Last semester, I wrote an article titled “African History is American History.” Now, I would like to expand that to say that it is world history.
For the last four months, I have been spending two days a week learning about a subject that is criminally under-taught: the history of Ancient Africa, specifically pre-colonial Africa. The course is taught by Dr. Constanze Weise, a newer professor within the history department who is one of the few professors in the world specialized to teach this subject. Having worked in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, Dr. Weise has had decades of on location research and knowledge.
The purpose of this class was to teach us the true history of Africa before overwhelming European influence through colonization. What we discovered was a rich and layered history that fundamentally shifts what the lens of world history has been told. Through archeology, we know the first human came from the continent of Africa, but not much is told through general biology or education outside of that. Africa is a continent that has had higher art and civilization as early, if not earlier, than Mesopotamia.
Birth of dozens of languages and systems of worship were created as society grew within Africa. Kingdoms filled with royalty and wealth had immense influence on world affairs, trading with Europeans and the Middle East for centuries without issue. Even in European paintings, Africans for a thousand years were portrayed as equals.
Africa is not at all the land of just jungles and tribes of people that perceptions seem to convey. Nor is it a land of uncivilized people that could not advance in society without outside help. Architecture, music, rock art, city planning, development, trade and more was all systematically ahead in Africa from its outside worldly counterparts. Cities in ancient Africa had hygienic systems of disposing waste in the cities while Europeans were still throwing their bodily waste out of buckets into the streets.
The most shocking part of the class however was how little the class was. There were four of us enrolled in the class, all returning from the class aforementioned in the previous article. This goes into the conversation that these classes should be required classes within general education. The fact there is a class that has thousands of years of information that likely no one has heard, even students from Africa, had less than a handful of students is an absolute travesty.
Dr. Weise has two classes continuing these subjects: one in the pre-summer and one in the fall. History of Africa (HIST 3720) is a three week pre-summer accelerated class focusing on the subjects mentioned above with a Topics in World History: Africa to 1800 (HIST 4297/5297) in the fall. I strongly recommend you to enrich your minds by taking a chance to learn history so seldomly taught. Africa has been the cradle of life and civilization long before history begins to account Africa within its chapters, the world just does not know it yet.
