The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index combining normalized
measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per
capita for countries worldwide. It is claimed as a standard means of
measuring human development — a concept that, according to the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), refers to the process of widening
the options of persons, giving them greater opportunities for education,
health care, income, employment, etc. The basic use of HDI is to rank
countries by level of "human development", which usually also implies to
determine whether a country is a developed, developing, or
underdeveloped country.
• High income = blue middle-high = green
• Middle-low = purple low = red
• Green = high (.75-.95 and over)
• Orange-yellow = middle (.50 - .749)
• Red = low (.35 and below - .499)
ca. 8000 B.P.
Saharan
Pastoral Neolithic:
(cattle, goats,
sheep)
Eastern Sahara
Nabta Playa, Egypt
ca. 8000 B.P.
Plant
Domestication?
After ca. 3000 BC
Spread of Pastoral
Neolithic & Farming (?)
into Sahel/E Africa
(Following Tsetse Fly-free regions)
Modern Distribution of Tsetse Fly
WET
DRY
African Plant Domesticates
Biogeographic Distribution
of wild ancestors of Domesticated African Plants suggests one broad region
encompassing 3 Domestic Complexes
savanna
Forest margin
Ethiopian
Savanna complex: sorghum, African rice, peanuts, millets, watermelon
Forest margin complex: millets, beans, robusta coffee, oil palm, yams
Ethiopian complex: millet, tef, noog, arabica coffee, enset, chat
Root Crop Agriculture
(yams) and Arboriculture
(oil palm) in Tropical
Forest and Woodland
Areas of Western,
Central, and Southern
Africa (how old?, likely
2,000 to 1,000 BC or
earlier)
Continuation of Hunting
and Gathering in some
areas until historic times
(trade and colonialism)
Oil palm
Yam “barn” in Nigeria forest region
Abelam (Sepik River, New
Guinea, decorated yams)
•
The Bantu, a large group of related peoples, originated in area of Cameroon and
Nigeria and spread throughout central and southern Africa. Bantu peoples make up
about a third of Africa's population. Bantu is the name of the language family spoken
by these peoples. Over time, the Bantu-speaking peoples diversified and developed
unique variations on the proto-culture of bantu peoples.
•
proto-Bantu, about 4000 -3000 B.C. , had developed a culture based on the farming
of root crops, hunting-foraging, and fishing on the West African coast. Social
organization of the early Bantu: based on a system of cooperation between villages.
Every village consisted of several "Houses," and each House formed working
relationships with Houses from other villages. This strong but flexible social network
helped the Bantu migrate across the continent.
•
Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggest that the Bantu migration began
sometime after 3000 B.C. One group of Bantu moved southward, reaching southern
Cameroon ca. 1500 B.C. Within a thousand years the migrants also settled the coast
of Congo and the Congo Basin in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo
(Congo Kinhasa). These West Bantu people developed new skills such as
ironworking.
•
Over 700 members of the Bantu family; initial diversity; regionalism and
diversification; culture contact; changing human-environmental relations
Modern Bantu pottery
Chifumbaze ceramic complex of
central and southern Africa
(e.g., Urewe, Kwale, Matola wares);
Spread by iron working farmers
Pottery and iron artifacts used to track Bantu dispersals
Ancestral Bantu Society
• 4,000 to 3,000 years before present (BP)
• Economics: Food production, accompanied by diverse
hunted, fished, and foraged foods, but the livestock
complex of Saharan Africa did not do well in tropical
forested areas
• Technology: Ceramics, iron (later), settled plaza villages,
in addition to food production technology
• Settlement: settled plaza villages composed of “Houses”
(kingroups based on lineal descent), and organized into
districts of related houses
• Social political organization: hierarchical (conical clan),
status rivalry, chiefship, matrilineal descent groups,
initiation and elite life crisis rites, in-law avoidance
matrilineal
cognatic
patrilineal
The (Ramage or) Conical Clan
• Internally ranked, or
hierarchical, social
organization
• Tendency to “ramify,”
that is subordinate
lineages split off main
group to found new
communities
• Over time this process
results in long-distance
migrations
• Village basic unit of settlement
• Rectangular houses along a street or plaza, which
was a place of authority, with “men’s clubhouse(s)”
located on it
• Village was an aggregate of houses, but frequently
disassociated, with more enduring features of
