African civilization of the Korotai. Ancient African Civilizations

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Review of ancient and medieval history Africa Compiled by Kazantseva L.V. Teacher of GBPO SO KUPedK

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Africa - the ancestral home of humanity Africa is considered the birthplace of man. Remains found here oldest species genus Homo. Of the eight species of this genus, only one survived - Homo sapiens, and in small quantity(approx. 1000 individuals) began to spread throughout Africa approximately 100,000 years ago. And from Africa people migrated to Asia (about 60,000-40,000 years ago), and from there to Europe (40,000 years), Australia and America (35,000-15,000 years).

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Olduvai Gorge is the site of many finds from the prehistoric period. Archaeologists Louis and Jonathan Leakey in the gorge during the 30-60s. XX century large-scale excavations were carried out, with the most important discoveries, some of which became a significant step in the study of human origins, were made by them in 1959-1963. In particular, the remains of Homo habilis (over 2 million years old) were found, which resembled Australopithecus monkeys, but had already crossed the line that separated man from the animal kingdom. An Australopithecus skull, broken bones of animals killed during hunting, and very crude stone tools dating back to the ancient Paleolithic era (the so-called Olduvai culture) were also discovered. The overlying layer (an antiquity of 1.4-1 million years) contained, in addition to stone tools, the bones of people who occupied an intermediate position between Homo habilis and Pithecanthropus. In the gorge there is the Olduvai Goj Museum of Anthropology and Human Evolution, which displays the remains of the predecessors of modern man, the remains of prehistoric animals, and mammoth tusks.

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Some of the oldest examples of hominid skulls. Skull of Australopithecus africanus. Brain volume 520 cm3. The large front part is not very forward. The supraorbital ridges are not very large. Skull of Australopithecus Beuys. Brain volume 530cm3. A very large front part pushed far forward. Very large supraorbital ridges. Skull of Homo habilis. Brain volume 680 cm3. The small front part is not very forward. Small supraorbital ridges. So the size of the brain is about two and a half times smaller than the brain modern people. But he was the same size as us, 1.8-1.7 meters tall, and nature did not offend this hominid with a weight of 65-80 kg.

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The most famous drawings of the primitive era are in the French Lascaux cave and Kapova cave in the Urals, on the Tassili rocks in Africa. Stone Age artists were excellent at making individual drawings, but did not learn how to assemble them into large paintings, where everything is connected by a common meaning. They also did not like to draw people; they only willingly painted images of animals.

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Artifacts of the ancient history of Africa Rock paintings in Tassili-i-Ajer in the Algerian Sahara Ajer.IV millennium BC. Image of an archer. Tassili-i-Ajjer. Ajer.IV millennium BC.

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Negoid type Characterized by: different heights, elongated limbs (especially arms), dark skin, curly hair, wide flat nose, thick lips, prognathism. Distributed in Africa, south of the Sahara. Prognathism involves protruding jaws, in addition lower jaw lacks a chin protrusion. These features create a sharp facial angle.

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The capoid race is a small Bushmen race within the large African Negroid race. Currently inhabits desert and semi-desert regions of South Africa.

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Pygmies (Greek Πυγμαϊοι - “people the size of a fist”) - a group of short Negroid peoples living in the forests of tropical Africa. Mentioned already in ancient Egyptian inscriptions of the 3rd millennium BC. e., at a later time - in ancient Greek sources (in Homer’s Iliad, Herodotus and Strabo).

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The Ethiopian race has some similarities with the Negroid group, but in terms of the structure of the facial skeleton, the Ethiopian group differs sharply from the Negroid race. The skin color, although brown with a reddish tint, is usually lighter than that of black peoples, although some groups of the Ethiopian race have some of the darkest skin tones in the world, curly hair usually does not reach the curliness characteristic of blacks, full lips do not so swollen as in representatives of the Negroid race.

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Berbers (self-name Amazigh, Amahag - “man”; Kabyle Imaziɣen) is the common name for the indigenous inhabitants of northern Africa conquered in the 7th century by Arabs and converted to Islam from Egypt in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west and from Sudan in the south to the Mediterranean city in the north. Population 11.52 million people (1992). They speak Berber-Libyan languages. By religion they are mainly Sunni Muslims.

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The Zulus (Zulu amaZulu, English Zulus) are an African people of about 10 million people, living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in Republic of South Africa. Small groups of Zulus also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. The Zulu language belongs to the Nguni group of the Bantu family. The Zulu Kingdom played an important role in the history of what is now South Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the apartheidazulu era in South Africa, being the largest ethnic group, were treated as second-class citizens.

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The Maasai are a semi-nomadic African people living in the savannah of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. The Maasai are perhaps one of the most famous tribes in East Africa. Despite the development of modern Civilization, they have almost completely preserved their traditional way of life, although this is becoming more difficult every year. They speak the Maasai language.

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Africa is the birthplace of many unique civilizations. In the 6-5th millennium BC. e. In the Nile Valley, agricultural cultures developed (Tassian culture, Fayyum, Merimde), on the basis of which in the 4th millennium BC. e. The oldest African civilization arises - Ancient Egypt. To the south of it, also on the Nile, under its influence the Kerma-Cushite civilization was formed, which was replaced in the 2nd millennium BC. e. Nubian (Nabata), which flourished during the period of the Meroitic kingdom (VI century BC - IV century AD). On the ruins of the latter, the states of Aloa, Mukurra, the Nabatean kingdom and others were formed, which were under the cultural and political influence of Ethiopia, Coptic Egypt and Byzantium. In the north of the Ethiopian Highlands, under the influence of the South Arabian Sabaean kingdom, the Ethiopian civilization arose: in the 5th century BC. e. The Ethiopian kingdom was formed by immigrants from South Arabia; in the 2nd-11th centuries AD. e. There was an Aksumite kingdom, on the basis of which the medieval civilization of Christian Ethiopia was formed (XII-XVI centuries). These centers of civilization were surrounded by pastoral tribes of Libyans, as well as the ancestors of modern Cushitic and Nilotic-speaking peoples.

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Ancient evidence of the occupation of the population In the Sahara, which was then a fertile territory, groups of hunters and fishermen lived, as they say archaeological finds. Many petroglyphs and rock paintings have been discovered throughout the Sahara, dating back to 6000 BC. e. until the 7th century AD e. The most famous monument of primitive art in North Africa is the Tassilin-Ajjer plateau. Rock art sites are also found in Somalia and South Africa (the oldest drawings date back to 25,500 BC). The oldest archaeological finds indicating grain processing in Africa date back to the thirteenth millennium BC. e. Cattle raising in the Sahara began ca. 7500 BC e., and organized Agriculture appeared in the Nile region in the 6th millennium BC. e.

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Development of crafts and trade in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1st millennium BC. e. Iron metallurgy is spreading everywhere. This contributed to the development of new territories, first of all - tropical forests, and became one of the reasons for the settlement throughout most of Tropical and Southern Africa of peoples speaking Bantu languages, pushing representatives of the Ethiopian and Capoid races to the north and south.

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Proto-states of ancient Africa The current level of our knowledge allows us to state with complete certainty that nowhere in Africa south of the Sahara before the turn of the 7th-8th centuries. n. e. societies with antagonistic classes did not develop and that only after the appearance of Arabs in North and East Africa did the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa become acquainted with writing.

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Relatively speaking, the most ancient civilizations, the formation of which coincided in time with the transition to iron age throughout sub-Saharan Africa, formed in several main regions that separated huge distances: Western Sudan and adjacent parts of the Sahel zone in the north; the adjacent regions of the Sahara; central and southwestern parts of modern Nigeria; basin of the upper reaches of the river. Lualaba (present-day Shaba province in Zaire); the central and eastern regions of today's Republic of Zimbabwe, the African coast of the Indian Ocean. Archaeological research of the last two decades convincingly shows direct continuity between these ancient civilizations and the civilizations of the African Middle Ages - the great powers of Western Sudan (Ghana, Mali, Songhai), Ife, Benin, Congo, Zimbabwe, the Swahili civilization, etc.

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Examples of ancient civilizations in Africa On the basis of horse breeding (from the first centuries AD - also camel breeding) and oasis agriculture in the Sahara, urban civilizations took shape (the cities of Telgi, Debris, Garama), and Libyan writing arose. On the Mediterranean coast of Africa in the 12th-2nd centuries BC. e. The Phoenician-Carthaginian civilization flourished.

