NOVEMBER 2001
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BLACK HISTORY
COVER STORY
New discoveries in Africa change face of history
October was "Black History Month" in Britain. As part of the celebrations,
we asked Prof Richard Greenfield to look at the significance of recent
breakthrough to scholarly research on the early history of northeastern
Africa. New discoveries there have provided incontrovertible evidence of
settled pastoral and agricultural communities dating way back to 800 BC -
earlier by far than hitherto envisaged.
The early history of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia will have to be
rewritten in the light of dramatic new discoveries. And they have relevance
to the worldwide demand for balanced historical and cultural studies freed
from arrogance, prejudice and racism.
Up on the mountainous plateau of northeastern Africa, Eritrean scholars and
their international colleagues at the University of Asmara have been
conducting new excavations and utilising the latest carbon-dating
techniques to revolutionary effect. This research has already revealed
incontrovertible evidence of settled pastoral and agricultural communities
dating way back to 800 BC - earlier by far than heretofore envisaged.
Together with revised linguistic evidence, it seriously and probably
finally challenges assumptions, dating from the colonial era and earlier,
that it must have been immigration of Sabaens crossing the Red Sea into
Africa, that introduced Semitic and related languages and gave rise to the
emergence of complex societies and cultures such as that of Aksum. In
noting this, we must now set this revision in context and also ask why it
has not occurred earlier.
It has been an eventful half-century since a Regius professor at Oxford
could openly assert that Black Africa had no history. The 18th
International Congress of Oriental Studies, meeting in Moscow in 1960 had
many panels. Egyptologists from East and West were there in force but, as
usual, only the last, the 19th panel was entitled "Africa".
This afterthought was occasioned only by the view that Semitic studies -
largely linguistic - at their very margin extended from the "Middle East"
and Arabia into Ethiopia. Rebels on that panel decided to call for the
future establishment of a new and separate International Congress of
African Studies. It fell to your correspondent, then a dean at the
then "University College of Addis Ababa" and the junior member of a four-
man delegation, otherwise composed of Ethiopian diplomats, to offer Addis
Ababa as the initial host.
The resolutions went forward. Later academic and wider politics intervened
but to no great lasting effect for eventually the first congress was held
in Accra, Ghana.
The ensuing struggle to have the vital role of Sudan and Black Africa
properly recognised in the origins and development of Ancient Egypt has
been long and arduous. The colonial legacy and in particular its
denigration of Black history, dies hard.
In turn, recognition of Egypt's own substantial contributions to the
civilisations of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean has also been
strongly resisted until very recently.
But, as Basil Davidson once commented, "liberated history will out" and
unmistakably and inexorably it will move on, deeper into Africa.
The whole pattern was of course closely related to the passing throughout
Africa of the colonial era and the wretched mentality it has so often
bequeathed.
African studies
It is surely no coincidence that in West Africa, wider recognition of the
value as historical sources of indigenous oral traditions, such as Stool
histories, or of the role of Arabic and other writing in local languages
employing that script, had to wait for the auspicious opening of the
Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana by Kwame Nkrumah on
25 October 1963.
When he opened the Institute, Nkrumah warned that "until recently the study
of African history was regarded as a minor and marginal theme within the
framework of imperial history". He called for new and fresh initiatives.
Also, very significantly, he cautioned: "But you should not stop here. Your
work must also include a study of the origins and culture of peoples of
African descent [in the Diaspora]... Seek to maintain close relations with
their scholars so that there may be cross fertilisation between African and
those who have their roots in the African past."
Black studies were born
Communication systems using drums or printed and woven patterns on cloth
were not until then seriously studied, except as anthropological
curiosities. Heads and limbs were indeed measured and vainly compared to
seek justification for spurious racial theories, but at the same time it
was hardly acceptable, for instance, for such as Professor Nketia of Ghana
to point out, that African music is structurally much more complex than
most Western music.
"The study of African languages," Nkrumah urged, "must serve much more
than...the practical objectives of the European missionary and the
administrator."
That liberated history has had to follow national liberation in Africa is a
universal truth. Take the late 1950s and 60s, when a new generation
of "sons of the soil" first began to transform traditional resistance to
settler colonialism in former Southern Rhodesia into a modern liberation
struggle. But neither the European nor any specific race has held any
lasting monopoly of empire creation or imperial attitudes.
