History Of Africa: The Incredible Arts and Architecture Of African Civilizations

History Of Africa

History Of Africa: Precolonial Africa developed art not for its own sake, but for social, political, or religious reasons. Not only did people ornament the human body, utilitarian goods, and architectural buildings for aesthetic purposes, but also to demonstrate their taste and economic status. People used sculptures and masks to enhance communication between the human and spirit realms.

As a result, traditional African artists avoided imitative naturalism in favor of conceptual or symbolic depictions in order to portray a subject’s spiritual essence. Once mistaken for a failed attempt to accurately imitate nature and thus labeled “primitive” by evolutionist-minded anthropologists and art historians, this conceptual approach ironically inspired the birth of modernist art at the turn of the twentieth century, being canonized as the pinnacle of artistic creativity by Western artists such as Picasso and Matisse, among others, who had revolted against academic naturalism. 

This new development had both beneficial and negative effects on the study of African art. On the one hand, it removed the evolutionist prejudice against conceptual representations, forcing art historians to investigate the motivations behind their production, thus improving our grasp of African aesthetics. On the other hand, it encouraged a scholarly preference for Sub-Saharan African woodcarvings due to their fundamental influence on art. 

The emphasis on woodcarvings overshadowed considerable artistic expressions in other mediums, both within and outside Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, it separated the study of Sub-Saharan African art from that of the continent’s northern, northeastern, and southern regions, where different artistic traditions predominate, making it extremely difficult to conduct interdisciplinary research that could have shed light on historical interactions as well as extensive artistic exchanges among different groups during the precolonial period. 

It is encouraging to see, however, that some researchers are beginning to remedy this anomaly by looking outside the customary borders previously established for African art and presenting a more geographical and historical perspective. 

Even though there are still several gaps, it is now possible to attempt an overview of the artistic activities in the continent from the earliest times to the present thanks to new data from archeology, prehistoric rock art, various eyewitness accounts by Arab and European visitors to the continent between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, and the art works of African origin preserved in European collections from the fifteenth century onward.

The hundreds of thousands of rock paintings and engravings discovered around the continent demonstrate that art has played a vital part in African cultures since time immemorial. At any rate, the oldest African rock paintings discovered so far are from Apollo Cave 11 in Namibia, southwest Africa, and date back to around 2,000 BCE. Many of them are lifelike drawings of animals like antelopes, hippos, and rhinoceros made in charcoal on movable stones. Some paintings depict stylized human figures wearing animal and bird masks, possibly for ritual or hunting purposes. Throughout southern Africa, from Zimbabwe to the Cape, one can discover more elaborate depictions, containing animal and human figures in various styles, though their exact date remains uncertain.

The majority of them are assumed to have been produced by the ancestors of today’s San, who continue to paint and engrave on rock walls in conjunction with rainmaking, healing, initiation, hunting, fertility, and shamanistic rites. It’s possible that the vast majority of the rock art seen elsewhere on the continent once had comparable purposes.

The Sahara desert and North Africa have revealed some of the most magnificent engravings and paintings. We divide them into five major periods. The earliest, dating from the Bubalus period (c. 10,000 BCE), are distinguished by their concentration on lifelike renderings of hunting scenes and wild wildlife such as buffalo, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe, and other animals. 

Several engravings show rams with collars and a disk on their heads, implying either domestication or an association with supernatural forces. The Round Head period paintings (c. 9000 BCE) are primarily found in the Tassili n’Ajjer. The term refers to the large, featureless heads of the human figures in the majority of the paintings.

Some have extravagant body decoration, feathered headdresses, masks, and tails clothing, while others are portrayed sprinting, hunting, drumming, and dancing. Artists frequently combine front and side perspectives in the same figure. 

The Cattle/Pastoralist era art (dated between c. 6000 and 300 BCE) appears to indicate the beginning of the African Neolithic because of its emphasis on sedentary life: there are depictions of houses and special enclosures for domesticated animals, including sheep, goats, and cattle. Humans are frequently seen playing, herding animals, courting, and fighting. 
The use of frontal and side perspectives in the same figure persists and is particularly visible in animal renderings, which show the body in profile and the horns from the front. The Horse period paintings and engravings (c. 1200 BCE) depict charioteers and horsemen in the flying gallop style. 

The chronology is based in part on the style’s link with the “People of the Sea” from the Aegean Islands, who allegedly raided ancient Egypt in the second millennium BCE. The art of the Camel period is distinguished by a concentration on the camel, which is considered to have arrived in Africa around 700 BCE, while some researchers argue for a far later date. 