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Since the 3rd century BC. is happening active process migration of Negroid tribes to the south of the continent associated with the onset of the desert. The world's largest desert, the Sahara, divides Africa into two unequal parts. In the smaller of them - North Africa - there were Egypt, Carthage and other ancient states. Tropical Africa extends south of the Sahara.

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Napata city on west bank Blue Nile, located 400 kilometers north of Khartoum, the modern capital of Sudan. Was founded around 1450 BC. Nubians. After 600 years it became the capital of Kush. After the capital was moved to Meroe, Napata became a religious center. In 24 AD was destroyed by the Romans during the reign of Queen Amanirene. The Romans were commanded by the prefect of Egypt, Gaius Petronius.

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Reconstruction of the Temple of Amun at Jebel Barkal under the Pharaohs XXV Dynasty. Image of the god Amun.

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The Etruscans, who went to the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, also split into two streams about 4 thousand years ago. One stream of people went to south coast the Black Sea to the region of Pontic Cappadocia (Turkey), and the second stream of people left through Palestine and northern Egypt to the eastern part of Libya in the region of Cyrenaica, which Mediterranean Sea. Here, 3.8 thousand years ago, they founded their state with its capital in the Kufra oasis (southeast of Libya).

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The Aksumite kingdom arose in the 2nd century. n. e. in the north of modern Ethiopia. In the 4th century. Aksum was ruled by King Ezana. In the V - VI centuries. Christianity became the dominant religion in Axum. The Aksumite state ceased to exist in the 9th – 10th centuries.

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Aksum, Aksumite kingdom is a powerful state that existed in the 2nd - 11th centuries on the territory of modern Ethiopia. The capital of the state was Aksum. The rise of Aksum occurred in the 3rd and 4th centuries. In the 4th century, under King Ezan, Aksum dominated Northeast Africa and the Red Sea, rivaling Byzantium. Since the 6th century, Christianity became the state religion. From the 8th century a period of decline began, and in the first half of the 11th century Aksum fell apart. Under his rule was a huge territory along the Red Sea coast and part of the Arabian Peninsula, including the most beautiful city of that time, Yemen. It was located at the intersection of trade routes from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt. The Aksumites traded in gold, ivory, live animals and their skins, aromatic resins, emeralds, and slaves.

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Large income from trade (gold, emeralds, Ivory, animal skins). Making statues and huge stone obelisks. The ruler is the “king of kings.”

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State of Ghana One of the earliest states that arose in western Africa, created by the Soninke people on the territory of modern Mauritania and Mali. According to legend, Ghana arose in end of III- early 4th century In 1076, Ghana was defeated by the Berber tribes - Almoravids, who inhabited the Sahara.

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Ghana, a state that existed in the territory. the southern part of modern Mauritania and the western part of the Republic of Mali. According to legend, the state of Ghana (middle-century state) (another name is Auker or Auhar) was formed in the 4th century. The ethnic basis of Ghana (Middle Century state) was made up of Sonike, one of the peoples of the Mande group. The main sectors of the economy were agriculture and cattle breeding; Metal processing has achieved significant development. The capital of Ghana (middle century state) - Kumbi-Sale played an important role in the caravan trade in salt and gold, as well as slaves with the countries of North Africa. Almost no information has been preserved about the social structure of Ghana (a middle-century state); it can be assumed that in Ghana (the middle century state) the process of formation of an early class society took place. The heyday of Ghana (Middle Century state) dates back to the 9th - mid-11th centuries. In 1076 Ghana (middle century state) was on a short time conquered by the Almoravids. At the beginning of the 13th century. The rulers of Mali, one of the southern provinces of Ghana (middle century state), extended their power to the entire territory of Ghana (middle century state), forming the state of Mali. The modern state of Ghana is named after the medieval Ghana (middle-century state).

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The state of Monomotapa was formed in the 14th century. In the southeastern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. In the 17th century single state broke up into many small estates.

Black Africa is like an island, washed by oceans on the east and west, fenced off from the rest of the world by the Sahara on the north, and by the Kalahari Desert on the south. The states of North Africa - Egypt, Carthage, and later the countries of the Arab Maghreb - were part of a completely different, Mediterranean civilization, which knew almost nothing about the inhabitants of the South. It was only during European colonization that we learned about the majority of African peoples who had lived in isolation for thousands of years.

Black Africa is like an island, washed by oceans on the east and west, fenced off from the rest of the world by the Sahara on the north, and by the Kalahari Desert on the south. The states of North Africa - Egypt, Carthage, and later the countries of the Arab Maghreb - were part of a completely different, Mediterranean civilization, which knew almost nothing about the inhabitants of the South. It was only during European colonization that we learned about the majority of African peoples who had lived in isolation for thousands of years.

Bushmen

It is believed that they are the closest to the most ancient representatives of humanity. Bushmen culture is largely reminiscent stone Age, the main “tools of production” are bows and arrows, smeared with the poison of beetle larvae. But the music is not built on rhythm, like other African peoples, but on melody. All of them have an absolute ear for music - in their language, the meaning of a word depends on the tone and even the volume.

Time and place
In time immemorial, the Bushmen settled South Africa; today their few tribes live in the Kalahari Desert and the adjacent territories.

Highest achievements
They created many masterpieces of rock art, and also achieved success in the art of peacefully resolving intra-tribal disputes and conflicts.

Exotic
"Bushman rice" - ant larvae; Fried locusts are considered a special delicacy.

Nubia, or the kingdom of Kush

Making long trips along the Nile to the south, in the 15th century BC. e. The armies of the pharaohs conquered Nubia - a country where tribes related to the ancient Egyptians mixed with blacks. The Egyptians acted as civilizers, building fortresses and temples, teaching the locals how to work iron, and giving Nubia religion and writing. The Nubians turned out to be good students: they built no less pyramids than the Egyptians, and their armies carried out many campaigns of conquest, eventually conquering Egypt itself. The country was weakened Roman conquest, and even more - the onset of the desert.

Time and place
The territory of modern Sudan, XI century BC. e. - IV century AD e.

Highest achievements
The kingdom reached its peak in the 8th century BC. e. under King Piankhi, who conquered Egypt and completed the construction of the majestic temple of Amun.

Exotic
For a long time, the priests of Amon actually ruled the country, acting on behalf of God. The kings carried out all their orders, even to the point of committing suicide.

Ethiopia

According to one version, the word “Ethiopia” arose from the Greek designation for “country of the tanned.” The Greeks considered this land southern limit ecumene and, knowing almost nothing about it, were often confused with Nubia, and the Romans for quite a long time considered the Ethiopians to be monsters without a head and with eyes on their chests. Meanwhile, Ethiopia became one of the world's first Christian states and - alone of all African countries - was never a colony, except for five years of Italian occupation (1936–1941).

Time and place
From the 1st century AD e. to this day, the territory of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Highest achievements
Churches of Lalibela, hewn from solid rock in the 13th century and unique icons.

Exotic
The founder of the world's oldest Ethiopian royal dynasty, which ruled for three thousand years, is called the son of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon.

Bantu civilization

About half of the 500 languages ​​spoken in central and southern Africa today are members of the Bantu family. And once upon a time, the Bantus were a small ethnic group living in eastern Nigeria and Cameroon. What helped them conquer the vast expanses of Africa was that they began to grow yams, an analogue of potatoes (they say they taste rather strange). Farming allows us to feed many more people than hunting. It was thanks to the expansion of the Bantu that Africa became the Dark Continent.

Time and place
Bantu settlement took place over approximately 15 centuries, starting from 1500 BC. e. throughout Africa south of the equator.

Highest achievements
As they explored new lands, the Bantu learned from neighboring peoples how to smelt iron, grow millet and sorghum, and much more. Bantu wisdom is captured in their proverbs, for example: “The splinter killed the elephant.”

Exotic
At first, the Bantu also raised cattle, but they became extinct due to the bites of the tsetse fly. I had to concentrate on growing yams.

Great Desert Civilization

In the third millennium BC. e., when the Sahara, which now occupies a third of Africa, was more like a flowering pasture, it was inhabited by Libyan pastoralists. They left thousands of colorful drawings on the rocks. Later pictures show conquerors disembarking from ships and racing into the interior of the continent. The conquerors were called Garamantes; Having mixed with the shepherds they conquered, they gave rise to a new people, living today in the Sahara - the nomadic Berbers: when the Sahara turned into a desert, they managed to adapt to life in the oases.