Ethiopia
In northeast Africa, when the Ethiopian or Abyssinian empire was
constructed or reconstructed, for centuries it suited its imperial
authorities not to question assumptions of a supposed "natural superiority"
stemming from identity with the descendants of non-African invaders whom,
it was conveniently accepted, had first introduced civilisation and state
framework into the highland areas. In the 13th century, the Christian
highlanders even borrowed from Arabia and adapted the fable of the Queen of
Sheba with which to further their own conquests and political tale. They
developed what was to become known as the Solomonic myth.
Whether or not they personally believed in its literal truth, together with
other factors, it greatly helped sustain the political psyche of supporters
of the ancient monarchy of Ethiopia and the expansion of the empire roughly
about the time of the European scramble for Africa, right up until the
demise of the last sovereign in 1974.
The concept of a continuous history for an ancient empire based on the city
of Aksum has been central to what Donald Levine, an influential Ethiopicist
scholar, has termed Greater Ethiopia. It underpinned the political
philosophy, conquests and hegemony practised by Emperors Menelik II and
Haile Sellassie.
Moreover, it has remained significant when more modern forces overthrew the
monarchical system and questioned the nature and in some regions -
including the Ogaden, Eritrea, Oromo and Sidama - the whole concept of the
Ethiopian empire-state.
Even today, the well publicised history and legacy of Aksum remains
fundamental to the wider pretensions of an essentially Tigray-based regime
in Ethiopia.
Substantial remains of the city - its residencies, dams, tombs and famous
stelae (popularly known as obelisks) - survive to this day.
The Aksumite state was indeed important in the ancient world. It has been
dated from early in the first millennium AD and is known to have been
overrun in circa 900 AD, probably by the Beja. The names of many of its
emperors are known from inscriptions and a coinage and there are near
contemporary accounts of its adoption of Christianity in the 4th century -
300 years before St Augustine came to England - and its subsequent initial
hospitality to Islamic leaders.
That Aksum was preceded by earlier pre-Christian cultures has also been
well known to scholars although that has attracted less attention. Certain
of these earlier sites, including Metera and Kohaito in modern Eritrea and
Yeha and Aksum just across the border in northern Ethiopia, have been
designated World Heritage Sites by UNESCO - but their supposed origin as
Sabaen colonies established in pre-Islamic times has not previously been
questioned.
What kind of mindset is it that can still find all developments in Africa
to be of foreign instigation? Likewise, ancient African harbours on the Red
Sea and the Gulf of Aden - including Suakin in modern Sudan, Adulis on the
Bay of Zula east of Massawa in Eritrea, and Zeila and Berbera in
Somaliland - are well known from inscriptions in Egypt and elsewhere and
from mention in manuscripts. Some writers have suggested the ports
themselves were actually of Egyptian or Greek origin but modern research
shows that Egyptian contacts with the Horn of Africa or Punt, though early,
were very sporadic.
The simple explanation is the more likely true, namely that visitors came
to trade and, as travellers have often done, some recorded their
impressions. More recently, certain cartographers and not only Ethiopians,
have presented all these ports as outlets for the Aksumite Empire. And this
has gone largely unquestioned but it too is pure speculation.
Eritrea
Continuing with Eritrea, this year celebrating the 10th anniversary of its
liberation, a certain Periplus - a guide to the Red Sea and parts of the
Indian Ocean, written in Greek early in the first millennium AD - whilst
describing the trade of Adulis, comments that a ruler named Zoscales
was "learned in Greek literature" but "mean and miserly in his ways".
That may well suggest that he ran an efficient taxation or customs revenue
service. But a few years ago, the writer cautioned a lecturer at the
British Museum - no less - for following certain Ethiopicists in not
hesitating to assume that he was emperor of Aksum and equating him with the
monarch Za Hakale, known from other sources.
The lecturer went back to the Periplus and soon afterwards returned to
admit his surprise that the original referred merely to a ruler "of these
parts". In truth, brainwash is invariably insidious but it must be worked
out why it comes about at all.
The fact is that recent surveys reveal that far from being an insignificant
forerunner of Aksum, the ruins on the Kohaito plateau in Eritrea indicate
very extensive settlement. Documented archaeological sites there to date
number more than 1,000.
