that the Negroid population did not create their own traditional anthropomorphic sculpture. As well as the sensational discoveries of A. Lot in the Sahara, where the indigenous African population of the Ethpopian-Caucasian and Negroid types already in the 4th millennium BC. e. skillfully created beautiful realistic images of men and women, clay heads and figurines found in Central Nigeria from the 1st millennium BC. e. were of great importance for the criticism of non-scientific theories. They served as a springboard for the rediscovery of Africa's historical past, which is now being undertaken by the progressive historiography of young nation-states, despite the theories and opposition of colonialists and neo-colonialists. Using radiocarbon dating, it was established that the oldest layers of the Neolithic center, from which the Nok figurines came, date back to approximately 900 BC. e., and the upper limit is 200 AD. e.

It is also interesting that the figurines were found in tin mines. Along with figurines and terracotta vessels, iron picks, remains of smelting furnaces and bellows, and iron slag were found here. Thus, the mines, probably founded as early as the 1st millennium BC. e., they say that in the last centuries BC in Tropical Africa they knew how to mine and process iron. In Central Nigeria, the most common ore is laterite, which is easily mined and melts at an exceptionally low temperature. Although the inhabitants of these areas learned to process bronze quite early, they mined iron even earlier. Basil Davidson rightly points out in this regard that the Nok culture was transitional from the late Stone Age to the Metal Age and that its peak occurred in the last two or three centuries BC.

But for a long time, stone and metal tools were used in parallel, anticipating the centuries-long process of transition to the use of iron and other metals, and, consequently, the formation of states based on an early class society.

Centers of Neolithic civilization were discovered along with Central Nigeria primarily in the Congo Basin, Zambia and Zimbabwe, in various areas West Africa, southern Mauritania, Guinea, the Senegal basin, as well as on the shores of Lake Chad. The population of these areas switched to agriculture and used stone and iron tools, which since the 1st millennium AD. e. gradually led to the formation of prosperous states in sub-Saharan Africa.

Although in recent years the study of the ancient and ancient history of Africa has achieved undoubted success, the study of the interaction of Neolithic cultures in time and space is only taking its first steps, and so far we have a very incomplete, inaccurate picture of their distribution.

When trying to reconstruct the events of these periods, one can rely on the first mentions of Africa, appearing in written sources from the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. and especially valuable information is provided by Egyptian, and later Greek and Roman inscriptions.

The first data of this kind is contained in the victorious reports of the Egyptians. At the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Huge concentrations of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes approached the borders of Egypt. The expansion of the desert gradually deprived them of pastures and fields. Every now and then wars broke out; oases and other fertile irrigated lands were constantly attacked. Ramesses II decorated the walls of the temple in Medinet Habu with reliefs and inscriptions of his victories over his enemies, among whom the peoples and tribes of Libya and Fezzan predominated. At this time (c. 1000 BC), when Nubia was still subject to the rule of the Egyptians, Egyptian sources often mention the “land of Punt” - a land of gold and incense. Where it was located has not yet been definitively established, only that it included areas southeast of Nubia, extending to the Red Sea, and paid tribute to Egypt in gold, ivory and myrrh. It is also known that Queen Hatshepsut (c. 1501–1480 BC) sent expeditions to Punt. From there, Egyptian ships reached the eastern coast of Africa.

From the accounts of the Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans about military, trading and exploratory expeditions one can glean much information about the geography of the African continent, but they tell little about the population even of the coastal strip, the most frequently visited, or in general about the interior regions. A map compiled by the great Greek geographer shows that, along with the Mediterranean coast and the Nile Valley, the eastern coast of Africa to Cape Delgado and the western coast to the Gulf of Guinea were more or less known. However, this knowledge was partly based on legends.

In the second half of the 1st millennium BC. e. The western part of the coast of North Africa was dotted with settlements and trading posts of the Phoenicians, the center of which was Carthage. There were relatively many of them before Mogador (Morocco), but further on; in the south there were only periodically visited trading posts and small trading posts that conducted exchange transactions with the population of the coastal regions. Herodotus (484–425) and the Greek geographer Pseudo-Scylacus, who lived in the 4th century. BC e., they report the so-called silent, or quiet, trade with the inhabitants of the northern part of the West African coast. In exchange for gold, which figured very early in commercial transactions, the population of West Africa was offered luxury goods such as incense, precious stones from Egypt, pottery from Athens, and other goods.