At any rate, archaeological excavations in the Sahara and North Africa, combined with representations of water-loving animals such as buffalo, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, giraffe, sheep, goat, and cattle in rock art, strongly suggest that the area once had a wetter climate and supported a large number of people who hunted and eventually domesticated some of the animals depicted. 

A progressive decline in rainfall appears to have prompted the ancient residents of the Sahara to flee to more hospitable locations along the Mediterranean shoreline and the Nile river, as well as Sub-Saharan Africa, among other places. The stylistic and thematic connections between prehistoric rock art from the Sahara and ancient Egypt show that some of its founders were Saharan immigrants. 

For example, the frontal-cum-profile form that distinguishes most of Saharan rock art would be carried over into ancient Egyptian art, as would the custom of depicting humans wearing tailed robes. Ancient Egypt quickly rose to become one of Africa’s most advanced civilizations, thanks to a combination of social, economic, political, and environmental influences. 

Ancient Egyptian art and architecture reflected a belief in the supernatural and a desire for immortality. To insure the gods’ goodwill, huge and beautifully decorated temples were built, complete with statues and murals. As the living representatives of the gods on earth, the kings (pharaohs) had great spiritual and political influence, as seen by the massive monuments commissioned during their reigns to preserve their legacy for posterity. 

Furthermore, the bodies of deceased pharaohs were mummified and hidden beneath pyramids, massive tombs, and mortuary temples furnished with pottery, household and ceremonial utensils, elaborate works of art in wood, stone, ivory, brass, marble, glass, and metal, as well as biographical murals, all designed to ensure that a king’s ka, or life force, lived on and continued to enjoy the same amenities in the afterlife. 

Retinue burial was used in the early centuries before being supplanted with miniatures of servants, courtiers, and soldiers whose spirits were said to await the departed king. Nubia, another early African state, emerged in the Nile Valley around the same time as ancient Egypt. It was located between present-day Darfur and Khartoum, and its populace was largely Black. 
The early arts of Nubia include adorned ceramics, clay figurines of humans and animals, jewelry, and beaded things. Some Nubian monarchs were buried behind massive circular mounds adorned with objects for the deceased’s use in the afterlife, similar to those found in ancient Egypt.

Although Nubian art and architecture had been influenced by Egypt since the third millennium BCE, when the two nations traded, this impact grew stronger between 1550 and 1100 BCE, when the pharaohs controlled Nubia and forced it to pay annual tribute. However, the Nubians used the war between Libya and Egypt around 1100 BCE to not only demonstrate their political independence but also to invade and impose Nubian authority on Egypt in the eighth century BCE. However, following its defeat and exile from Egypt by the Assyrians (c. 673 BCE), the Nubian dynasty returned to its homeland, founding a new capital at Napata and later, farther south, at Meroe, where Egyptian cultural and artistic influences persisted.

Between the first and sixth centuries, Christianity was introduced and expanded in North Africa, Egypt, Nubia/Meroe, and Aksum/Ethiopia, resulting in the development of new art and architectural styles. Basilicas were created in Numidia, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, Djemila, and Leptis Magna, among other places. Many basilicas featured biblical-themed paintings, murals, mosaics, and sculptures. According to the Greek shipping guidebook, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, published in the first century, Adulis, Aksum’s metropolis and primary seaport, was the most important ivory market in northeast Africa. 

It was also known for the sale of high-quality crafts, swords, incense, and herbal remedies. A thriving economy fueled the construction of prominent structures, temples, tombs, and public monuments. In the fourth century, the Aksum king, Ezana, turned to Christianity and declared it the state religion. However, by the seventh century, Adulis had deteriorated as a commercial center, prompting the foundation of a new capital in what is now Ethiopia. 

The rise of the Zagwe dynasty in the twelfth century heralded an age of economic progress that peaked in the thirteenth century, when King Lalibela commissioned gigantic rock-cut churches, some embellished with Byzantine murals yet reflecting an Ethiopian identity. Meanwhile, around 632, a new religion known as Islam emerged in the Arabian Peninsula, sweeping through Egypt and North Africa, replacing Christian basilicas with mosques and other forms of Islamic architecture, with an emphasis on the dome and minaret. 