Time and place
WITH III millennium BC e. to this day, Sahara.

Highest achievements
Amazingly expressive drawings on the Tassili-Ajer plateau.

Exotic
Any child knows something about the life of the Berbers (by the way, this is not a self-name, but a variant of the word “barbarians”) from “Star Wars.” The planet Tatooine is named after the Berber town where the film was filmed, and the houses of its inhabitants are built in traditional Berber style.

Western Sudan trading empires: Ghana, Mali, Songhai

Traders sought to get to the Niger River valley, where there were rich gold deposits. Here the state of Ghana arose, the ruler of which could field an army of 200 thousand people. Which did not save the country from destruction in the 11th century by the Almoravian Berbers. In place of Ghana, the state of Mali arose, whose rulers had black skin, but professed Islam (these countries do not have names direct relationship to modern Ghana and Mali). In the 15th century, the kingdom of Mali was replaced by the state of Songhai, but flows of gold still brought wealth and aroused the envy of its neighbors, under whose pressure Songhai eventually collapsed.

Time and place
III–XVII centuries, savannas around the Niger River.

Highest achievements
According to one traveler, “here gold grows like carrots and is harvested at sunrise.”

Exotic
The king of Ghana had four drums: with gold he collected the descendants of the legendary king Ding, with silver for the nobility, with copper for commoners, and with iron for slaves.

Holy City of Ife

Ethnographer Leo Frobenius, who discovered sculptures comparable in beauty to ancient ones in the sacred groves of the Yoruba people, was sure that he had found the remains of Atlantis. The Yoruba considered the newcomers dark barbarians - after all, it was in their places that God created the world. One such place is the sacred city of Ife (“Ife” means “love” in the Yoruba language). It was a large city-state that extended its influence to medieval Benin and other lands.

Time and place
Ife flourished in the 12th–19th centuries, but it still exists today in southwestern Nigeria.

Highest achievements
Bronze sculptures and amazing pavements made of tens of millions of round clay shards.

Exotic
The witchcraft religion of voodoo, with its piercing of dolls with needles and turning enemies into zombies, arose largely from the beliefs of the Yoruba.

Photo: Emile LUIDER/RAPHO/EYEDEA PRESSE/EAST NEWS; FROM THE PERSONAL ARCHIVE OF D. BONDARENKO; illustration: Rodion Kitayev; AKG/EAST NEWS; ALAMY/PHOTAS; Georg Gerster/PANOS PICTURES/AGENCY.PHOTOGRAPHER.RU; AKG/EAST NEWS(2); Pierre Colombel/CORBIS/FOTOSA.RU; ALAMY/PHOTAS

Meroe Civilization

“Memphis was captured like a hurricane of water, many people were killed there, and prisoners were brought to the place where His Majesty was... There is no longer a nome closed to His Majesty among the nomes of the South and North, West and East.” This is the story of the accession of the Kushites in Egypt in 729 BC. e. unknown author Piankhi steles.

For almost a century, newcomers from Napata called themselves pharaohs of Egypt, appearing, as if from oblivion, on the historical stage after a century and a half of silence from epigraphic and archaeological sources south of the first Nile cataract. However, the previous long period of Egyptian domination outwardly seemed to level out many aspects of local cultural traditions. The search for the origin of the newly-minted “Lords of the Two Lands” takes us back to ancient times.

The fate of two peoples, the Egyptians and the Cushites, was closely intertwined for centuries. According to Academician B.B. Piotrovsky, archaeological materials of the 4th millennium BC. e. clearly show that the same culture covered Upper Egypt and Northern Nubia at that time. Later, due to the peculiarities of the geographical factor, the development of cultures followed two different paths.

Kush controlled the territories mainly between the third and fifth cataracts of the Nile, but sometimes the Kushite kings managed to extend their power as far north as Aswan and as far south as Khartoum, the capital of modern Sudan. The name of the country, as well as its individual parts, was different. Kush was inhabited by agricultural and pastoral associations.

Early settlements south of Egypt

Already in the 3rd millennium BC. e. the territories south of the first cataract of the Nile become the object of military raids, and then direct conquest by the Egyptian pharaohs. The development of the early archaeological culture known as "Group A" was interrupted at its peak by raids from the north. The population of the “group C” culture that replaced and partially absorbed its remains already had a significant admixture of Negroid elements. Latest archaeological excavations showed that the carriers of the Kerma “group C” cultures are closely related in origin to the regions of Southern and Eastern Sudan, as well as the Sahara, that they appear in the Nile Valley in the middle of the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Judging by archaeological materials, the carriers of the “Group C” culture mainly occupied the territory of Northern Nubia proper, while the carriers of the “Kerma culture” occupied the territory of Kush.

Culture "Kerma"

Excavations of the ancient settlement and necropolis of Kerma paint a picture of a developed society: a powerful urban complex, multifaceted architectural structures of the religious center, residential areas built from baked bricks, which had large granaries, and a fence that ran around the city center. Kerma ancient settlement with with good reason can be considered unique for all of Nubia.

Kerma society already had significant class differentiation. The rulers owned large herds of bulls and goats. Among various types Along with Egyptian ceramics, items trimmed with mother-of-pearl from the Red Sea and items made of ivory brought from Central Sudan stand out, which indicates broad connections and a significant level of development of society. The decor of the ceramics shows the strong influence of Black Africa. The population of Kerma maintained close contacts with Egypt, the population of Eastern Sahara, the areas of Khartoum and the border areas of Ethiopia. Some tombs of the metropolis and the territory over which Kerma's rule extended reached 100 m in diameter, which provides further evidence of the power of its rulers.

In its heyday, coinciding with the period of the Middle Kingdom and the II Transition Period, Kerma controlled the territory from the second to the fourth cataract of the Nile. Even during the period of Egyptian colonization, as shown by the most recent excavations of the French archaeologist III. Bonn and Kerma apparently retained their status as a regional metropolis. The local burial ritual remained the most stable. In more late period the constructions of the new centers of the Cushitic civilization of Kawa, Napata and Meroe show similarities with the structures of Kerma, which proves the local (Kermi) roots of this civilization.

Egyptianization of the region

A large number of natural resources, including the most important place occupied by gold deposits located, in particular, in Wadi Allaqi (here in 1961 -1962 a Soviet archaeological expedition led by academician B.B. Piotrovsky conducted excavations), as well as the possibility of breeding livestock, valuable tree species, and theft of prisoners determined the policy Egypt in relation to this country. The era of Egyptian domination in Kush significantly affected its development and determined its fate for a long time. Already by the end of the Second Transitional Period, the Egyptianization of Cushitic society reached such an extent that it was practically difficult to separate local features from Egyptian ones. And with the departure of the Egyptians the shadow great power remains forever here even in those areas where they never reigned.

The process of cultural interaction in the broadest sense of the word, with the dominant role of Egypt at the first stage (from the initial period of conquest to the XXV dynasty), took place not only through the forcible introduction of individual cultural elements (types of temples, Egyptian cults, attributes, style of depiction, language, social terminology and partly the institutions of state power, priesthood), but also selectively - only those features were preserved and adopted that corresponded to local traditions and views.

Rulers of Kush on the Egyptian throne

However, the Egyptian foundation, transforming on local soil, acquired a different flavor, and sometimes even features that were not at all characteristic of it in Egypt. During the XXV dynasty, the result of the long-term influence of the Egyptians on the development of Kushite society boomeranged back to Egypt, conquered by the rulers of Kush, who had the same titles of pharaoh (son of Ra, “lord of the Two Lands,” under the patronage of Horus and the goddesses of the kite and snake), who preached the same formulas of religious struggle at the command of Amun, which at one time justified the Egyptian campaigns of conquest.

Being on the Egyptian throne, it would seem, strengthened the influence of Egypt, but this was only an external moment - the desire to imitate and copy the greatness of the former ruler. Thus, a pyramid was built over the grave of Piankha, although they had not been built in Egypt itself for about a thousand years before. It is possible that Piankha’s body was mummified, since canopic jars were discovered in the tomb. However, the body did not rest in a sarcophagus, but on a bed, as is typical for Kerma burial grounds.