social organization being the house and district
• Initiation (circumcision rituals) and (sometimes)
formal age grades, and (importantly) social
hierarchy at house (founder’s ideology) and district
levels
• The district or “maximal lineage were often reduced
to few or even one village by the 20th century and
often (an alliance of houses)
1
2
3
Western Africa
• Big-man or great-man  chief (nkáni)
• Ca. 3000 BP
• Ultimately larger kingdoms or principalities
emerged, AD 1000 onward
• Three main kingdoms: kongo, loango, tio,
after AD 1200 to contact
• The level of political stratification depends
on number of “courts” in polity
1
2
3
Interlacustrine Bantu
•
•
•
Soon after the West Bantu migration, a second Bantu migration to the east began,
arriving ca. 3000 BP. the “Great Lakes” area in what is now Uganda. Known as
“Interlacustrine Bantu,” these peoples learned new farming methods from neighbors
in eastern Africa, notably raising livestock—particularly cattle—and practiced
agriculture, growing cereal crops such as sorghum. Between about 2500 BP (500
BC) and 1000 BP (AD 1000), the Bantu language spread throughout the Great Lakes
region. Also development of plantain farming created base for cultural development
and population/economic growth, providing a reliable year-round supply of food,
enabling villages to grow in size/complexity, in scrub forest, grasslands and open
woodlands
Cattle was a source of moveable wealth, like metal tools in Western Africa, and
important for brideswealth among influential families. People who owned cattle
gained political power by loaning the cattle to neighbors, who were obligated to
provide support and assistance to the lender in return. In this way, loaning cattle
forged new political relationships and incorporated outsiders in existing political and
social groups.
Between AD 1000 and 1500 (500 BP) the new forms of economic, political, religious,
and social life that arose under Bantu influence transformed Africa's Great Lakes
region. six independent kingdoms, called Buyunga, Muhambwe, Heru, Luguru
(Kunkanda), Bushingo, and Bujiji (Nkalinzi).
The Lozi people of western Zambia have
been marking Kuomboka, an
annual traditional ceremony in
honour of their king or Litunga.
The Lozi kingdom - known as
Barotseland – was a protectorate
under British colonial rule
and became part of Zambia at the
country's independence in 1964
• Southern Interior and Coastal Bantu
•
•
•
•
Interlacustrine Bantu spread east fairly rapidly ca. 2200 BP (200 BC) or later south
into what is now Kenya and Tanzania and south into Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Mozambique, and parts of South Africa.
Archaeological evidence of Bantu cultures in eastern and southern Africa dates
widespread Bantu presence by 1800-1600 BP (AD 200-400). By this time, cattle were
so important in southern Bantu society that villages were erected around a central
pen.
In Kenya the first towns built by the Swahili appeared around 1250 BP (AD 750),
which came to dominate eastern coastal areas. Around the same time, systems of
farming and herding developed in interior areas, which prompted the development of
large settlements with fortified central areas and eventually powerful chiefdoms and
kingdoms by AD 1500.
By A.D. 1000, settlements along the Limpopo River had developed into a town called
Mapungabwe—the capital of a Bantu kingdom that controlled much of the
surrounding territory. It was replaced around AD 1250 by the kingdom of Great
Zimbabwe. This powerful empire flourished for almost 200 years by supplying gold
and ivory to Swahili traders from the North. Bantu civilizations continued to dominate
south and east Africa politically until European colonial governments displaced them
in the 1800s.
• Slavery was primarily Portuguese until early 16th century
• Britain’s involvement began in the 1560s. For the next 250 years
Britain’s activity in the transport and enslavement of African people
increased dramatically
• “The Atlantic Slave Trade” was abolished in 1807. In 1838 British
slavery in the West Indies was abolished, in 1863 (?) in US, and in
1888 in Brazil.
• The economic and social consequences of this terrible slavery are
still with us today, with regard to the derived wealth of slavers and
the derived poverty of slaves.
• From Slavery to Mass incarceration (L. Wacquant, New Left Review
13, Jan/Feb. 2002:41-60
Mid-late 1800s
• High income = blue middle-high = green
• Middle-low = purple low = red
• Green = high (.75-.95 and over)
• Orange-yellow = middle (.50 - .749)
• Red = low (.35 and below - .499)
Zulu, people of heaven, descended from nguni peoples
Ngbandi, ngongo, ngumba = people; ngando, people in congo, zaire