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GENERAL HISTORY

OF AFRICA-II

Ancient Civilizations

of Africa

EDITOR G.MOKHTAR

Introduction

G. MOKHTAR

with the collaboration of), V E R C O U T T ER

The present volume of A General History of Africa deals with that long period of the continent's history extending from the end of the Neolithic era, that is, from around the eighth millennium before our era, to the beginning of the seventh century of our era. That period, which covers some nine thousand years of Africa's history, has been, not without some hesitation, subdivided into four major geographical

zones:

(i) the corridor of the Nile, Egypt and Nubia (Chapters i to 12);

(2) the Ethiopian highlands (Chapters 13 to 16);

(3) that part of Africa often later called the Maghrib, and its

Saharan hinterland (Chapters 17 to 20);

(4) the rest of Africa as well as the African islands in the Indian

Ocean (Chapters 21 to 29).

This division is governed by the present compartmental nature of research into African history. It might have seemed more logical to arrange the volume according to the continent's chief ecological divisions, which offer the same living conditions to the human groups inhabiting them without any true physical barriers which serve to block cultural and other exchanges within the region.

In that case w e would have obtained an entirely different picture, which, running from north to south, would have comprised what has been called since the eighth century of our era the Maghrib island, largely Mediterranean

in its geology, climate and general ecology; and the wide subtropical band of the Sahara and its tectonic accident, the Nile valley. Next would have come the zone of the great subtropical and equatorial river basins, with their Atlantic coast. Then, to the east, w e would have had the Ethiopian

highlands and the Horn of Africa that looks towards Arabia and the Indian Ocean. Lastly, the region of the great equatorial lakes would have linked the Nile, Nigerian and Congo basins with southern Africa and its annexes of Madagascar and the other ocean islands near Africa.

Such a division, more satisfying to the mind than the one that has had to be used, was unfortunately impossible. T h e researcher wishing to study the history of Africa in antiquity is, in fact, considerably impeded by the weight of the past. T h e separation into sections imposed on him, which is reflected in the plan adopted here, derives very largely from the colonization of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the historian, whether he was a colonist interested in the country in which he was living or one of the colonized reflecting on his people's past, was, in spite of himself, confined within arbitrarily fixed territorial limits. It was difficult, if not impossible, for him to study relations with neighbouring countries, although these more often than not formed a whole, historically speaking, with the country with which he was concerned.