UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Ancient Civilizations of Africa
weight of the past. The separation into sections imposed on him, which is
reflected in the plan adopted here, derives very largely from the colonization
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the historian, whether he was
a colonist interested in the country in which he was living or one of
the colonized reflecting on his people's past, was, in spite of himself,
confined within arbitrarily fixed territorial limits. It was difficult, if not
impossible, for him to study relations with neighbouring countries,
although these more often than not formed a whole, historically speaking,
with the country with which he was concerned.
This heavy weight of the past has not altogether ceased to exist, partly
because of inertia - once in a rut, one is, in spite of oneself, inclined to
remain in it - but also because the archives of the history of Africa, which
consist of reports of excavations or of texts and iconography, are for some
regions assembled, classified and published according to an order which is
irrelevant and arbitrary to the present situation in Africa but which is very
difficult to call in question.
This volume of A General History of Africa, perhaps even more than the
volume that preceded it, must depend on suppositions. The period it covers
is obscure, owing to the scarcity of sources in general, and of solidly dated
sources in particular. This applies both to the very uneven collections of
archaeological sources and to the written or pictorial sources, except in
respect of certain relatively privileged regions such as the Nile valley and
the Maghrib. It is this lack of firm documentary bases that makes it
necessary to resort to suppositions, since facts established with certainty
are always the exception.
Another point should be stressed: the archaeological sources available
to the historian are extremely inadequate. Excavations are not uniformly
spread over the continent as a whole. There is not everywhere the density
of excavations that is found notably along the coast, in the hinterland of
the northern fringe and, above all, in the Nile valley from the sea to the
Second Cataract.
This lack of archaeological information cannot, unfortunately, be
supplemented by the reports of foreign travellers, contemporaries of the
events or facts that concern this volume. The continent's rugged nature,
and its very size, discouraged, in antiquity as later, deep penetration by
those from outside. It will be noted that, in the present state of our knowledge,
Africa is the only continent where voyages around the coastline have
thrown an important light on history (cf. Chapters 18 and 22).
These considerations explain why the history of Africa, from —7000
to +700, still consists largely of suppositions. However, these suppositions
are never unfounded; they are based on information, rare and inadequate
certainly, but which exists none the less. The task of the contributors to
this work has been to collect, weigh and assess those sources. As specialists
in the regions whose history - no matter how fragmentary - they trace,
they present here the synthesis of what may legitimately be deduced from
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