Piankha's successor Shabaka left a good memory of his rule in Egypt. By his order, the oldest theological treatise of Memphis was rewritten. The efforts were not in vain. Long after Shabaka's death, right up to Ptolemaic times, one of the streets of Memphis bore his name. The dynasty reached the apogee of its greatness under Taharqa. His coronation stele was installed not only in the magnificent temple of Gempaton (at the third threshold), completed and decorated by him, but also in the northern part of the Delta, in Tanis. To the last representative XXV dynasty, Tanutamon, despite the prediction to reign in Egypt, received in a dream, did not have to enjoy glory for long. The power and onslaught of the Assyrian troops dispelled the ambitions of the pharaohs from Kush.

Apparently, due to the threat of invasion by foreigners from the north or for some other reasons, the main centers of the Cushitic civilization moved much further south, to Napata and Meroe, to the fourth and fifth cataracts of the Nile. Residence royal family from VI-V centuries BC e. was in Meroe, but Napata remained the main religious center. The main rite of coronation of the ruler took place here, after which he made trips to other major sanctuaries of Kush.

Temples of Kush

The most outstanding monument of local architecture and art is the religious complex at Musawwarat es-Sufra, where the local lion-headed god Apedemak was revered. The reliefs of this temple, in terms of execution style, are still very similar in appearance to Egyptian ones, although upon careful study there is already a departure from the principles of the Egyptian canon. The hymn to Apedemak, inscribed, however, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, is purely Meroitic in its content. Numerous images of a lion on the reliefs of the Musawwarat es-Sufra religious complex reflect the typically African symbolism of the lion king, associated with ideas about the power and physical strength of the ruler, the bearer of fertility, ensuring the well-being of his subjects.

At the turn of our era, another temple was built in honor of the god Apedemak, in Naga. Its architecture was designed in the local style. On the reliefs, Apedemak is represented as a three-headed and four-armed lion-headed god, as well as in the guise of a lion-headed snake with the body of a man and the head of a lion. These images were entirely the product of the creativity of local craftsmen and reflected the functions of the lion-headed god of war and at the same time the god of fertility.

Greek tradition has preserved the memory of the Meroitic king Ergamenes (Arkamani), who lived during the time of Ptolemy II, who received a Greek upbringing and philosophical education. He dared to destroy the old customs, according to which the aging ruler, by order of the priests, had to die. “Having adopted a way of thinking worthy of a king,” wrote Diodorus, “he... killed all the priests and, having destroyed this custom, remade everything at his own discretion.” In modern science, the origin of Meroitic writing is sometimes associated with the name of this ruler.

The first inscriptions written in the Meroitic script reached us from the 2nd century. BC e., although the language, of course, existed much earlier. This oldest alphabetic letter on the African continent arose under the direct influence of the Egyptian, both its hieroglyphic and demotic variants.

The entire history of the development of Meroitic culture took place in interaction with the major powers of antiquity. Many of their traditions and achievements were adopted in Kush. Syncretism in the Kush culture is thus historically conditioned. Among external factors, the leading role in the formation of a cultural tradition, of course, belongs to Egypt, a number of features of which took root in Kush without changes. This applies to individual images of Egyptian gods, to the style of depiction of relief and statue compositions, to the attributes of kings and gods - the shape of a crown, scepters, an attached bull's tail, to sacrificial formulas and a number of other elements of the funeral cult, to some temple rituals, to the title of kings.

A certain role in maintaining the tradition was played by the permanent layer of the Egyptian population in Kush - the direct bearer of culture. A feature of the process was the adaptation of the features of Egyptian culture to such an extent that they were already mechanically perceived by the population and were no longer perceived as an alien, but as a local element.

Greco-Roman period

During the Greco-Roman period, the process of cultural influence took place indirectly - through Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and also directly - through the Greek and Roman population located in Meroe. The most striking manifestations of this influence are considered to be the so-called Roman kiosk in Naga, the remains of Roman baths in Meroe, and full-face figures of gods, similar in style to Greek images. This should also include poetic works in honor of the local god Mandulis, compiled according to various forms of the Greek literary canon.

Already from the time of Alexander the Great, Kush occupied a very definite place in Hellenistic, and later in Roman literature. Kush was associated with travel, imaginary or real geographical discoveries, was considered a place of refuge for the oppressed and persecuted rulers from Egypt. The reader is presented with a fabulously gold-rich country, the seat of the gods revered in the Greco-Roman world. Thus, in the synthesis of various elements, but with the stable preservation of the local basis, over the centuries it formed and developed qualitatively new culture- the Kush civilization, which influenced those countries with which it was in direct contact.

Traditions of deep antiquity have been preserved for centuries in people's memory. Even in the modern folklore of Sudan there is a legend about King Napa from Naphtha, etymologically clearly going back to the Meroitic toponym, about the ancient customs of killing kings and their abolition by King Akaf, about the snake guardians of the temple and many others. The legends contain memories of the treasures of Kerma, and the local population still surrounds them with legends and reveres the ruins - the remains of the ancient settlement of Kerma. The distinctive and original culture of Kush contributed to the common cultural heritage of the countries of the ancient East and was the source modern culture peoples of Sudan.

Ancient cultures of tropical Africa

The current level of our knowledge allows us to state with complete certainty that nowhere in Africa south of the Sahara before the turn of the 7th-8th centuries. n. e. societies with antagonistic classes did not develop and that only after the appearance of Arabs in North and East Africa did the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa become acquainted with writing.

It is indisputable, however, that in different regions there were certain communities that were distinguished by certain specific features of material and spiritual culture, which would be more correctly defined as pre-civilizations or proto-civilizations.

These, relatively speaking, ancient civilizations, the formation of which generally coincided in time with the transition to the Iron Age throughout the entire territory of sub-Saharan Africa, were formed in several main regions that were separated by vast distances, where, apparently, the population that lived in the early stages of the primitive communal system. These centers of civilizations were:

• Western Sudan and the adjacent parts of the Sahel zone in the north, as well as the adjacent Saharan regions;
• central and southwestern parts of modern Nigeria;
• basin of the upper reaches of the river. Lualaba (present-day Shaba province in Zaire);
• the central and eastern regions of today's Republic of Zimbabwe, which owes its name precisely to the brilliant civilization that developed here in the first centuries of the 2nd millennium AD. e.;
• African coast of the Indian Ocean.

Archaeological research of the last two decades convincingly shows direct continuity between these ancient civilizations and the civilizations of the African Middle Ages - the great powers of Western Sudan (Ghana, Mali, Songhai), Ife, Benin, Congo, Zimbabwe, and the Swahili civilization.

The most ancient civilizations that developed in Western Sudan and Nigeria achieved the greatest development. Central African centers lagged behind the emergence of iron and copper metallurgy and large urban-type settlements. The East African focus was distinguished by a certain specificity associated with the role of maritime trade in its formation.

Contacts between centers of civilizations

The separation of the centers of civilizations of Tropical Africa by considerable distances did not mean at all that there were no connections between them. They can be traced between the Western Sudanese and Nigerian centers, between the latter and the Congo basin. Archaeological evidence reveals contacts that existed between the territory of present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe and the Upper Lualaba region, as well as the East African coast, although most of this data dates back to the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. e.

The situation was different with contacts outside Africa. If Western Sudan by the 8th century. n. e. already had many centuries of contact with North Africa, and East Africa had long-standing connections with the Red Sea basin, and then the Persian Gulf region and South Asia, the Nigerian and Central African centers did not directly interact with non-African societies. But this did not exclude indirect contacts, for example, between the predecessors of the Zimbabwean civilization and the Middle East and South Asia. They were carried out through the harbors of the East African coast. There are known, for example, finds of Roman items in inland areas quite remote from caravan and sea routes. African continent.

The high level of civilization of the Western Sudanese hearth was the result of the development of local societies, although long-standing and stable ties with the class societies of the Mediterranean to a certain extent accelerated such development. The connections are attested by numerous rock carvings along the two main ancient routes across the Sahara: from southern Morocco to the inland delta region. Niger and from Fezzan to the eastern end of the great bend of the Niger in the area of ​​the present city of Gao. We are talking about the so-called chariot roads: rock carvings of horse-drawn chariots speak of fairly lively contacts, but with certain restrictions in time and nature. On the one hand, the appearance of horses in the Sahara dates back only to the 1st millennium BC. e., and on the other hand, the chariots of the Saharan images themselves, according to experts, could hardly be used for any other purposes other than prestigious ones, due to the fragility of the design, which does not allow them to be used either as cargo or, possibly, like a war wagon.

