Historiography Of Africa Essay

The historiography of Africa is very important. It is the only factual way we can understand the history of Africa as a continent. Archeology, art, linguistics, genetics, and indigenous written sources are all great pieces of works needed to start to understand the history of Africa. Although they all come from departments in history, together they reveal and answer the questions we have had for many years. As we learn more about the different works, it opens more questions to be answered. The questions are to help reconstruct Africa’s past and respect the existence of the continent.
Not many of the continent's peoples developed any extensive form of writing. Thus, the earliest written sources on African peoples were the accounts of European and Arab traders, travelers, and explorers. The historiography of the pre-literate societies was passed on through oral traditions. Many of the tradition were in forms of poems, either spoken or sung. Dances were also popular to tell stories. Because there was little to no written sources, it was widely believed among Western historians that Africa had no “civilization” and thus no history.
The archaeology of Africa must be the most important part of learning the history of Africa. If archaeologist were to track the activity of Pre-Africans,

Africa is too big of a continent for all its history to be discovered. All its history may never be discovered, but at least we can continue to search until we can get accurate descriptions of Africa’s history. To understand the history, we need better equipment that will track the human activity of the pre-historic years. Understanding the art and language as equal will allow us to depict why communities did the things they did. Also, knowing that the same humans today were not the same as the ones in ancient Africa can open the discussion of how people acted towards the climate and why did they people become