History of Africa - Mother Africa

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.  I am doing the first episode of the series and, it is thirteen days into February.  Oh well, I discovered this series while working on documentaries about Ancient Egypt so I suppose that will be my excuse for doing this series out of order.  This episode is called Mother Africa and has a run time of 44:56.

Zeinab Badawi travels across Africa to learn about the origins of humankind in the first episode of History of Africa.  She learns how and why humans evolved in Africa.  She gets access to the actual bones that were discovered.  Her travels take her to Tanzania and learns about a tribe where they continue to live as hunter-gatherers.  This community has been rarely filmed and provides insights into how our ancestors lived.

Zeinab kicks off her travels in Tanzania.  She is at the top of a volcanic crater, it is one of the most complete volcanic craters in the world.  Then she makes her way to a river bed where she meets a tribe that continues the traditions of hunter and gatherers.  She meets up with a guide who knows this tribe well.  They are isolated from the modern world.  This tribe has about a thousand people in it and they are divided into autonomous groups.  These groups are spread out among the area.  They only eat what they can kill and find and will move around to better grounds.

Zeinab gives her greeting to a majority male group.  She then greets the women.  The men and women work on separate activities.  She meets the women making crafts and Zeinab learns that the women are the foragers and gatherers.  This tribe has been carefully studied because they live a life that no longer exists.  Although there are governments and leaders that have offered them farmland, they refuse and maintain their traditional lifestyle.  There is no desire for modern life nor do people track their age.  This was a rather interesting section and you wonder how this group feels about sharing their way of living with outsiders.  I rather enjoyed Zeinab trying to shoot a bow, it takes a few times but she manages to shoot it and you will too.  It was also rather cool to see members of the tribe sheltering in a large tree.

After this trip to the tribe, Zeinab traces the evidence of humankind in Africa.  She explores the Leaky family who research bones and they are trying to trace human evolution.  She goes to Rwanda to track down gorillas.  It takes an hour before Zeinab finally traces a group of gorillas.

She talks about the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and traces the evidence that had been found in regards to the ape-man, creatures between humans and apes.  An expert in bones is brought in and he talks about the skulls that had been found.  Zeinab also interviews a member of the Leaky family to talk about evolution.  Then she learns about Lucy and Lucy’s discovery in Ethiopia.  Lucy was considered the most complete skeleton discovered.  The real bones are kept under lock and key in a temperature-controlled environment.  To learn more about humankind coming out of Africa continue to watch this documentary.

The only thing that could make this series better was consistency in dividing the episodes into chapters to help facilitate easy breakdowns for lectures and to track down time.  I also feel like these episodes could have been a little bit longer because although this is a basic history of Africa, I feel like more information should have been shared.  I also do not know if Zeinab has any training in history, but she does do a good job presenting historical information.  I am still demanding Zeinab and Gus get together to do a history show together.

This episode would be more appropriate for a science class with the section on the hunter-gatherer tribe would be excellent for an anthropology class.  This is why I suggest that this episode should have been divided into chapters.  However, if you go to a religious school you may want to give this episode a skip.