A genuine “technical revolution” occurred with the appearance of the camel in the Sahara around the turn of the 2nd-1st centuries. BC e. and had serious social consequences, defining the forms of relationship between the desert inhabitants and their sedentary neighbors to the south and allowing cross-desert trade to become a stable and regulated institution. True, the latter, apparently, happened completely later and was already associated with the appearance of the Arabs.

Bronze hearth of metallurgy

Trans-Saharan contacts probably played a certain role in the formation of the West African center of Bronze Age industry, which preceded iron metallurgy, a center unique in all of Tropical Africa. Excavations by French researcher Nicole Lambert in Mauritania in the 60s. proven existence here large center copper and bronze industry. Copper mines and copper smelting sites (Lemden) were discovered in the Akzhuzht area. Not only were large accumulations of slag found, but also the remains of a smelting furnace with blow tubes. The finds date back to the 6th-5th centuries. BC e. The Moorish center of the bronze industry lay just at the southern end of the western "chariot road", which directly connected it with a similar but earlier metallurgical center in southern Morocco.

The scientific literature has suggested a connection between the Moorish center of metallurgy and numerous burials and megalithic structures along the middle reaches of the Niger in the Gundam-Niafunke region. The fundamental possibility of such a connection cannot be denied. However, in areas much closer to Akjoujt along the Dar Tishit scarp in Mauritania, lying in a direct line between Akjoujt and the Niger Valley, the influence of the bronze industry was not manifested in any way. Archaeological discoveries of the late 70s - early 80s. force us to associate the monuments of the Gundam-Niafunke region with another center of civilization, unique for the entire territory of Tropical Africa, since it is distinguished by a fairly developed tradition of urban life, which developed even before the beginning of our era.

Ancient Ghana

We are talking about the excavations of American archaeologists Susan and Rodrick McIntosh in Djenne (Mali), begun in 1977. On the Dioboro hill, 3 km from the city, the remains of an urban-type settlement were discovered: the ruins of a city wall and quarterly buildings with numerous traces were discovered residential buildings. Djenné-Djeno (Old Djenné) preserved evidence of the existence of a developed iron metallurgy and ceramic production in the area. The city served as a center for active trade between the upper Niger region and the Sahel zone, as well as in the middle Niger Delta. Radiocarbon dating allows its foundation to be dated back to the 3rd century. BC e., while according to tradition it was believed that the city arose no earlier than the 8th century. It is especially important that the results of the McIntosh work provide an opportunity to reconsider and habitual views on the nature of exchanges in the area of ​​the internal delta, as well as on the reasons for the formation in this region of the first of the early state formations of Tropical Africa known to us - ancient Ghana. And in this respect, the Western Sudanese center of civilizations turns out to be unique.

The fact is that the formation of ancient Ghana was usually associated with the needs of trans-Saharan trade. Now it becomes obvious that long before the advent of Ghana and the establishment of large-scale trade across the desert, a rather complex and organized economic complex with a developed system of exchanges grew up in the middle reaches of the Niger, which involved agricultural products, iron, copper and products made from them, and livestock products ; Moreover, iron preceded copper in such exchanges. These data allow us to understand the true relationship between internal and external factors in historical development region.

The results of archaeological research indicate a continuous deterioration of the “political” situation in the Dar Tishit area throughout the 1st millennium BC. e. The reduction in the size of settlements, their enclosure with defensive walls and their gradual transfer to the tops of the hills indicate increased pressure from the nomads, who were obviously pushed south by the increasing aridization of the Sahara. It has been suggested that the beginnings of the rudimentary exploitation of Negroid farmers by these nomads. But the same pressure to a greater extent stimulated the formation among farmers of large organizational early political structures capable of resisting aggression. This tendency appeared at least in the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC. e., and perhaps earlier, by the beginning of this millennium. Ancient Ghana at the turn of the 3rd-4th centuries. n. e. became the logical conclusion of this trend. This is understandable, given that the appearance of the camel in the Sahara sharply increased the military-technical potential of nomadic societies.

Nigerian "civilizations" (Nok, Ife, Igbo-Ukwu, Sao)

The Nigerian center of ancient civilizations is directly related to the emergence of the iron industry in West Africa. Most of the early civilizations of the mentioned hearth are distinguished by one or another degree of continuity in relation to the so-called Nok culture - the earliest Iron Age culture in the region, dating back to the 5th century. BC e. It includes the oldest surviving monuments of artistic creativity of the peoples of Tropical Africa - a rich collection of realistic sculptures found during excavations along with metal and stone tools, metal and pearl jewelry. In addition to its purely artistic merits, it is interesting because it presents features of the style that have been preserved in traditional African sculpture (including wooden sculpture) right up to our time. In addition, the completeness of the artistic form presupposes a stage of rather long development of this artistic tradition.

A continuity with the works of Nok is found in the Ife civilization, created by the ancestors of the modern Yoruba people. The realistic sculptural tradition found further development and continuation in the art of Ife. The influence of the artistic style of Nok ceramics was also reflected in the famous bronzes of Ife.

The ability to judge from archaeological materials the level of social organization of the creators of the ancient cultures of this region is provided by the results of excavations carried out in Igbo-Ukwu, in the lower Niger. The British scientist Thursten Shaw discovered here a developed early civilization with a high artistic culture, with a very advanced technology for processing iron and bronze for its time. Foundry workers from Igbo-Ukwu mastered the lost-wax casting technique, which several centuries later became the glory of Benin bronze. Shaw's excavations showed that the society that created this civilization was distinguished by a developed and already quite stratified social organization.

Of particular interest is the question of cultural ties between Igbo-Ukwu and Ife. Based on the stylistic similarities in the sculpture of both centers, it has been suggested that Ife is an older civilization than generally believed; analogies between certain types of jewelry known from modern ethnographic research and finds in Ife and Igbo-Ukwu suggested that Ife as Cultural Center is at least synchronous with Igbo-Ukwu, that is, it can be dated no later than the 9th century. n. e.

Apparently, the Sao culture in the territory of modern Chad (within a radius of approximately 100 km around modern N'Djamena) was not connected with the Nok culture. Excavations discovered here many terracotta sculptures, representing a completely independent artistic tradition, bronze weapons, and utensils. The French researcher Jean-Paul Leboeuf, who studied the initial stage of Sao culture, dates its earliest stage to the 8th-10th centuries.

The center of early cultures in the upper reaches of the river. Lualaba

A completely original center of early civilizations developed in the upper reaches of the river. Lualaba, as can be judged from the materials of excavations of two large burial grounds - in Sanga and Katoto. Moreover, Katoto dates back to the 12th century, but its inventory reveals clear continuity in relation to the earlier Sanga. The latter dates, at least for part of the burials, to the period between the 7th and 9th centuries. The richest grave goods testify to the high level of development of local crafts. In particular, the metallurgists of Sanga not only mastered foundry and forging skills, but also knew how to draw wire, iron and copper.

The abundance of products made from both metals seems quite natural if we remember that the province of Shaba, where Sanga is located, remains today perhaps the main mining region of Tropical Africa. It is characteristic that in Sanga, as in Tropical Africa in general, iron metallurgy preceded copper metallurgy. Ivory jewelry also testifies to the brilliant art of local artisans. Sangi ceramics are very original, although they reveal an undoubted relationship with ceramic products a wider region in South-Eastern Zaire, usually referred to as Kisale pottery.

Crafts and artistic tradition, represented by Sanga and the later Katoto, showed amazing vitality. Thus, the iron hoes from the Katoto burial goods fully reproduce the shape of modern hoes handicrafted in this area. Based on the material from excavations in Sanga, we can talk about a large concentration of population, and also that this area was inhabited for a long time. The nature of the inventory allows us to confidently assume that social stratification has already gone quite far. Therefore, it is fair to assume that the upper Lualaba region, along with the Sudanese zone, belonged to the key areas of state formation on the subcontinent. Moreover, Sanga chronologically preceded the formation of the system of exchanges between the upper reaches of the Lualaba and the Zambezi basin, which means that some form of supreme power arose here spontaneously.

