Africa's Great Civilizations PBS Trailer:

a reply to: Anaana

Hi Anaana , I had known for some time ago that Iron had an independent development in Africa, it's part of the reason why Africa is, well..full of Africans, and not only that but some achieved temperatures in their furnaces not surpassed until the dawn of the industrial revolution, ex. the Haya people were in fact producing steel.

Modern steel-making began in 1847. William Kelly of Eddyville, Kentucky, found he could make superior structural iron if he blew air through molten pig iron. Oxygen from the air burned harmful elements out of the iron and formed a very strong carbon steel. The process gave what we call converter steel. Nine years later the Englishman Henry Bessemer reinvented Kelly's method. Today we talk about the Bessemer process for making carbon steel.

But carbon steel had been made long before either Kelly or Bessemer. One of the oldest and most sophisticated methods was that of the Haya people. They're an African tribe in what is Tanzania today. The Hayas produced high-grade carbon steel for about 2000 years. The Hayas made their steel in a kiln shaped like a truncated upside-down cone about five feet high. They made both the cone and the bed below it from the clay of termite mounds. Termite clay makes a fine refractory material. The Hayas filled the bed of the kiln with charred swamp reeds. They packed a mixture of charcoal and iron ore above the charred reeds. Before they loaded iron ore into the kiln, they roasted it to raise its carbon content. The key to the Haya iron process was a high operating temperature. Eight men, seated around the base of the kiln, pumped air in with hand bellows. The air flowed through the fire in clay conduits. Then the heated air blasted into the charcoal fire itself. The result was a far hotter process than anything known in Europe before modern times. Anthropologist Peter Schmidt wanted to see a working kiln, but he had a problem. Cheap European steel products reached Africa early in this century and put the Hayas out of business. When they could no longer compete, they'd quit making steel.

Schmidt asked the old men of the tribe to recreate the high tech of their childhood. They agreed, but it took five tries to put all the details of the complex old process back together. What came out of the fifth try was a fine, tough steel. It was the same steel that'd served the subsaharan peoples for two millinea before it was almost forgotten.
www.uh.edu... /ex]
Good reading here also
unesdoc.unesco.org...

In the area around around Mali for example enabled it's inhabitants to build very large cities 500yrs B.C before the rise of Timbucktu proper, according to one archaeologist Doug Park, was twice the size of medieval Timbuktu and medieval Timbuktu was twice the size of medieval London.

The Iron industry had a cost, the trees were cut down probably contributing desertification and this may also have been a contributing factor in an even earlier civilization of Wagadu's down fall through desertification, in this Africans are just as prone to self destructive behavior as everyone else.

edit on 26-2-2017 by Spider879 because: (no reason given)

originally posted by: Spider879
a reply to: Anaana

Hi Anaana , I had known for some time ago that Iron had an independent development in Africa, it's part of the reason why Africa is, well..full of Africans, and not only that but some achieved temperatures in their furnaces not surpassed until the dawn of the industrial revolution, ex. the Haya people were in fact producing steel.

2000 years ago makes much better sense. The Hittites had developed the cementation process and were producing steel by the 2nd millennium BC, and by the 1st millennium that had spread to India,but the Gerzean culture of Egypt were hammering meteoric iron as early as the 4th millennium BC. Iron was the great leveller, it is abundant and not bound to specific locations of tectonic and plate activity like other metals but it is incredibly labour and resource intensive even before you produce a bloom of workable iron, this can be done at 800 degrees centigrade, but it is a spongy ball still littered with impurities, but hammering for weeks on end will produce a refined iron that can be worked. Anyone, in theory, can make a workable iron by grabbing a big enough chunk of red soil, but it is only with determination, sheer hard work and lots of charcoal for fire, and water at all stages of the process (hence all those Roman viaducts), that it will be weapons grade, so 2000 years ago seems reasonable. For the grade of iron used in ploughs, tools and the such like, I take no issue with that process developing independently in Africa at that level, and since the oldest worked iron objects have been found in Egypt, it seems likely to me that the technology travelled both ways along the Nile. Or in fact that it had originated in Nubia and spread to Egypt.

Really, the only thing I was objecting to was the accidental aspect, we know that the Egyptians worked meteoric iron, I know that there is a move towards recognising the rest of Africa's rich history, but that shouldn't mean biting noses off to spite our faces.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: Bedlam

We had a decent experience with ours. Mostly we'd talk about Harriet Tubman (again) and eat soul food at lunch. Pretty trivializing all around, but at least not overtly negative.