The region’s old sculptural traditions were quickly displaced (though not entirely) by an Islamic concentration on ornamental arts. Although Islam did not reach all of Ethiopia and southern Nubia, it did spread along the East African coastline, which had been involved in the Red Sea/Indian Ocean trade for centuries, exporting slaves, ebony, ivory, rhino horns, gold, and leopard skins from the African interior to the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia, and importing glazed porcelains, carnelian and glass beads, scents, weapons, fabrics, and food plants. 

Prior to the Islamic era, large cities arose along the coast, from Mogadishu (Somalia) to Sofala (Mozambique). Between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, larger cities grew along the coast and on neighboring islands, distinguished by massive stone mansions, palaces, and mosques that, while influenced by Arab models, incorporated significant African contributions in terms of craftsmanship and form. This brings us to the cultural evolution of Sub-Saharan Africa. There is plenty of evidence that the region’s inhabitants connected with their North African counterparts as early as prehistoric times. 

For example, earthenware and ground stone implements found from Iwo Eleru in southeastern Nigeria and dated to around the sixth millennium BCE share considerable similarities with objects from the “wet” Sahara period. Furthermore, rock paintings from Mauritania, Mali, Niger, northern Nigeria, and Chad, as well as human and animal clay figurines discovered in a second millennium BCE context at Karkarichinka in the Tilemsi valley of northern Mali, are widely regarded as evidence of the southern spread of ancient Saharan populations. 

The Nok culture of northern Nigeria produced the oldest terracotta sculptures in Sub-Saharan Africa, which date from around the sixth century BCE to CE200. They comprise of human and animal depictions with very simplified and stylized features, with a focus on spherical and cylindrical shapes. The human body is almost usually dominated by the head, as seen in paintings from the Round Head period of Saharan rock art. 

However, Nok facial features are highly defined, and the eyes and nostrils are typically pierced. The stylistic difference in the representation of animal and human figures is also reminiscent of Saharan rock art, with the former being far more realistic than the latter. The Nok terracottas’ original context and cultural importance are unknown, but the placement of clay and terracotta on ancestral altars and tombs across the continent suggests that some of the former may have had a similar function. 

Other ancient terracotta sculptures in Sub-Saharan Africa have turned up at Ancient Djenne, Mali (tenth-sixteenth century), Komaland, Ghana (thirteenth-sixteenth century), Sao, Chad (thirteenth-sixteenth century), Yelwa, Nigeria (seventh century), Ife, Nigeria (twelfth-fifteenth century), ancient Benin, Nigeria (thirteenth-nineteenth century), and Lydenburg, South Africa (CE500-700), among others. 

Another prominent type of African art is sculpture and ritual/ceremonial artifacts cast in gold, copper, brass, or bronze using the lost wax method. So far, the earliest are from ancient Egypt, dating back to around the second millennium BCE. Those found in Nubia, Aksum, Meroe, Ethiopia, and various sections of North Africa are from a later period. 

Although Arab visitors to the ancient kingdoms of Ghana and Mali between the ninth and fifteenth centuries saw jewelry and ceremonial artifacts cast in gold, silver, and brass, the first bronze pieces created using the lost wax technique come from Igbo-Ukwu in southeastern Nigeria. Castings in the Igbo-Ukwu style have been discovered in numerous locations of eastern Nigeria, the lower Niger, and Cameroon, indicating that such things were traded (as prestige items) among cultures in precolonial periods.

Raw materials for casting were obtained through either local mining or long-distance trading. By the beginning of the twelfth millennium, painters in the Yoruba kingdom of Ife had mastered the lost wax method, which they used to create exceedingly realistic portraits of kings, queens, chiefs, and other notables. 

The method was brought to ancient Benin from Ife somewhere in the fourteenth century, and it was used to cast various sculptures and commemorative plaques. Ancient castings in brass/bronze, copper, and gold have been found in other parts of Africa, especially among the Bamana and Dogon of Mali, Baule of Côte d’Ivoire, Asante of Ghana, Fon of the Republic of Benin, Bamum and Bamileke of Cameroon, and Kongo of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre). 

Although Sub-Saharan African artisans carved in a variety of materials, including stone, ivory, and bone, wood was unquestionably the most popular medium of artistic expression in precolonial times because much of the continent is in the tropics and densely forested. 
Furthermore, wood is easy to carve and therefore inexpensive.

The dryness of northern and northeastern Africa has allowed woodcarvings from the second millennium BCE to remain in the Nile Valley. The oldest known specimen is a carved animal head discovered in 1928 on the banks of the Liavela River in central Angola and radiocarbon dated to the seventh century CE. 

