Page 64 - ie2 August 2019

WORLDVIEW

by roughly 500 BCE in many areas of
East and West Africa, although other re-
gions did not begin ironworking until the
early centuries CE. Copper objects from
Egypt, North Africa, Nubia, and Ethiopia,
dating from around 500 BCE have been
excavated in West Africa, suggesting that
Trans-Saharan trade networks had been
established by this date.
Around 3300 BCE, the historical record
opens in Northern Africa with the rise of
literacy in the Pharaonic civilisation of
ancient Egypt. One of the world’s earli-
est and longest-lasting civilisations, the
Egyptian state continued, with varying
levels of influence over other areas, un-
til 343 BCE. Egyptian influence reached
deep into modern-day Libya and Nubia,
and, according to scholars, as far north as
Crete. An independent centre of civilisa-
tion with trading links to Phoenicia was
established by Phoenicians from Tyre on
the northwest African coast at Carthage.
European exploration of Africa began
with ancient Greeks and Romans. In 332
BCE, Alexander the Great was welcomed
as a liberator in Persian-occupied Egypt.
He founded Alexandria in Egypt, which
would become the prosperous capital of
the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death.
Following the conquest of North Afri-
ca’s Mediterranean coastline by the Ro-
man Empire, the area was integrated eco-
nomically and culturally into the Roman
system. Roman settlement occurred in
Wildebeest making the annual migration in the Serengeti modern Tunisia and elsewhere along the
coast. The first Roman emperor native
preceded agriculture and seems to have ly and led to increasing desertification. to North Africa was Septimius Severus,
existed alongside hunter-gatherer cul- This, in turn, decreased the amount of born in Leptis Magna in present-day Lib-
tures. It is speculated that by 6000 BCE, land conducive to settlements and helped ya – his mother was Italian Roman and
cattle were domesticated in North Africa. to cause migrations of farming commu- his father was Punic.
In the Sahara-Nile complex, people do- nities to the more tropical climate of West Christianity spread across these areas
mesticated many animals, including the Africa. at an early date, from Judaea via Egypt
donkey and a small screw-horned goat By the first millennium BCE, ironwork- and beyond the borders of the Roman
which was common from Algeria to Nu- ing had been introduced in Northern Af- world into Nubia; by 340 CE at the lat-
bia. rica and quickly spread across the Sahara est, it had become the state religion of
Around 4000 BCE, the Saharan climate into the northern parts of sub-Saharan the Aksumite Empire. Syro-Greek mis-
started to become drier at an exceeding- Africa, and by 500 BCE, metalworking sionaries, who arrived by way of the Red
ly fast pace. This climate change caused gradually became commonplace in West Sea, were responsible for this theological
lakes and rivers to shrink significant- Africa. Ironworking was fully established development.

64 l INDIAN ENGINEERING EXPORTS l AUGUST 2019