The mentioned system of long-distance exchanges in the Lualaba basin, as in the Sudanese zone, existed in parallel with the network of local exchanges that arose before it. But it was foreign trade that apparently played a particularly important role in spreading the influence of the local civilization to the southeast, to the Zambezi basin. And if, in the words of the famous Belgian scientist Francis Van Noten, Sanga can be considered as a “brilliant but isolated” phenomenon in the Congo Basin, then between Shaba and the territory of present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe its influence was quite noticeable, which does not mean, however, the lack of independence of the Zimbabwean civilization that arose here.

The heyday of this civilization dates back mainly to the 12th-13th centuries. Meanwhile, it is necessary to mention it, since the prerequisites for its formation arose much earlier. Copper items found by Roger Summers on the Inyanga plateau, where many of its most important monuments are located, date back to the same time as Sanga - VIII-IX centuries.. - and turn out to be much earlier than the complex of buildings in Zimbabwe proper. But even in Zimbabwe, the earliest traces of settlement (the so-called Acropolis on Great Zimbabwe) date back to the 4th century. n. e. (though based on a single sample), and the early settlements of the Gokomere hill date back to the 5th-7th centuries.

Swahili civilization

A brilliant example of African civilizations of the Middle Ages was the Swahili civilization, which developed on the East African coast of the Indian Ocean. As in the case of Zimbabwe, its heyday dates back to the 12th-13th centuries. But just like there, the creation of the prerequisites for its emergence covered a much longer period - approximately from the 1st to the 8th centuries. By the turn of our era, East Africa was already connected with the countries of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, as well as with South and Southeast Asia quite long-standing and lively trade and cultural contacts.

The acquaintance and contacts of representatives of the Mediterranean civilization with East Africa are attested in such written ancient monuments as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and the Geography of Claudius Ptolemy. In the I-II centuries. coastal areas up to approximately 8° south latitude(the mouth of the Rufiji River) was regularly visited by South Arabian sailors. East Africa supplied ivory, rhinoceros tusks, turtle shells and coconut oil to the then world market, exporting iron and glass products.

Archaeological work at different points on the coast of East Africa gives results dating back to the heyday of the Swahili civilization itself, that is, to the Muslim period in the history of the region, the beginning of which, according to the oral and literary Swahili tradition, dates back to the turn of the 7th-8th centuries. However, studies of the last two decades, especially the works of the Soviet Africanist V. M. Misyugin, indicate that on the coast, long before that time, a kind of pre-civilization was taking shape, based mainly on ocean shipping and ocean fishing.

It is with this pre-civilization that one should apparently associate the emergence of relatively large settlements - trading and fishing - which then turned into such famous city-states typical of the Swahili civilization as Kilwa, Mombasa, etc. In all likelihood, the cities arose precisely during 1st-8th centuries: It is hardly accidental that the anonymous author of the Periplus, apparently written in the last quarter of the 1st century, avoids using the words “city” or “harbour”, preferring to talk about the “markets” of the East African coast. It was on the basis of such trading posts that those cities were formed, the foundation of which tradition, and after it early European explorers, associated with the appearance of newcomers here from Arabia or Iran. But there can be no doubt that these migrants of the 7th-8th centuries. settled in points familiar to Middle Eastern sailors and merchants for centuries through their contacts with coastal inhabitants.

Thus, by the 8th century. n. e. Several centers of early civilizations had already formed on the territory of Tropical Africa, which became the basis for the subsequent development of African cultures.

Civilizations of ancient South Arabia

Settlement of southern Arabia

The fate of the Arabian Peninsula is truly dramatic. Finds of Early Paleolithic tools of the Olduvai type in the territory of South Arabia from the coastal strip near the strait to western regions Hadhramaut, as well as the discovery of numerous Early Paleolithic sites along the northern border of the Rub al-Khali, indicate that South Arabia was part of one of the zones from where humanity began its “march across the planet”, starting from East Africa. One of the routes of settlement went through Arabia, which at that distant time was abundantly irrigated by the waters of river flows, flourishing, rich in countless herds of herbivores.

Apparently, no later than the 20th millennium BC. e. the first ominous signs of a sharp change were revealed natural conditions human habitation in Arabia, which in the 18th-17th millennium led to absolute aridity of the climate throughout almost the entire territory of the peninsula. People left Arabia, although it is possible that in its extreme south and east separate, little connected “ecological refuges” remained, where the embers of life continued to smolder.

Secondary settlement

From the 8th millennium, under the conditions of a new climate change, this time favorable for people, the secondary and final settlement began - first of the eastern coastal part (Qatar), and then, from the 7th-6th millennium, of Central and Southern Arabia (south -western part of Rub al-Khali, North Yemen, Hadhramaut, etc.). Apparently, no later than 5 thousand along east coast The carriers of the Ubaid culture, and then the Jemdet-Nasr culture, settled in Arabia. In the 3rd millennium, Eastern Arabia, and especially Oman (ancient Magan), were included in the maritime trade of the Southern Mesopotamia and the “country of Dilmun” (Bahrain) with North-West India.

It is possible that at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Semitic tribes penetrate into the territory of South Arabia for the first time. We do not know the specific reasons that prompted them to make a journey full of hardships to the south of the peninsula, but it is clear that already in their ancestral home they reached a fairly high level of development: they were familiar with agriculture, they acquired skills in irrigation and construction. Communication with more cultured settled peoples introduced them to writing, and they already possessed a coherent system of religious ideas.

Features of the natural conditions of South Arabia - highly rugged terrain, contrasts climatic zones, relatively narrow wadi valleys suitable for agriculture contributed to the fact that the newcomers, settling in separate tribal or clan groups, created isolated centers of culture. One of the consequences of this isolation was the coexistence of no less than four distinct languages ​​in a small area over a long period of time.

Those that arose here from the end of the 2nd millennium to the 6th century also had clear features of originality. BC e. civilizations:

• Sabeyskaya,
• Katabanskaya,
• Hadhramautskaya,
• Mainsskaya,

They coexisted throughout the 1st millennium BC. e. It is likely that throughout this time the South Arabian civilizations, in their cultural contacts with the Middle East, remained oriented toward the areas from which their founders had once come. In the culture of ancient Hadhramaut there are also certain features of borrowing from the regions of the extreme east of the Arabian Peninsula, long time under the influence of the Southern Mesopotamia.

Political events of the 1st millennium BC e.

In the first half of the 1st millennium BC. e. these were already highly developed societies based on irrigated agriculture, with numerous cities, developed architecture and art. Industrial crops began to play a major role, and above all trees and shrubs that produced incense, myrrh and other fragrant resins that were in high demand in the countries of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The cultivation of incense trees became the source of prosperity for the states of Ancient Yemen - “Happy Arabia”. The export of incense contributed to an increase in exchange and trade, and the expansion of cultural contacts. In the 10th century BC e. Saba establishes trade and diplomatic relations with the Eastern Mediterranean. By the 8th century. BC e. The Sabaean state first came into contact with the Assyrian power and, apparently, no later than the 7th century. BC e. colonizes the territory of modern Northeastern Ethiopia.

The production of frankincense, myrrh, etc. was concentrated mainly in the regions of Hadhramaut (and partly Qataban) adjacent to the Indian Ocean, and external caravan trade from the 6th century. BC e. ended up in Mine's hands. The main part of the caravan “Path of Incense” began from here. Subsequently, the Mainians created caravan stations and trading colonies in Northwestern Arabia and began to make regular trade trips to Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia, and then to the island of Delos.

The place occupied by South Arabia on the sea route from India to Africa and Egypt and further into the Mediterranean, already in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. e., also determined its role as the most important intermediary in the exchange of goods between the ancient civilizations of South Asia and the Middle East, the Indian Ocean basin and the Mediterranean Sea. The harbors of Hadhramaut and Kataban served as transshipment points for these goods, which from here went north along caravan routes - to Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Things were getting easier special treatment winds blowing in the northern Indian Ocean, which allowed winter from the harbors west coast India sailed directly to South-West Arabia and East Africa, while in the summer months the winds provided sailing from South Arabia and Africa to India.

From the 7th century BC e. Saba's political hegemony extended to the entire territory of Southwestern Arabia, but already from the 6th-4th centuries. BC e. as a result of long wars, Main, Qataban and Hadhramaut are freed from Sabaean dependence, and this is reflected in numerous facts of “national” cultural revival. Wars continue throughout the second half of the 1st millennium BC. e. As a result, their Myne is absorbed by Saba, but she herself, weakened by these wars, for a long time becomes the arena of internecine battles and changes in various peripheral dynasties. Relative stability was established here only from the 3rd century. n. e. By this time, Qataban disappeared from the historical arena, and in Saba itself a dynasty from Himiyar, a region located in the extreme southwest of South Arabia, reigned.