As previously stated, much African woodcarving served a religious purpose in the shape of statues, masks, altar furniture, and ritual items used in the worship of deities and spirit forces. Others, such as carved pillars and royal staffs, neckrests, containers, beds, thrones, and stools, served secular purposes by projecting taste, reinforcing high status/political authority, or promoting social and gender harmony. 

Thus, the artists of a specific culture were previously schooled to work within a group style handed down from the past, with the goal of generating a sense of unity within the culture and distinguishing its art forms from those of its neighbors. However, certain more than coincidental similarities exist in the woodcarvings of west, central, equatorial, eastern, and southern Africa, particularly in the conceptual approach and emphasis on the head—similarities that highlight tighter ethnic connections in precolonial periods. 

In West Africa, the rise and fall of kingdoms (i.e., ancient Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Mossi, Asante, Oyo, Dahomey, and Benin) between the fourth and nineteenth centuries, the trans-Atlantic slave trade (CEfifteenth-nineteenth century), and the Fulani jihad of the nineteenth century triggered a series of population movements that not only relocated artistic styles but also encouraged cultural and aesthetic exchanges among contiguous and far-flung groups. 

These characteristics appear to be responsible for a specific formal and stylistic relationship between, say, the terracotta of ancient Djenne (CE tenth century) and the woodcarvings of the Tellem/Dogon, Bamana, Senufo, Mossi, Bwa, Nuna, Winiama, and Nunuma, respectively. A similar phenomenon occurred in central, equatorial, eastern, and southern Africa as a result of numerous waves of Bantu migrations into the region from the Nigerian/Cameroonian border in the early centuries of the Christian era. 

The heart-shaped face mask has a wide geographical distribution, ranging from southeast Nigeria to equatorial and southern Africa. Recent archaeological discoveries by Ekpo Eyo in Calabar have uncovered ceramics dating back to the first century CE, featuring diamond and circular designs typical in Kongo and Kuba art and implying some sort of genetic link, the exact nature of which has yet to be determined. 

Interethnic marriages, art trade, and military expansion linked with the Kongo, Luba, Lunda, Marawi, and Mutapa kingdoms all helped to homogenize forms and symbols in this region prior to colonization. Stone sculptures were made in various places of Sub-Saharan Africa before colonization, but they are now few. 

They range in style from naturalistic and semi-naturalistic to stylized representations. 
Others are anthropomorphized monoliths, such as those from Zimbabwe (thirteenth-fifteenth centuries) and the akwanshi ancestral figures of the Ekoi-Ejagham (eighteenth century), who live in the Cross River region of the Nigeria-Cameroon border.

Tondidarou monoliths in Mali (seventh century) have a phallic shape, whereas some in Zimbabwe are pillar-shaped and ornamented with reptiles and bird themes. Many old monuments in north and northeastern Africa, as well as along the Swahili coast, have survived for centuries thanks to the use of stone and other durable materials in architecture. 

However, the prevalence of perishable materials for construction in many Sub-Saharan African societies restricted the life duration of most buildings, with the exception of a few. In precolonial periods, mud or clay were the most popular wall materials; however, they were occasionally blended with palm oil, shea butter, cow dung, and other bonding agents. The roof was usually covered in leaves or grasses.

This building method continues to this day, coexisting with the use of modern construction materials and processes. In coastal or swampy areas (typically inhabited by fishermen), the most common dwelling design is a rectangular, gable-roofed home with bamboo or wooden walls built on stilts to prevent flooding. 

Moving away from the coast, one comes upon the rectangular wattle-and-daub dwelling. The wall is frequently constructed of intertwined branches or mangrove poles plastered with the brittle mud typical in this area. However, in the rainforest and tropical forests, where the laterite soil contains less water (and thus more plastic), the wattle is removed. 

Frequently, four rectangular constructions are grouped to form a courtyard with a hole in the center to drain rainwater. The Kuba and other people who live around the Kasai and Sankuru rivers frequently decorate their homes with woven mats. A verandah is typically supported by figurated posts and runs along the courtyard of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. 

The ruins of many ancient constructions with mortarless dry stone walling have survived in eastern central Africa, south of the Zambesi River, an area of open grassland and rock formations, at Bam bandyanalo, Khami Leopard Kopje, Mapela, Mapun gubwe, and Naletale, among others, dating from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries. The most advanced construction is in Great Zimbabwe. 

