Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening depending on when you are reading this blog post. I am working through the History of Africa series with Zeinab Badawi. Now I am doing episode two of the series and it is called Cattle, Crops, and Iron. The run time for this episode is 45:16.
Zeinab Badawi works through the history of Africa. She travels to meet the Maasai tribe of East Africa. The Maasai are the best-known group from Africa. The Maasai explain how humans started to domesticate animals and became pastoralists. Then Zeinab travels to Zimbabwe and visits a lively family. She looks at how humans make a living from farming after settling down. Then she learns about the impact of the Iron Age which would pave the way for the development of urban civilizations. Zeinab Badawi introduces that this series is part of UNESCO’s efforts to document the history of Africa as told by Africans. She reminds the viewer that the first humans were hunter-gatherers and talks about the Stone Age. Early humans would have left Africa and spread around the world. It was suggested that the early humans moved due to climate change. There would have been competition for scarce resources. Africa is a land of diverse landscapes and climates; the history can be very complicated to look at. Zeinab then tours the waterfalls of the Zambezi River. It is a river that flows through several African countries. The lands were fertile and would have been primed for settlement. The people would have raised sheep, goats, and cattle. Over time they would have been bred and domesticated. She meets up with Professor Felix who specializes in early human settlements. They talk about the evidence that was discovered about the early hunter-gatherers as well as the settlements that emerged. The Rift Valley is the place best for discovering the evidence of early settlements. She then meets up with the Maasai tribe. They are the best-known of the tribes and live in both Kenya and Tanzania. The Maasai boys are responsible for herding livestock. Zeinab is taken to a Maasai tribe by a local guide and they talk about the tribe and the importance of cattle to the Maasai people. “No meat, no people” the local guide puts it. She talks about how the Maasai people put up fences to protect their settlements and their cattle from wild animals. Zeinab chats with a local woman and she discovered that it is the women that build the houses and take care of the settlement. She concludes that women work harder than men. Zeinab goes into the hut. The women gather water and wood. The Maasai had to adapt to their environment and make use of the world around it. After this visit to the Maasai tribe, she talks with Professor Ngawbi. He contributed to the General History of Africa. He talks about domestic animals and how they were owned communally. Then he talks about how power structures emerged to help herd those cattle and raid other communities to get more cattle. He talks about how chiefs rose and established hereditary systems to keep the power and wealth in the family. If you had cattle, you were a very rich person indeed. He concludes with how proud he is in the modern age to own cattle. At the same time, farming was developing. The people started building shelters and started planting seeds. When farming first developed the land was owned in common. However, today farms are held by families. Zeinab narrates the lifestyle of one farming family and talks about what crops they grow and weed on the farm. This section on the farming family was pretty cool. To continue to follow this farming family as well as learn more about the History of Africa tune into the rest of this episode to find out. I still want a Gus and Zeinab co-hosted history series. They would be a good pairing to explore more of the history of Africa going beyond the initial series History of Africa based on the General History of Africa as well as the Lost Kingdoms of Africa series. This continues to be a series I would recommend for a history class.
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