Decline of trade

By the beginning of our era, there was a sharp change in the situation on the routes for the export of incense, which influenced the subsequent development of local civilizations. Already in the middle of the 2nd century. BC e. The Red Sea and the western part of the Gulf of Aden were developed by Greek-Egyptian sailors and merchants. They use their ships to reach the northern coast of Somalia and Aden, where goods brought from India by Yemeni and Indian sailors are loaded onto their ships. At the end of the 2nd century. BC e. South Arabia's monopoly in transit trade between India and Egypt was dealt a severe blow. The discovery of the monsoon regime by Greco-Egyptian navigators allowed them to sail directly to India and back. Within just a hundred years, over 100 ships were leaving Egypt annually for India. With the capture of Syria and Egypt by Rome in the 1st century. BC e. the situation became even more complicated. Intra-Arabian trade is withering away, the struggle in South Arabia since the 1st century. n. e. is no longer fought for dominance on trade routes, but directly for the lands where trees that produce incense grow, and for the coastal areas where harbors were located for the export of these incense.

Culture of Ancient Arabia

The founders of the ancient Yemen civilizations brought with them to South Arabia solid knowledge, ideas and skills in many areas of economic and cultural life- this is evidenced by magnificent buildings made of stone, huge cities, built on artificial hills in wadi valleys, the unsurpassed skill of the builders of giant irrigation systems. This is also evidenced by the richness of spiritual life, reflected in complex ideas about the world of the gods, in the creation of their own “intelligentsia of the spirit” - the priesthood, in the extremely wide dissemination of writing.

The ancient South Arabians, who spoke languages ​​of a separate subgroup of the “south-peripheral” Semitic languages, used a special script that they inherited from the alphabetic writing of the Eastern Mediterranean - many signs were changed in accordance with the main idea - giving the entire system of signs clear geometric shapes. They wrote on a variety of materials: they cut stone, on wooden tablets, on clay, then cast inscriptions in bronze, scratched them on rocks (graffiti), and also applied soft writing materials. Everyone wrote: kings and nobles, slaves and merchants, builders and priests, camel drivers and artisans, men and women. The discovered inscriptions contain descriptions historical events, articles of laws. Also found were dedicatory and building texts, inscriptions on tombs, business correspondence, copies of mortgage documents, etc., etc. It is the inscriptions, coupled with individual mentions in the Bible, among ancient and early Byzantine authors, that are the most important source of knowledge on the history and culture of Ancient South Arabia.

True, little is known about spiritual culture - large works of mythological, ritual and other content have been lost. The most important sources to this day, inscriptions remain containing, among other things, the names and epithets of the gods, their symbols, as well as sculptural and relief images of deities, their sacred animals, and mythological subjects. They are the basis for ideas about the nature of pantheons (there was no single host of gods in South Arabia) and some of the functions of the gods. It is known that in the early stages, astral deities who stood at the head of pantheons played a huge role here, primarily the ancient Semitic god Astar (cf. Ishtar, Astarte, etc.). His image was Venus. After Astara came various hypostases of the solar deity and, finally, “national” gods - deities tribal unions, personified by the Moon (Almakah in Saba, Wadd in Maina, Amm in Karaban and Sin in Hadhramaut). Of course, there were other gods - patrons of individual clans, tribes, cities, “functional” deities (irrigation, etc.).

In general, the pantheons united the most ancient pan-Semitic (Astar, possibly Ilu) gods or tribal deities, borrowed from Mesopotamia (Sin) and from neighbors, from Central and Northern Arabia, etc. If we talk about the dynamics of ideas in the “pagan” era, then one can clearly see, at least from the time shortly before the beginning of our era, the promotion of “national” gods to the fore and the gradual displacement of the main astral deity Astara. Subsequently, by the 4th century. n. e., Almakah in Saba almost completely displaces other gods, which significantly facilitated the transition to monotheistic religions - Judaism and Christianity.

Decline and decline of Arabian civilizations

A consequence of the special natural conditions of the existence of ancient South Arabian civilizations and a feature of their development was the close proximity and interaction with the nomadic tribes of inner Arabia. Some of these tribes constantly sought to leave the desert country for agricultural areas and settle there. The pastoral tribes were at a much lower level of economic and cultural development. Settled for centuries (especially starting from the 2nd century AD) in the lands of Yemen, they came into direct contact with local civilizations. This to a large extent led to general decline economic life and culture, to the fact that the local population was increasingly dissolved in the mass of alien tribes and clans, lost its identity and language, and became “Arabized.” The irresistible and ever-increasing impact of negative factors predetermined the gradual decline of South Arabian civilizations from the first centuries of our era and their death in the 6th century.

However, the decline of the ancient civilizations of South Arabia was accompanied by an extraordinary rise in spiritual life, which reflected in a bizarre form the entire set of conditions and features of their development. In dying societies it has taken on eschatological tones to the greatest extent.

The fact that South Arabia, especially its internal, most developed centers of civilizations, could less and less enjoy the benefits of its special position at the intersection of trade routes did not mean at all that this position itself had lost all significance in the eyes of the great empires of antiquity. It can even be argued that from the end of the 1st century. BC e. it invariably increased, and Arabia in general and South Arabia in particular acquired the character of the most important element of international relations.

Clashes and struggle of ideas

At the turn of our era, the natural centers for the spread of late Hellenistic influences (and subsequently Christianity) in Southern Arabia were precisely the trading settlements of Greek-Egyptian merchants in coastal trading cities (Aden, Cana, on the island of Socotra). Attested in iconography, attempts to create allegorical images of South Arabian gods and their “Hellenization” date back to this time. In the first centuries AD, Christianity began to spread in the Greco-Roman environment of Aden and Socotra.

From the 4th century n. e. The Eastern Roman Empire is making efforts to plant the mentioned religion in South Arabia, using for this both the missionary activities of the Alexandrian Church and the Christianized elite of Aksum - a state that arose at the beginning of our era on the territory of Ethiopia and captured already at the beginning of the 2nd century. some coastal areas in Southwestern Arabia. Soon, Arabia will be filled with more Arians, Monophysites, Nestorians, etc. To this picture we must add the local ancient pagan religion and primitive cults of the Bedouins, who are increasingly influencing political events in the south of the Arabian Peninsula.

The fierce struggle of ideas, accompanied by clashes and invasions of the Aksumites, involved wide circles South Arabian society... The main political conclusion of this struggle became clear: both Christianity of any kind and Judaism lead to the loss of independence, to the enslavement of the country by foreigners. However, it was impossible to prevent an ideological explosion. The struggle of ideas spread beyond the borders of the south of Arabia, drawing trading posts along the caravan routes into its orbit. Gradually, in this struggle, another main political idea made its way - the idea of ​​unity and confrontation. Something unique, Arabian, was born. Islam was born.

Most leading scholars of civilizations, with the exception of Braudel, do not recognize a separate African civilization. The north of the African continent and its eastern coast belong to the Islamic civilization. Ethiopia historically constituted a civilization in itself. In all other countries, European imperialism and settlers introduced elements of Western civilization. In South Africa, settlers from Holland, France, and then from England planted mosaic European culture. Most importantly, European imperialism brought Christianity to much of the sub-Saharan continent. Tribal identification is still strong throughout Africa, but a sense of African identification is rapidly growing among Africans, and it appears that sub-Saharan Africa may become a separate civilization, probably with South Africa as the core state.

Religion is the central, defining characteristic of civilizations, and as Christopher Dawson said [ c.59] “Great religions are the foundations on which great civilizations rest.” Of Weber's five “world religions,” four—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism—are associated with major civilizations. Fifth, Buddhism - no. Why did it happen so? Like Islam and Christianity, Buddhism split early into two movements and, like Christianity, did not survive in the land where it originated. Beginning in the first century AD, one branch of Buddhism, Mahayana, was exported to China, then to Korea, Vietnam and Japan. In these societies, Buddhism was adapted to varying degrees, assimilated into local cultures (in China, for example, into the form of Confucianism and Taoism) or banned.