The Shona built it between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it is made up of three groups of structures: an enclosure with high stone walls that appears to have originally served as a palace and temple, a series of walls and enclosures, and what appears to be a ram pant. According to Shona oral tradition and archaeological digs, farmers and cattle herders lived on the site and in the surrounding area, benefiting from the long-distance commerce in gold and ivory between the Swahili coast and the African interior. 

In West Africa’s dry savannah region known as the Sahel (the Arabic word for “shore” because it borders the Sahara desert), round and rectangular homes cohabit frequently; the flat, mud-plastered roof is popular in this area. In metropolitan places, rectangular shapes outweigh round ones. Adobe, or sun-dried clay blocks combined with dung or straw, is the primary building material used here. 

The walls of Hausa and Fulani houses are covered with interlace motifs in high relief, mimicking embroidery patterns found on clothes, leatherwork, and carved doors, as well as showing Islamic influence from North Africa and the Near East. This impact may be traced back to the 17th century, when Arab and Berber traders began to settle in western Sudan and other Sahelian regions, bringing with them certain characteristics of Islamic art and architecture.

Contemporary Developments

Western-style architecture, such as concrete, steel, and glass high-rises, dominates the skylines of many African cities today. This occurrence dates back to the fifteenth century, when European slave traders built temporary houses, castles, and forts along Africa’s coast, from Cape Blanco in Mauritania to Mombasa in Kenya. 

The arrival of Dutch settlers at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 marked the beginning of the progressive Westernization of South Africa’s terrain, transforming towns like Cape Town and Johannesburg into the “concrete jungles” they are today. The European colonization of the continent at the end of the nineteenth century has since spread this Westernization process to virtually every nook and cranny, resulting in the widespread use of cement, burnt bricks, steel, glass, corrugated iron roofs, and asbestos in modern building construction. 

In precolonial Africa, the layout of a house or compound was defined by the family’s social structure and size, with construction being a communal endeavor that included all members of a specific household, as well as friends, relatives, and certain trades. This resulted in all structures within a given civilization having a similar appearance; however, economic position controlled the size and level of adornment.

European colonialism changed all of that by introducing the concept of an architect whose design must be approved by the government before a structure can be constructed, particularly in metropolitan areas. Such a design usually reflects the architect’s individualism or Western schooling. Urbanization has also disrupted rural life, prompting many to relocate to cities in quest of modern education and higher-paying jobs. 

A rented city apartment’s limited area discourages African extended family residency, which is common in traditional compounds. While decolonization has prompted some African architects to draw inspiration from traditional African architecture, they still prioritize global trends shaped by Western materials and spatial principles. A comparable scenario arises in the visual arts. 

Many urbanized Africans have renounced their traditional beliefs, particularly the old concept that art can affect the spirit realm, due to Western education and widespread conversion to Islam and Christianity since the turn of the twentieth century.

Western-style art schools, a byproduct of colonialism, introduced the concept of “art for art’s sake” and an imitative naturalism that emphasizes the cultivation of a personal idiom of expression, as opposed to the precolonial period, when artists in a given culture were expected to conform to a set of rules that allowed for individual and regional variations. 

After losing many of their native consumers, many traditional painters now labor for the tourism industry, mass duplicating historical forms and sometimes copying the styles of other ethnic groups (like African art books) to meet trade demand.

In short, contemporary African art represents not only the metamorphic changes brought about by colonialism, urbanization, industrialization, and new socioeconomic pressures, but also the desperate battle to cope with them. Political independence has sparked nationalism, igniting the search for an African identity, despite its formative period’s desire to imitate Western forms and styles, which turned off many art historians and collectors.

Many formal and informally trained contemporary African artists, aware of their rich artistic heritage and contributions to modern art, are now returning to their roots in an attempt to reconcile the present with the past in order to create new forms that capture the spirit of the postcolonial era. 

Some draw influence from indigenous African sculptures, while others, particularly those from Islamicized civilizations, experiment with nonfigurative art, blending Arabic calligraphy with abstract forms. The growing international interest in the study and collection of modern African art demonstrates its ingenuity and potential. 

In conclusion, an examination of African art and architecture from prehistoric times to the present demonstrates considerable interactions between northern and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as different responses to external influences. The similarities are just as profound as the differences. As a result, there is an urgent need to unify the continent’s art history in order to allow for a more impartial analysis of continuities and changes in form, style, context, and meaning.

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