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Monday, October 24, 2016

Unit 3: Ancient Africa: Egyptian and Kushite peoples

Today, we will move to our third unit on ancient Africa: Egyptian and Kushite peoples. This unit will feature your first quarterly research project of the year.


http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/africa_pol_2012.pdf


Countries and Capitals
Landmarks
Algeria (Algiers) 
Angola (Luanda) 
Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa) 
Egypt (Cairo) 
Ethiopia (Addis Ababa) 
Ghana (Accra) 
Kenya (Nairobi) 
Morocco (Rabat)
Mozambique (Maputo)  
Nigeria (Abujo)
South Africa (Pretoria, a/k/a Tshwane) 
Sudan (Khartoum)
Tanzania (Dodoma) 
Uganda (Kampala)
Atlas Mountain
Congo River
Indian Ocean
Niger River
Nile River
Red Sea
Sahara Desert 
East African Rift




Again, realize that political map boundaries (the black lines) are artificial and of "modern" construction.  They are ephemeral (lasting for a very short time) in the "Big History" of the world. Africa's map could have taken a very different form, but for European conquest and the decisions made at the time of decolonization to keep the map to prevent disputes between newly independent African nation-states.  That said, efforts have been made to represent what political boundaries would have looked like had some other indicia, such as ethnicity, been used. 


Some economists today have tried to study to what extent Africa's artificial and tragic political boundaries may be blamed for conflict and wars in Africa today.  "Not surprisingly, the length of a conflict and its casualty rate is 25 percent higher in areas where an ethnicity is divided by a national border as opposed to areas where ethnicities have a united homeland. Examples of divided (and conflicted) groups are the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, and the Anyi of Ghana and the Ivory Coast. The conflict rate is also higher for people living in areas close to ethnic-partitioned hot-spots." 
http://freakonomics.com/2011/12/01/the-violent-legacy-of-africas-arbitrary-borders/


"The past lies like a nightmare upon the present." -- Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 

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