Christopher Ehret

A solid, sweeping overview of deep African history: from tens of thousands of years ago up to Late Antiquity. Christopher Ehret draws on archaeological and linguistic evidence to show that Africans and African societies have always been central to global history and to the story of human progress. He marshals evidence to show that Africans made key early discoveries in fields such as weaving, ceramics, and iron smelting (in central Africa there's evidence for iron smelting occurring at least 400 years before the technology was independently developed in western Asia), and that what we can glean of social organisation gives the lie to the idea that social stratification and gender subjugation are inevitable. There are a couple of times where I felt that Ehret was pushing the evidence up to the limit of what it can with validity support—I'm thinking here primarily of his arguments to do with belief systems—but overall I thought this was an impressively deft introduction to a topic vast in its scope. Recommended if you have even a passing interest in the topic.… (mehr)