Great African Reads discussion

Hey gang,

Sorry for setting this up a couple of days late, but please feel free to discuss your reading!

I am a wee bit behind, but will catch up shortly. :)

Regarding climate change, the shift from eons of high humidity and vegetation growth to contrasting periods of aridity is interesting, more so than the discussion of population growth statistics. Also interesting is the acquiring of fire. It's doubtful that fire is discovered as fires naturally occur in nature. The book suggests that with fire the early people can travel into cold-temperature climate areas (this hypothesis is debated) and can survey their immediate surroundings at night, among other uses. The charcoal from fire proves a handy drawing implement. How the making of fire is discovered is a cultural accomplishment.

I think we are finally reaching a point in the book where it might be more interesting/accessible for readers. :)

This book is amazing in the sheer scale of topics covered. This section deals with the evolutionary process and physiological changes that were required to enable speech to develop and provides insights in how speech patterns are used by linguists and historians to trace the movement of humans across the continent. It covers the change from a pure hunter- gatherer society to more pastoral societies with domesticated animals.

I never realised the importance of the development of pottery to create more sedentary communities and the role it would play in enabling population growth to increase. There are some very interesting statistics on population growth across the millennia in the section.

The role of domesticated cattle and how the availability of dairy products changed women's ability to bear more children is interesting. There is a short section that covers the science and genetics of lactose tolerance and intolerance which just indicates the width of topics.

The role of domestic animals and that Africans may only started using domestic animals at a later stage compared to Asia and Europe since the continent has such a huge range and availability of wild animals is also interesting. He makes the comment that looking after domestic animals is hard work (especially in African with its bigger number of predators).

The subject of domestic animals has been a political topic in South Africa this week since a report by the Public Protector appeared. The President received a cattle kraal and chicken house as part of a security upgrade to his Nkandla homestead. He would know that it is hard work to look after cattle since he was a cattle herder as a boy.

His description of the process to smelt iron using charcoal and the effect that would have had on deforestation on the continent provided some more context on that part of history. He makes the comment that there is no archaeological finds that indicate that iron was used as a weapon in Africa initially. That is such a profound statement in a continent that has been wreaked by conflict for so many centuries in recent times.

The main theme in this section that stands out for me is how dramatically the climate changed over the period covered and how that affected the different kinds of societies that formed during effectively the last 10000 years. There is a current group that ascribes a lot of the violence in Somalia/CAR/Sudan and environs to climate change and communities competing for resources. Given the context provided by this section, some of that would start to make sense.

Wow Carolien you've got me excited to dive back into this! Work has been brutal for me the past two months but I'm about to get to breathe again and have some brain space for this book. :) it's in my plans to get back into this rainy weekend.

I'm excited about the lactose intolerance. I have such a gene lol so I'm quite fascinated by both the genetics and the structures of different kinds of milk and milk products that make them mor or less digestible.

And pottery is not something that had come to mind so that will be fun to read about.

And of course climate change...on a lot of people's minds these days.

Why humans developed language: It's more efficient than social grooming! (I loved this.) And the comparison of hunting with gathering ("Ancestral Economies"): I really enjoyed the summary of research about the !Kung people in the Kalahari desert, and the well-plotted way in which Reader exposed the errors of early studies (nutrition, protein, birthrate). I like reading each chapter slowly. They are so short, and yet there's so much there!

So happy to be reading this book.

I'm so glad, Mindy!

I'm still behind, but you state it so well about the shortness of the chapters yet packed with info, so I have opted not to rush. but I will catch up, soon!

I am loving this book so far too. Like Mindy, the chapters are short but pack a powerful punch.

Also loving doing a large group read like this with lots of time and modest page goals. Look forward to more of these in the future :)

Mindy wrote: "Why humans developed language: It's more efficient than social grooming! (I loved this.) And the comparison of hunting with gathering ("Ancestral Economies"): I really enjoyed the summary of resear..."

I just read this chapter and I, too was really fascinated with language development, group size, and social grooming. Wow...

We went to the Origins centre at Wits University on Saturday afternoon. They have a large display of various stone tools nicely organized in chronological order so one can see how they became more sophisticated over time.

Yesterday I caught up and finished chapter 19, then also read chapter 20. Still loving this book like mad! (And by the way, I'm now in Grahamstown, South Africa, for work -- will be here till mid-July.)

