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Post by mendeman on Jun 14, 2012 14:00:47 GMT -5
Found a interesting article from Rice Unviersity about W. Africa and its inhabitants. Goes over the climate conditions which contributed to why present day west africans were not there in antiquity, at least not until the very early part of our current era. Also, shows that Africa as a whole has not been excavated to any major extent. I would presume not even 80% of it. Which really helps to quiet any noise from those who try to say African's has a whole have not contributed to civilization. How would they know beyond their imaginations, considering there has been little research. We must remember, even in Egypt when the Europeans came, they had to dig out most of the monuments, wasn't like they were just sitting there waiting to be discovered, people would only see the very tops of these monuments, and through careful excavation did the picture of Kemet's greatness emerge. Find the PDF here anthropology.rice.edu/research.htmlThe name is: Overviews: West African Archaeology S.K. McIntosh and R.J. McIntosh 1981 West African Prehistory. American Scientist 69: 602-613 article
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Post by nebsen on Jun 14, 2012 20:56:59 GMT -5
I guess Europeans felt that Black Africans could have never created anything worth their time excavating ! ! Thanks for the PDF link !
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Post by mendeman on Jun 15, 2012 6:11:20 GMT -5
Did you read the part about iron smelting? The oldest iron smelting in the world found so far is in Nok civilization in Nigeria. They said its about 6,000 B.C. per the carbon dating. But then the author's eurocentrism overwhelms them. They start speaking of how the original carbon dating may have been contaminated, which would explain in their imaginary scenario, why its a 6,000 B.C. date for iron smelting. To further their argument they said the problem with Nok is that they do not have a gradual buildup to iron smelting i.e. going from cooper smelting to aluminum smelting etc. So they said, this must not be right (the carbon dating). However earlier in the paper it says that Africa has not been excavated that much. So if you apply that to the Nok, it could have very well been that either A. they moved from somewhere else and their gradual process of progressive metal work happend elsewhere in Africa or B. Some other older African civ brought this system to them.
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Post by anansi on Jun 16, 2012 5:36:52 GMT -5
Did you read the part about iron smelting? The oldest iron smelting in the world found so far is in Nok civilization in Nigeria. They said its about 6,000 B.C. per the carbon dating. But then the author's eurocentrism overwhelms them. They start speaking of how the original carbon dating may have been contaminated, which would explain in their imaginary scenario, why its a 6,000 B.C. date for iron smelting. To further their argument they said the problem with Nok is that they do not have a gradual buildup to iron smelting i.e. going from cooper smelting to aluminum smelting etc. So they said, this must not be right (the carbon dating). However earlier in the paper it says that Africa has not been excavated that much. So if you apply that to the Nok, it could have very well been that either A. they moved from somewhere else and their gradual process of progressive metal work happend elsewhere in Africa or B. Some other older African civ brought this system to them. Or the likely scenario that they just skipped a step steel was being produced in east Africa at degrees not attained any where else in the world until late in history as far as we know today.
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Post by mendeman on Jun 16, 2012 9:26:50 GMT -5
The only reason I would think they didn't skip a step, but instead migrated from elsewhere, is because it seems that is a common theme back then. Movement due to climate change, I mean.
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Jun 18, 2012 23:58:02 GMT -5
Did you read the part about iron smelting? The oldest iron smelting in the world found so far is in Nok civilization in Nigeria. They said its about 6,000 B.C. per the carbon dating. Iron, in 6000 BCE?
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Post by nebsen on Jun 19, 2012 3:40:19 GMT -5
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9LkpJdll9APosted this You- Tube video a while back. Thought it was in alignment with the subject matter ! Helpful hint to also put the YouTube url between these tags (youtube)(/youtube) then we can all see it here without leaving the page and go to YouTube for related vids
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Post by mendeman on Jun 19, 2012 7:29:34 GMT -5
nebsen
That is a good video, saw it some time ago. That desert holds some very important information in my opinion
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Post by clydewin98 on Jun 21, 2012 12:58:58 GMT -5
nebsen That is a good video, saw it some time ago. That desert holds some very important information in my opinion One of the ancient civilizations of Middle Africa was the Maa Confederation. Check out the video
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Jun 22, 2012 11:41:12 GMT -5
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Post by mendeman on Jun 24, 2012 13:07:36 GMT -5
^^
I mis spoke, in terms of the 6,000 b.c. date.