Reliable sources, including Strabo (Geography, III, 326), report that in the 5th century. BC e. (c. 470) the Carthaginian Hanno passed through the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar) and sailed along the northern part of West Africa. He was tasked with replenishing the staff of the Punic trading posts with new people and exploring the possibilities of trade with the southern region of this coast. His journey took him to the coast of Cameroon. The mentioned streams of fire and columns of fire erupting from an unknown volcano seem to indicate Mount Cameroon.

After the few references to Egyptian military campaigns dry up, the sources, especially after the Roman conquest of North Africa, devote considerable attention to the east coast of sub-Saharan Africa and the sources of the Nile. In the second half of the 1st millennium BC. e. Greek sailors knew from experience that it was possible, leaving the Red Sea, to reach the northwestern coast of India. They also sailed along the East African coast and reached the borders of modern Mozambique.

From this time came an extremely interesting guide, a guide for Greek navigators, “Periplus of the Erythraean Sea” by an anonymous author. Most likely, it was compiled by a Greek from Alexandria, who apparently himself sailed off the southern coast of East Africa. He reports on trading stations stretching along the East African coast to the settlement of Rapta (between Dar es Salaam and Tanga). The compiler of the Periplus describes the busy port cities on the coast of “Azania” - now located in Kenya and Tanzania - and provides some information about their inhabitants.

Several centuries before the spread of Islam in Africa, very close economic and political ties existed between the population of its eastern regions and the southern Arabs, and some leaders of the coastal tribes were even directly subordinate to the Himyarite rulers of South Arabia. In the first centuries of our era, Africans sold to foreigners Iron tools and weapons produced in Muse, on the shores of the Red Sea (we will discuss the iron smelting centers in Tropical Africa separately). They exported from the ports of "Azania" ivory, Palm oil, tortoiseshells, slaves.

To the “Father of History,” the Greek historian Herodotus, who committed in the 5th century. BC e. traveling through the countries of the East, we owe interesting and reliable information about the population of some areas of Western and Central Africa, located in the Sahara further to the south. Herodotus describes the famous Garamantes of Fezzan and their crossings across the Sahara, the “troglodyte Ethiopians” and the Nasamones of Eastern Libya. At that time, “Ethiopians” were people of the Negroid type with curly hair who lived not only in East, but also in West Africa. Starting from the 6th century. BC e. they were often depicted on Greek vases. According to Herodotus, the area stretching from the Egyptian city of Thebes to the Pillars of Hercules was already a waterless desert, where there was no vegetation or wild animals. By the time of Herodotus, the Sahara had largely assumed its current appearance.

Apparently, in the 7th century. BC e. (?) The Nasamon expedition of five people set off from the Aujila oasis to the south. On the way, they met a city and a country, “where all the people were... small, and... black. A large river flows past this city, and it flows from west to east, and crocodiles were visible in it: (II, 32). Most likely, the Nasamons walked through the Fezzan to the southwest to the bend of the Niger (the presence of such paths was suggested on the basis of rock carvings by A. Lot), and reached the regions of Gao and Timbuktu.

Of even greater interest is Herodotus’ description of the Garamantes’ march to the southwest, into the Niger Valley, from Fezzan itself. The Garamantes of Fezzan already knew highly developed agriculture and cattle breeding. In horse-drawn chariots, they crossed the Sahara and met “cave Ethiopians,” who spoke in a language that sounded like “the squeak of bats.” Although the researchers have not yet come to definitive conclusions and cannot say for sure which country they are talking about, they suggest that the language can be identified with the so-called Sudanese languages, in which pitch changes are known to play an important role. Therefore, it is possible that Herodotus’ story about the Garamantes refers to the inhabitants of the Niger basin or Lake Chad. Archaeological excavations and the remains of primitive man indicate that during the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods these areas were early centers of settlement, where, after the accelerated drying of the Sahara and the subsequent movements of peoples, large masses of Africans of the Negroid type settled.

