Ancient African People
Ancient African society did not involve the huge
differences between rich and poor people that plagued Europe
and Asia. North Africa,
being part of the Mediterranean community, was an exception, but south
of the Sahara even kings and
queens were not so much richer than their subjects. But there
were kings and queens, and even if they weren’t very rich they
did have power over the other people in their area. Traders often
got to be very powerful as well.
Family was very important to African social networks. Many trades
were done through networks of cousins and second cousins and even
more distant relatives. In famines, too, people counted on distant
relatives living in other regions to help them out.
Friendship, on the other hand, is not emphasized in African stories,
or mainly to show how it is not as strong as families.
All over Islamic Africa
– North Africa, West Africa, and East Africa – many boys
went to school in the mosques,
where they learned to recite the Koran.
Bantu girls, both Muslim and traditional believers, had specialized
training before they were able to marry. The boys participated in
elaborate lessons to teach them how to be warriors and responsible
men. More formal training of girls and boys was expected in Africa
than among peasants in Europe or Asia.
Africans seem to have had slaves from the earliest times among themselves, who mainly acted as personal servants. But, damaging as this practice was, it was far outdistanced by the practice of capturing people and selling them into slavery abroad. Even before 1500 AD, when the Europeans were not involved, the slave trade was already capturing thousands of Africans every year and selling them away from their families and their homes. Most of the captured slaves were probably Bantu people. Some of them were forced to walk across the Sahara Desert to be slaves in North Africa, and especially to work in the salt mines of the Sahara. Others were shipped from the east coast of Africa to India and the Persian Gulf, to work in salt mines there. A total of about ten thousand slaves a year were probably exported in the years before 1500.
To find out more about African people, check out this book from Amazon.com or your library -
Daily
Life of the Nubians, by Bob Bianchi (2004)
