African Cultures

Words to Know

Arab Ashanti Bedouin San Igbo Swahili Bantu

Graphic Organizer

Culture

Location Language

ReligionLife

Style

Ethnic group vs Religious Group

Ethnic groups share many common characteristics such as language, physical features, customs, and traditions

Religious groups share a common belief system but are not necessarily composted of a single ethnic group.

Africa Religious Groups

In Africa the three major religions are Traditional Beliefs, Christianity, and Islam.

Traditional beliefs may include worship of ancestors, spirits, gods, animals, land, inanimate objects, and/or natural phenomena.

Arab Arabic culture was first spread in the Middle East beginning

in the 2nd century as ethnically Arab Christians such as the Ghassanids, Lakhmids and Banu Judham began migrating into the Northern Arabian desert and the Levant. The Arabic language gained greater prominence with the rise of Islam in the 7th century AD as the language of the Qur'an.

Genealogical: someone who can trace his or her ancestry to the tribes of Arabia - the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula - and the Syrian Desert.

Language is Arabic, including any of its varieties. Location-througout the world however mostly in

North Africa and the Middle East.

Arab

Interactive Notebook Question (Left Side)

Think-Pair-Share

› Did you know Arabs were found all over North Africa?

› Do you think most Americans know that?

› Why do you think many Americans are not aware North Africans are Arabs?

Graphic Organizer

ArabMiddle

East and North Africa

Arabic

IslamModern(Varies

between affluent to

poverty

Ashanti

Ashanti, or Asante, are a major ethnic group in Ghana.

Prior to European colonization, the Ashanti people developed a large and influential empire in West Africa.

Today Ashanti number close to 7 million people (roughly 30% of the Ghanaian population. Their political power has fluctuated since Ghana's independence, but they remain largely influential. The current president of Ghana, John Agyekum Kufuor is Ashanti. The majority of the Ashanti reside in the Ashanti region, one of the administrative regions of the country. Kumasi, the capital of the current Ashanti region, has also been the historic capital of the Ashanti Kingdom.

The Ashanti are one of Africa's matrilineal societies where line of descent is traced through the female. Historically, this mother relationship determined land rights, inheritance of property, offices and titles.

The Ashanti require a bride price - various goods given by the boy's family to that of the girl. Sometimes nuptial arrangements were arranged before the birth of the couple. Parents allowed boys some initiative, but he must receive the consent of the households, the only formalities required.

Graphic Organizer

Ashanti

West Africa, Ghana

TWI

Traditional(Spiritual and supernatural

powers)

Modern (Poverty

)

Interactive Notebook Question (Left Side)

Think-Pair-Share› Why do the Ashanti practice Christianity?

Bedouin

Bedouin, are a desert-dwelling Arab nomads, found throughout most of the desert belt extending from the Atlantic coast of the Sahara via the Western Desert, Sinai, and Negev to the Arabian Desert. Non-Arab groups as well, notably the Beja of the African coast of the Red Sea are sometimes called Bedouin.

Changing ways of life Starting in the 1950's as well as the 1960s, many

Bedouins started to leave the traditional, nomadic life to settle in the cities of the Middle East. In Syria, for example, the Bedouin way of life effectively ended during a severe drought from 1958 to 1961, which forced many Bedouin to give up herding for standard jobs. Similarly, government policies in Egypt and Israel, oil production in Libya and the Persian Gulf, and a desire for improved standards of living have had the effect that most Bedouin are now settled citizens of various nations, rather than nomadic herders.

Bedouin

Graphic Organizer

BedouinSahara

Desert to the

Arabian Peninsula

Arabic

Sunni Islam

Modern/Nomadic

Bantu

Bantu is the name of a large category of African languages. It also is used as a general label for over 400 ethnic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa, from Cameroon across Central Africa and Eastern Africa to Southern Africa. These peoples share a common language family sub-group, the Bantu languages, and broad ancestral culture, but Bantu languages as a whole are as diverse as Indo-European languages.

The ancestral Bantu homeland was near the southwestern modern boundary of Nigeria and Cameroon (3000 BC).

Before the expansion of farming and herding peoples Africa south of the equator was populated by neolithic hunting and foraging peoples.

Bantu expansion

The Bantu expansion was a millennia-long series of physical migrations, a diffusion of language and knowledge out into and in from neighboring populations, and a creation of new societal groups involving inter-marriage among communities and small groups moving to communities and small groups moving to new areas. Bantu-speakers developed novel methods of agriculture and metalworking which allowed people to colonize new areas with widely varying ecologies in greater densities than hunting and foraging permitted. Meanwhile in Eastern and Southern Africa Bantu-speakers adopted livestock husbandry from other peoples they encountered, and in turn passed it to hunter-foragers, so that herding reached the far south several centuries before Bantu-speaking migrants did. Archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence all support the idea that the Bantu expansion was one of the most significant human migrations and cultural transformations within the past few thousand years.

Graphic Organizer

Bantu

Sub-Sahara Africa

Bantu

Traditional (Ancestors

)

Modern (Poverty

)

Interactive Notebook Question (Left Side)

Think-Pair-Share› What would have been a cause(s) for the

Bantu to move into different parts of Africa?

San

The Bushmen, San, Basarwa, Kung or Khwe are indigenous people of southern Africa which spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe , Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia and Angola. They were traditionally hunter-gatherers.

Genetic evidence suggests they are one of the oldest, if not the oldest, peoples in the world — a "genetic Adam" according to Spencer Wells, from which all humans can ultimately trace their genetic heritage.

Graphic Organizer

San

Southern Africa

Khoisan languages

Traditional Nomadic

Interactive Notebook Question (Left Side)

3-2-11. Name three European countries involved

in the colonization of Africa.2. List two reasons Europeans came to

Africa.3. Name one continent that was also

colonized by Europeans.

Swahili

Swahili is the first language of the Swahili people, who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, Swahili is the official working language of the African Union.

The language evolved through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast.

Graphic Organizer

Swahili

East Africa Swahili

Islam(traditional

minority) Modern

Learning Log

On the left side of your paper, answer these questions:

› 1. Today I learned…

› 2. Which culture did you struggle with?