In that last graph you showed from Gerard Ouechon/Alain Person it seems to show Iron in Niger around 4,000+ B.C., am I reading that correctly?
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Jun 28, 2012 13:40:20 GMT -5
In that last graph you showed from Gerard Ouechon/Alain Person it seems to show Iron in Niger around 4,000+ B.C., am I reading that correctly?Those graph dates are in BP (Before Present, i.e., 1950 CE) notation. Just subtract a graph date from 1950 to get the appropriate CE/BCE. So, 4000 BP = 2050 BCE. -2175 is Quechon's oldest date for Niger.
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Post by Dawn2Earth on Aug 10, 2012 1:31:03 GMT -5
What goes unmentioned in this thread is that 4,000+ years BP (going from 2000 A.D. as present), people in Central Africa may have been working Iron. See;
Heather Pringle, Seeking Africa's first Iron Men., Science 2009.
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Post by mendeman on Aug 25, 2012 21:25:06 GMT -5
What goes unmentioned in this thread is that 4,000+ years BP (going from 2000 A.D. as present), people in Central Africa may have been working Iron. See; Heather Pringle, Seeking Africa's first Iron Men., Science 2009. It is mentioned in reply #9 and I think you mean 2000 B.C., not A.D., right?
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Aug 26, 2012 20:36:13 GMT -5
Whereas the map and the graph in reply #9 give a 2000 BCE date specifically for Egaro in Niger, I think Dawn2Earth expressly meant the following: Now controversial findings from a French team working at the site of Ôboui in the Central African Republic challenge the diffusion model. Artifacts there suggest that sub-Saharan Africans were making iron by at least 2000 B.C.E. and possibly much earlier — well before Middle Easterners, says team member Philippe Fluzin, an archaeometallurgist at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard in Belfort, France. The team unearthed a blacksmith’s forge and copious iron artifacts, including pieces of iron bloom and two needles, as they describe in a recent monograph, Les Ateliers d‘Ôboui, published in Paris.
“Effectively, the oldest known sites for iron metallurgy are in Africa,”
Fluzin says.
. . . .
... [the] French team led by archaeologist Etienne Zangato of the University of Paris X had published the Ôboui monograph [in 2007] with sensational new evidence for ancient African ironworking.
. . .
Zangato and his team spent nine field seasons at the site, opening more than 800 square meters. They recovered 339 stone artifacts and a host of evidence for ironsmithing: a blacksmith’s forge, consisting of a clay-lined furnace, stone anvil, and part of a ceramic pot that likely held water for cooling or possiblytempering red-hot iron. They also found charcoal storage pits, 1450 pieces of slag, 181 pieces of iron bloom, and 280 small iron lumps and objects, including two needles.
. . .
To date the site, seven charcoal samples were taken from inside and outside the furnace. They were radiocarbon dated by Jean-François Saliège in the Laboratory of Dynamic Oceanography and Climatology at the University of Paris VI to between 2343 and 1900 B.C.E—long before the Anatolians were working iron.
Those dates are early, but they fit well with a newly emerging pattern, says Zangato. Excavations he directed between 1989 and 2000 at the three nearby sites of Balimbé, Bétumé, and Bouboun each uncovered layers containing ironworking debris, he says. Those layers were radiocarbon dated by Zangato, Saliège, and Magloire Mandeng-Yogo of the Institute of Research for Development in Bondy, France, to between 1612 and 2135 B.C.E. at Balimbé and Bouboun, and to sometime between 2930 and 3490 B.C.E. at Bétumé. “There is no longer any reason to cling to the diffusionist theory for iron metallurgy in Africa,” says Zangato.
The evidence is very convincing, says Patrick Pion, a University of Paris X archaeologist who specializes in the European Iron Age. The metallographic analysis is clear proof of ironworking at Ôboui, he says, and “the series of C14 dates obtained are coherent, done by a laboratory and a specialist recognized for C14 dating in Africa. I see no reason intrinsically to question them.” MacEachern agrees that the seven consistently early dates from the forge are persuasive.
Though not giving any concrete examples, Pringles's 2009 article point blank says some French and Belgian archaeologists have evidence to place iron metallurgy in both Africa's central Sahara/Sahel and Great Lakes regions as far back as 3600 BCE.
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