Thus, while Buddhism remains an important part of the culture in these societies, they are not part of the Buddhist civilization and do not identify themselves in that way. However, in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia there is what can rightly be called the Theravada Buddhist civilization. In addition, the populations of Tibet, Mongolia and Bhutan have historically adopted the Lamaist variant of the Mahayana, and these societies form the second region of Buddhist civilization. However, the most important fact is that there is a clear difference between Buddhism as adopted in India and its adaptation into existing culture in China and Japan. This means that Buddhism, being one of the main religions, did not become the basis for any of the major civilizations *** , 20 .[ c.60]

Relationships between civilizations Random encounters. Civilizations before 1500 AD

The relationship between civilizations has already evolved through two phases and is now in the third. For more than three thousand years after civilizations first emerged, contact between them, with a few exceptions, was either non-existent and limited, or intermittent and intense. The nature of these contacts is well expressed by the word historians use to describe them: “chance meetings.” 21 . Civilizations were separated by time and space. Only a small number of them existed at any one time, and, as Benjamin Schwartz and Shmuel Eisenstadt argue, there are significant differences between axial and pre-axial civilizations in terms of whether they could recognize the difference between the “transcendent and the mundane.” Among axial civilizations, unlike those that preceded them, myths were spread by a separate intellectual layer: “Jewish prophets and preachers, Greek philosophers and sophists, Chinese poets, Hindu Brahmins, Buddhist Sangha and [ c.61] Islamic ulema" 22 . Some religions survived two or three generations of related civilizations, when one civilization died, followed by an “interregnum” and the birth of another successor generation. In Fig. Figure 2.1 shows a simplified diagram (taken from Carroll Quigley) of how the relationships between the major Eurasian civilizations changed over time.

Figure 2.1.(p.63)

Civilizations of the Eastern Hemisphere

Source: Carroll Quigley The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis, 1979.

Civilizations were also divided geographically. Before 1500, the Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations had no contact with other civilizations or with each other. Early civilizations in the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus and Yellow River valleys also did not interact with each other. Over time, contacts between civilizations began to multiply in the Eastern Mediterranean, Southwest Asia and Northern India. However, communication and commercial relationships were hampered by the distances that separated civilizations and the limited number of vehicles capable of crossing these distances. While there was still some trade in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, “crossing the steppe, horses, caravans and river fleets were the only means of transportation by which civilizations in the world before 1500 AD were connected together - to the small extent that they maintained contact with each other" 23 .

Ideas and technologies were transferred from one civilization to another, but this often took centuries. Perhaps the most significant cultural diffusion that did not result from conquest was the spread of Buddhism to China, which occurred six centuries after its emergence in northern India. Printing was invented in China in the eighth century AD, movable type printing presses in the eleventh, but the technology did not reach Europe until the fifteenth century. Paper appeared in China in the second century AD, came to Japan in the seventh century, then spread [ c.62] to the west, to Central Asia, in the eighth, reached North Africa in the tenth, Spain in the twelfth, and Northern Europe in the thirteenth. Another Chinese invention, gunpowder, made in the ninth century, reached the Arabs several hundred years later and reached Europe in the fourteenth century. 24 .

The most dramatic and significant contacts between civilizations have occurred when people from one civilization conquered, destroyed, or enslaved the peoples of another. As a rule, these contacts were bloody, but short, and were of an episodic nature. Beginning in the seventh century AD, relatively long-term and at times strong intercivilizational contacts began to emerge between the world of Islam and the West, as well as Islam and India. Mostly commercial, cultural and military relationships developed within [ c.63] civilizations. And if India and China, for example, were sometimes raided and conquered by other peoples (Moguls, Mongols), then both of these civilizations also knew long periods of war within their civilization. The Greeks are the same - they traded and fought with each other much more often than with the Persians and other non-Greeks.

The first Civilizations began to emerge in the 100th century. back.

The last Civilization stopped in the 32nd century. back.

Toynbee lists African civilizations among independent civilizations.

Modern directories also divide Africa into northern, central and southern.

There is a division into ancient African and modern African civilization.

The first civilizational societies of primitive socio-cults arise in the center of Africa, where there has been a stabilization of natural conditions, despite the not entirely suitable conditions themselves.

Typically African civilizations ceased to arise with the penetration of foreign sociocultural technologies into Africa, which were carried on their humps by camels unprecedented in Africa, urged on by the Berbers.

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Africa was the birthplace of the subfamily and genus Homo, including the eight species of which only Homo sapiens remains.

According to the latest paleontological and archaeological evidence, hominids already existed at least five million years ago. These animals were still very similar to their close cousins, the great apes of Africa, but adopted a bipedal form of locomotion, which gave them a critical advantage in the fight for survival, as it allowed them to live in both forested areas and open savanna, while Africa was drying out, with savanna encroaching on forested areas.

By 3 million years ago, several species of australopithecines had evolved throughout southern, eastern and central Africa.

Archaeological evidence suggests that primitive tribes lived along the Nile before the dynastic history of the pharaohs began. Organized agriculture began around 6000 BC.

Linguistic evidence shows that people of the Bantu language group (such as Xhosa and Zulu) emigrated southwest into the pre-Khoisan areas and that the Bantu displaced the former inhabitants. Bantu settlements used a distinctive range of grain crops suitable for tropical Africa, including cassava and yams.

The population consists mainly of representatives of two races: Negroid sub-Saharan, and Caucasian in northern Africa (Arabs) and South Africa (Boers and Anglo-South Africans). There are 56 countries in Africa. Most of them for a long time were colonies of European states and gained independence only in the 50-60s of the 20th century.

Before this, only Egypt (since 1922), Ethiopia (since 1941), Liberia (since 1847) and South Africa (since 1910) were independent, but in South Africa, until the 90s of the 20th century, the apartheid regime remained in place, discriminating against indigenous people ( black) population.

In the north of the continent are the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla. Traditional religions are widespread: Islam, Christianity (Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Monophysites).

Due to the fact that the borders of African states were drawn artificially, without taking into account the settlement of various peoples and tribes, and traditional African society was not ready for democracy, in many African countries after gaining independence, civil wars. In many countries, dictators came to power. The resulting regimes are characterized by disregard for human rights, bureaucracy, and totalitarianism, which in turn leads to an economic crisis and growing poverty.

The most common languages ​​are Arabic, English, French, as well as Swahili, Congo, and Fulani.

Modern African civilization (sub-Saharan) is going through a stage of formation, but its position among the civilizations of the 5th generation remains the most difficult. This is due to the highest rates of population growth with a simultaneous reduction in GDP per capita. Thus, the share of this civilization in the total population of the planet increased from 6.2% in 1950 to 10.6% in 2000, and in the first half of the 21st century. will increase to 18.6%, population growth will be 2.5 times. At the same time, the share in world GDP decreased from 3.4% in 1950 to 2.4% in 2000, and in 2015, according to the forecast of IMEMO RAS, will be only 2.1%. Standards of living in most African countries are at record lows.

In general, in African civilization, GNP per capita is 11.4 times lower than the world average, and in Ethiopia (population 69 million people), Nigeria (130 million people) - 15.7 times. In 2000, 540 million people lived in Africa, and by 2050 there will be 692 million. Under a pessimistic scenario for the development of African civilization, the gap between rich Western and poor African civilizations will only increase, which will further complicate the global situation. Africa is a kind of stand where the effectiveness of globalization and the ability of 5th generation civilizations for mutual support and partnership will be tested.

The ability of any potential core state (one of the most important characteristics of civilization) to lead in Tropical Africa is limited by its division into French- and English-speaking parts. For some time, Côte d'Ivoire was the core state of Francophone Africa. However, the same role was largely played by France, which, after the colonies gained independence, maintained close economic, military and political ties with them. Both African countries are most suitable for the role of the core states, Anglophone.

Nigeria's size, resources and location make it a potential heartland state, but lack of intra-civilizational unity, massive corruption, political instability, repressive government and economic problems severely limited her ability to play the role, although she did so from time to time.

South Africa's peaceful, negotiated transition from apartheid, its industrial strength, superior economic development compared to other African countries, its military capabilities, natural resources and experienced black-and-white leadership clearly point to this state as the leader of the South African nation. parts of Africa - the probable leader of English Africa and the possible leader of all Tropical Africa. (Huntington)

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Some believe that there was no civilization in black Africa before the arrival of Europeans. In fact, black Africans can boast of much more ancient roots of their great culture than most Europeans. Kerma is a state as ancient as Egypt.

Pyramids of Meroe. Wikimedia Foundation Picture

Dmitry Samokhvalov