We got a soul food restaurant at one point.

I remember going there to see what new stuff I could try. It was the same food I got every day. At least if I ever long for home cooking when I'm in LA or NYC I know to go look for a soul food place.

a reply to: Bedlam

I eat a lot of stuff that you'd find in a soul food restaurant. Sometimes its the same dish, sometimes its different. Like chitlins being tripas. I like mine cooked in a disc with garlic, lime, salt, and a splash of beer at the end. Not the same dish at all, but the same meat.

But im proficient in a kitchen and will make all sorts of stuff.

I have Jamaican and other small caribean island friends, and some Kenyan and Nigerian friends. I get to try some good, authentic cooking from them. The Nigerian guy gets these sweet red beans that are just delicious.

For living in far flung west texas i've been fortunate enough to know folks from equally far flung parts of the globe.

a reply to: Spider879


For those of you who missed it, or can't get PBS due to location, it's now on Youtube, don't know how long it will last tho, these things come and go the vid above is post Egyptian stuff The Cross and The Crescent..take a look at early Christianity and Islam in Africa.

Empires of Gold, basically the trans-Saharan gold trade.
I have an issue with what Gates said about Wagadu's origin in 1500 B.C , because that was it's first decline , it's first golden age was 2600 B.C about the same time of the people Kerma or first great age of Kush.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

What are the sweet red beans called??

I didnt grow up where my parents are from.. I was born in Louisiana, grew up mainly in New Orleans and then schools in NO, Memphis TN and then Mississippi. We didnt have black week or afiican american anything.. we had history next door at the old peoples houses ( who LOOOVED to talk) and were taught just normal things about each continent throughout the elementary stage, then in middle and HS we had larger times dedicated to the ancient civilizations. I didnt learn the nitty gritty until I learned it on my own, and Im still learning. So many new discoveries and we get to add them to our internal encyclopedias immediately due to the internet.

Ill definitely watch this.

originally posted by: Spider879
it's now on Youtube, don't know how long it will last tho

Brilliant. I am never up normal hours and forgot to program the dvr.

a reply to: Bedlam

Timbuktu is not in Africa.

Oh crap. It is.

a reply to: Advantage

I don't recall the name. I still work with him, but he's in Austin now so we don't see each other very often now.

RE: the show....it was a good, brief explanation of the more well documented pieces of African history. I was entertained for the full hour and a half or so. After the first 30 minutes I was feeling like it'd just be an Egypt show, but it turned out to be pretty comprehensive, considering the giant in the north.

I knew this was your thread he moment i saw it

Spidey,i will watch it soon,but i want to ask,have you ever seen these?

www.youtube.com...

Bro,btw,you Really need to make a plan to come down Mzansi way.Now these vids+info what i'm gonna show you,is from my province. Mpumalanga Province. These ruins are real,and our friend Nick knows of places. Pyramids,that he is keeping secret from the general pop.And there's a place i could show you,a double hill,from the front- and a triple hill from another angle..that contains something my husband will never discuss on the net,but only in person.Hope you can get the funds together in the foreseeable future. I want to go see Mr.Mutwa before he passes.That old shaman has info that will Stun the human race.

His book,well he writes many books,but from what myself and my family has seen right out here in the Bush - there is something Very strange about this region Spider.Mr.Mutwa's theories do not seem farfetched,if you live,day and night,for many years in this region.And i passed the double/triple once in a car when my husband was sick in the hospital,and dying-and in times of this type of strife,sometimes the hill sends some messenger to comfort the ones they seek to comfort, i guess.

a reply to: Raxoxane

Hi Rax, while I do find Credo Mutwa's traditions interesting , I need more than story telling I found the stories of the Chituwara?? or the lizard like people intriguing also, the serpentine beings are found throughout Africa, matter of fact I did a post on this sometime ago about Bida the Black snake and the Egyptian tale of the shipwrecked sailor, the Axumite version of Andromeda, but for me these are rich story telling.

The Adam's Calendar still holds some interest for me, however none of the universities have written anything about it to my knowledge , leading me to suspect there is nothing to write about ,unless one is thinking in terms of some grand conspiracies or cover up
They did after all did a stand up job on the Blombos cave.