Very considerably larger and older than Aksum, Kohaito is much nearer and
is located on the direct hinterland of Adulis. Moreover, to date no
evidence whatever has emerged of Sabaen or any other non-African influences
on this society.
Nor are these startling revelations the whole story. Far from it. Peter
Schmidt, a professor from the University of Florida, who with several
younger colleagues all presently working with the University of Asmara's
archaeology department, recently addressed the first international
conference on Eritrean studies held in Asmara. He and his colleagues
revealed that between 800 BC and 400 BC, the highlands around Asmara
supported the earliest settled pastoral and agricultural community known in
the Horn of Africa: an indigenous culture.
Scientific excavation has begun at Sembel, a site on a hillock beside
fertile farmlands near the international airport first identified by a
group of Italian amateur archaeologists. Once a village just outside the
capital Asmara, today Sembel is almost part of the conurbation. Any remains
of stone structures above the ground level have already been lost as
building material to the expansion of the adjacent city. A new
International Hotel has been built almost directly over one such site, so
there is urgent need for formal Eritrean government protection if further
excavations are to bear fruit.
Permanent villages and towns around Asmara predate, and were also
contemporaneous with, even the pre-Aksumite settlements in the highlands of
southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. Dating from 800 BC, it is they -
not sites in Arabia - that were the vital precursors to urban developments
in the southern highlands of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia later in the
first millennium BC.
Likewise, students of evolution and distribution of languages now believe
that Semitic and Cushitic languages are of African origin. Yes, a lot of
revision and rewriting of textbooks is called for!
The bloody war
Clearly, the scholarly findings of modern archaeology, linguistics and
history can prove to be most sensitive economically as well as politically.
And sadly, that problem has been greatly accentuated by setbacks resulting
from the recent and widely unexpected, but very bloody, military conflict
between Ethiopia and Eritrea. So there is a debit side and all the news is
not good.
In July this year, your correspondent ventured inside the 25 km-wide UN
security zone along the Eritrean side of the border - from parts of which
Ethiopian forces have yet to totally withdraw. Beyond the refugee tents and
the town of Senafe - where all permanent structures have been blown up by
the invading Ethiopian military - lie fantastically sculpted mountains. At
their foot, a short track leads past even more pre-Aksumite ruins at
Metera, one of Eritrea's World Heritage sites. Like Sembel, they are
adjacent to productive agricultural land. Dressed stonework, artistically
designed courses, a covered tomb chamber and several substantial walls of
this early settlement survive.
At Metema, a unique pre-Christian inscribed stele (or obelisk) once stood
4.68 metres above the ground (and another metre below it). But today its
base, 80 x 28 cm, lies shattered and scattered up to 40 metres by high
explosives clearly deliberately and carefully attached by the retiring
Ethiopian army. Was this malicious vandalism authorised by higher authority
angered at revised views on the origin and extent of Aksumite "empire"?
This is not an Afghan scenario nor does the Addis Ababa regime normally
react to world opinion like the Taliban. Conspiracy theorists are not
lacking in Eritrea and elsewhere but this writer is not convinced if only
because such a tragedy cannot reflect well on Ethiopia's ongoing campaign
to recover an Aksumite obelisk which Benito Mussolini had shipped to Rome
and erected near the Gate of Constantine.
But one fact remains. Dr Yosef Libsekal of the Museum of Eritrea, who is
also head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Asmara,
sadly commented: "The protection of cultural heritage in times of armed
conflict was supposed to have been guaranteed by international treaty in
1907 and in the instruments governing UNESCO. The Hague Convention of 14
May 1954 also includes a comprehensive code for the protection of the
cultural heritage of mankind worldwide." Africa has been shamed and someone
should be severely disciplined.
Let us trust that Africa's enlightened governments will increase support
for the efforts of the former OAU, its successor the African Union, and the
United Nations to create the lasting peace, stability and scholarly balance
so necessary for a complete cultural recovery throughout Africa and the
Diaspora. The root causes of prejudice and conflict have to be comprehended
and addressed sooner rather than later. As Kwame Nkrumah put it on that
October day back in 1963:
"The personality of the African...can only be retrieved from ruin if we
make a conscious effort to restore Africa's ancient glory. [Then] the
aspirations of our people will see real fulfilment and the African genius
again find its best expression." .
Copyright © IC Publications Limited 2001.
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