During Roman rule in North Africa, expeditions to the south were again undertaken. Pliny reports military campaigns in this direction. Roman proconsul Cornelius Balbus in 19 BC. e. reached Fezzan, the country of the Garamantes, and, according to A. Lot’s assumption, crossed the Sahara and reached Gao. Pliny also mentions the cave dwellers of the Niger Valley, “troglodytes,” already described by Herodotus. In 70 AD e. the path of the Garamantes was followed again, this time by Septimius Flaccus, who, according to some authors, reached Bilma. Ptolemy reports that in 86 AD. e. Julius Materi, by order of Emperor Domitian, crossed the desert with the Garamantes and reached Agisimba, the region “where rhinoceroses gather.” Agisimba was usually identified with the oasis of Air (Niger Republic). But such an identification is most likely erroneous: it is difficult to reach Air from Fezzan. Bovill believes that the Romans reached the Tibesti highlands, where an ancient route from Fezzan to Central Sudan, already at that time used for trade relations, ran nearby. Tibesti is supported by the report that there were rhinoceroses there. Over the next few centuries, these animals were still found in the area of ​​Lake Chad and surrounding reservoirs up to Tibesti.

In search of the sources of the Nile, and most importantly, in pursuit of gold, expeditions were sent to Eastern Sudan. By order of Emperor Nero in 70, two centuries went up the Nile, passed the state of Meroe (at the 5th cataract) and apparently reached the swampy area on the banks of the White Nile and at Bahr el-Ghazal with “a huge labyrinth of swamps, covered with a quagmire where a boat cannot pass” (Seneca, VI, 8). Thus the border of ancient and ancient Africa was reached. Sub-Saharan Africa was characterized by a transition to the use and processing of metals and the emergence of early class societies.

When at the end of the 15th century. The first Portuguese conquerors and travelers set foot on African soil; a significant part of its population had been able to smelt and use iron for many centuries. The only exceptions were some tribes who lived isolated in remote areas of the tropical virgin forest and South Africa.

Many primitive tribes, like the carriers of Neolithic cultures of the 1st millennium BC. e., in parallel with metal ones, they continued to use tools, weapons and other similar objects made of stone and bone. Such parallelism is observed in the Sao culture of the Lake Chad basin and in the Neolithic Bigo culture in Uganda from the 10th to the 14th centuries. n. e., as well as in the centers of the Nok culture before the beginning of our era.

Since when did the use of metal begin in Tropical Africa, which marks the end of the Stone Age, and therefore of primitive society? This question is of particular importance, because for any nation the emergence of economic and social differentiation and the formation of a class society are associated with its entry into the metal age.

With the exception of Egypt, where bronze working reached its greatest development during the New Kingdom (1262–1085 BC), and parts of North Africa and Mauritania, sub-Saharan Africa did not have a distinct Copper or Bronze Age, although copper and bronze in many places even in ancient times, and in some places for a number of centuries, occupied the main place in everyday life. In West Africa, poor in copper but rich in gold, in the course of trade exchanges across the Sahara, Libyan copper played an important role in ancient times, exchanged for West African gold. These operations began in the 1st millennium BC. e. Garamantes - chariot riders from Fezzan. French archaeologist R. Moni dates the use of copper in the form of axes and spearheads in Mauritania to 1200 BC. e.

Systematic copper mining began relatively late in sub-Saharan Africa. Acquaintance with it remained purely regional and limited to a few deposits and junction points along the routes of trade caravans with copper in Western Central Africa and did not have a significant impact on the development of productive forces. On the contrary, copper mining and especially the spread of copper casting presupposed the presence of iron tools and other equipment. Only at the turn of the 1st and 2nd millennia AD. e. and it was thanks to the use of iron tools that the exploitation of copper deposits on the Zambezi and Katanga, red copper ore in Takedda (Mali) and tin on the Bauchi plateau in Nigeria was intensified. From the descriptions of al-Biruni it is known that in the 13th century. There were copper mines in Katanga. Ibn Battuta reports in the 14th century. about a deposit of red copper ore near Takedda in Mali.

The famous bronze and copper works of art of Ife and Benin date from no earlier than the beginning of the 12th century. Figurines made of copper and bronze, found by J.-P. Lebeuf in the places of settlement of the Sao people on the shores of Lake Chad, date back to the 10th–13th centuries. As archaeological data show, in Tropical Africa, copper and bronze were almost never used for the production of tools, utensils and weapons, but court artisans made works of art and valuable household items from them, as well as from gold, with great perfection. Unlike the countries of the Near East and the Mediterranean, sub-Saharan Africa first learned to smelt and process iron, and only then mastered the art of producing copper. In many areas of Africa, at the end of the Neolithic, iron began to be used immediately after stone. The Bronze Period in the proper sense of the word, characterized by the processing of copper, as well as the Eneolithic (the period of stone and bronze) did not exist here.