Chapter 19 was one of the most fascinating so far. Even though the title is "The Impact of Iron," the first part of the chapter is all about the spread of one group of people, referred to as the Bantu-speaking people (because they are a language group, not a racial or ethnic group), from around eastern Nigeria and western Cameroon all the way down to the Cape. When we begin asking why are so many of the African languages so similar, we travel back in time to the dispersal of this group of people, once small and focused in one general location. Little by little they multiplied and spread out, taking their agricultural ways with them as they went.

Then the story of iron (which I won't recount), which was also quite fascinating! One point that struck me was about the lack of weapons. For a long time, iron was used mainly to make hoes, for farming. Not knives, not spear tips, not swords. Hoes.

Chapter 20 begins the next section of the book, and in seven short pages we get the whole of ancient Egyptian civilization, as well as the Egyptians' neighbors, the Nubians. I was not surprised to learn that Egyptian cultural practices and artifacts did not travel south into the rest of Africa. But hm ... probably that's to be saved for our next discussion thread!

Hi Mindy! I'm so glad you are still loving the book! I'm almost caught up. Apologies I let the days slip by. I will set up the next thread later today.

I've been distracted lately by caring for my very old and very sick dog, who peacefully passed on to the great hereafter Monday evening. Of course I'm very sad and miss him terribly, but it does mean I will have time and energy again for stuff at goodreads. :)

Mindy wrote: "Yesterday I caught up and finished chapter 19, then also read chapter 20. Still loving this book like mad! (And by the way, I'm now in Grahamstown, South Africa, for work -- will be here till mid-J..."

Hi Mindy, hope you are enjoying the South African version of autumn. If you come up to Joburg while here, let me know. I'd be happy to go and show you around the place. I need to get back in this book. I've been concentrating on Long Walk to Freedom the past few weeks.

Marieke wrote: "Hi Mindy! I'm so glad you are still loving the book! I'm almost caught up. Apologies I let the days slip by. I will set up the next thread later today.

I've been distracted lately by caring for my..."

Sorry to hear about your dog. It's very sad when they get so old and sick.

Well...I had the double whammy of losing my dog and then dealing with a family crisis. Ah well, life...you never know what it will throw at you!

I am getting back to the point now where I can find time and mental energy to read, and this morning I have dived back into this book. Wow am I behind! Haha!

So I am laughing at myself while I read about glaciation and how humans originated in the tropics, so the plunging temperatures meant technological adaptations for making clothes from animals skins and stuff. I live in a subtropical zone that gets very humid and quite hot in the summer months...I can't stand it!!! Does that mean I am a devolved human? Hahaha....

I'm a bit of an outlier here--I'm finding this section more of a chore to get into.

Perhaps it's because of Chapter 11. Why this paragraph? "...Africa could hardly have been more inhospitable to the rapacious, white-skinned, and thick-blooded northerners. The continent held them off for centuries more; not until they had filched the means of curbing malaria--quinine--from South America could they settle close to the heart of Africa..."

Black Africans are far from immune to malaria; most malaria deaths still occur in sub-Saharan Africa and among blacks. Furthermore, mutations conferring some modest protection against malaria have occurred again and again among human populations and have been selected for, even well after the primary migrations out of Africa--and that includes people of fairly recent European ancestry.

That's a good point and I didn't even stop to think about that while I was reading.

I'm still stuck here, puzzling about another paragraph on the very next page:

"While the migrants had colonized the globe, pushing always at fresh horizons and challenging new frontiers, the imperatives of life in Africa had remained within the confines of ecological boundaries that had been identified long before. There was nothing new in Africa. The human dynamic was continuous, and unbroken."[emphasis mine]

But the records suggest just the opposite and he's spent the last hundred pages proving it! Africa was constantly undergoing changes in climate, geography, flora, fauna, competing humanoid populations--you name it.

I'll also mention the more recent evidence that humans migrated back and forth across the African-Asian-European land mass even before settled agricultural communities were founded. After all, that's what nomadic populations do!

I think what he's trying to say right there is that while migrating populations out of the continent had to adapt quickly to brand new environments and climates, those populations that stayed behind didn't have to change very much. Sure, the continent went through big changes, but over a very very long period of time. At least that is how I'm understanding that section. Am I making any sense?

I'm just going to plow ahead on this one. The book is bringing together enough new ideas and insights and threads to follow up so I know I'll enjoy the journey. But I'm newly wary of his oddly emotional POV.

Yes you are making sense, Marieke, and maybe I'll get it as I read further.

There are definite problems with the book for sure, but I'm also approaching it like that: big picture! :)

Big pictures are good--and a great place to start :)