Introduction

When did the history of West Africa begin?

For thousands of years, African history was oral history. It was told and passed on from generation to generation by the griots or storytellers. Because there were no written records until the 10th century, in fact, Europeans thought sub-Saharan Africa had no history at all. It was with the Arab expansion across the Sahara that written records began to be made of Africa's past. We have now uncovered documents in the Arabic language dating back to 970 A.D., but for centuries they remained unknown to Europeans. In general, these documents lend credence to oral histories told over the centuries. Still, many details of African civilization in the centuries before contact with Arabs and Europeans are not known. What is known is that some of the world's great empires arose in sub-Saharan Africa, most notably, the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, and the Songhai Empire. They represented a culmination of cultural development that took thousands of years.

Around the end of the second millennium B.C., it is thought that people changed from hunting, gathering, and fishing to herding animals and cultivating wild grasses -- sorghum, millet, and rice. The Soninke people, who now live in Mali, Gambia, and Senegal, believe that during the second or third century A.D. their ancestors settled in the wide valley that lay between the Senegal River to the west and the Niger River to the east. This area was part of a vast territory called the Bilad es Sudan, the "land of the blacks" by the Arabs. This region, over time, became known as the Sudan (not to be confused with the present-day country of Sudan). It was in the Sudan that the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai Empires developed.

What is history?

In the Virginia Standards of Learning, history and its role in the curriculum are presented this way:

"History should be the integrative core of the curriculum, in which both the humanities (such as art and literature) and the social sciences (political science, economics, and geography) come to life. Through the study of history, students can better understand their own society as well as others. By understanding the relationship between past and present, students will be equipped to deal with problems that might arise in the future. Students will understand chronological thinking and the connections between causes and effects and between continuity and change. History enables students to see how people in other times and places have grappled with the fundamental questions of truth, justice, and personal responsibility, to understand that ideas have real consequences, and to realize that events are shaped both by ideas and the actions of individuals."