The more important was the ability to process iron. It ultimately entailed fundamental changes in the state of the productive forces, and consequently in the socio-economic field, in property relations.

It should be emphasized that Africans independently learned to mine iron and created their own methods of producing and processing it.

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Question 01. Tell us about the integration processes in Latin America. Why do they displease the US ruling circles?

Answer. Integration in Latin America affects mainly the economic sphere. Unions such as the South American Common Market, the Andean Community, and the Union of South America strengthen the economic cooperation of these states as opposed to the economic influence of the United States, which is why they cause dissatisfaction with the United States.

Question 02. Tell us about the foreign policy of modern China, Russian-Chinese relations. When answering, use materials from the media and the Internet.

Answer. China has become one of the most economically developed countries in the region (not counting Japan), so it began to actively foreign policy around the world, taking care of economic cooperation with many countries. Special place occupies cooperation between China and Russia. The signing of the Treaty on Good Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation between these countries in 2001 is of exceptional importance. At the same time, China's position on international issues remains very tough. In particular, Beijing has no intention of recognizing Taiwan's independence.

Question 03: What development problems does Japan face? How does this affect its economic position in the Asian region?

Answer. The emergence of strong competitors, rising energy prices and overproduction caused a protracted economic crisis in Japan, the ruin of many enterprises, and rising unemployment. Stimulating the economy by lowering the interest rate on loans does not yield results; from time to time there is even talk of switching completely to electronic money, thanks to which the interest rate can be made negative.

Question 04. What are the features of the modernization process in India at the present stage?

Answer. Peculiarities:

1) India’s economy has developed as a multi-structure economy;

2) there are special economic zones with preferential conditions for business;

3) there is a huge difference between large European-style cities and underdeveloped rural areas;

4) large cities, by European standards, are significantly overpopulated, their infrastructure requires serious development;

5) The Indo-Pakistani conflict remains relevant, but smoldering, periodically it leads to terrorist attacks;

6) since 1998, both sides of the Indo-Pakistani conflict have nuclear weapons;

7) the pace of economic development in India is one of the highest in the world;

8) the wealth stratification in the country is enormous, most of population lives below the poverty line;

9) a significant part of the poorest population remains illiterate and has no chance of getting an education.

Question 05. What allowed India to achieve significant success in modernization? Give examples of industries in which the Indian economy has been particularly successful?

Answer. The reasons for the success of the Indian economy lie in government regulation, encouraging the development of advanced areas of the economy and creating attractive conditions for investors from developed countries. At the same time, a significant part of the demand is created by consumption within the country. A typical example is mechanical engineering. Based on discoveries made in other countries, India has developed its own car models aimed at the local market. The main criterion for this was the low price due to the simplicity of the design, which is implemented, in particular, in the cheapest car in the world - the Tata Nano. Another example is Indian cinema, the famous Bollywood. The film industry creates a fairy tale for people living in difficult conditions, the consumption of its products is huge, especially within the country, which ensures the prosperity of the industry.

Question 06. What are the features of the development of Islamic countries in the Middle East and North Africa?

Answer. Peculiarities:

1) a significant part of the countries in the region lives off significant revenues from oil sales;

2) the region is torn apart by religious contradictions between Shiites and Sunnis;

3) the influence of fundamental Islam in the region is constantly increasing;

4) in 2010-2011, revolutions took place in a number of countries in the region that overthrew secular authoritarian regimes, the so-called “Arab Spring”.

Question 07. What are the main features of the development of the states of Central and Southern Africa? Why have the problems of the poorest countries on this continent become global?

Answer. Peculiarities:

1) in many regional states there is political instability, coups d'état often occur;

2) the economy of most countries in the region remains backward and cannot provide decent income for a significant part of the population;

3) the problem of hunger remains very relevant in the region, it is further aggravated by the high birth rate;

4) the problem of AIDS remains very relevant in the region, which infects a significant number of people;

5) terrible epidemics periodically occur in the region, the latest being the outbreak of the Ebola virus.

The problems of this region are also becoming relevant for Europe due to illegal migration from these countries. Fleeing from a low, often unbearably low standard of living, people cross the Mediterranean Sea on fragile boats in the hope of a better life.