The Toubou - Chad

Found primarily in Chad, Libya, Niger, and Sudan, the Toubou consist of two smaller ethnic groups, the Teda and Dazagra people. The Toubou are semi-nomadic herders traveling between scattered oasis, wadis, and wells within the territories of each clan. Animal husbandry includes tending cattle and sheep, but focuses on raising camels; a family’s wealth and status is dependent on how many camels they own. Fitted with saddles, Toubou camels provide recreational and practical uses; they are trained for ceremonial racing or used for traveling between settlements. Adapt as camel riders, the Toubou had a long history of being fierce warriors patrolling the trade routes across the Northern Sahara. The Toubou speak Tebu, part of the western branch of the Nilo-Saharan languages. The Toubou population is estimated at less than one million with more than half residing in Chad.

The Egyptians

The history of ancient Egypt spans three millennium. It began in 3200 BC when Lower and Upper Egypt were unified during the Early Dynastic Period and ended with the conquest of Egypt by Macedonia under Alexander the Great in 332 BC. This immense time span recorded the rise and fall of 30 dynasties ruling over one of the most enduring and powerful empires the world had ever seen. The Egyptians took pyramid building to new heights, were able to make paper from papyrus, created a system of hieroglyphics, used alphabetic, syllabic symbols, and ideograms to record their history, and they were able to design a remarkably accurate calendar. The Egyptians were the first to harness oxen to plow their fields and the first to rig their boats with sails for traveling up and down the Nile River. Their accomplishments are impressive and set standards for further innovations..

The Zulu

The Kraal was a typical design for Zulu homesteads. The word is derived from the Portuguese “curral” and is similar to the Spanish “corral.” In the Zulu language they were known as Isibaya. Kraals were built as two circular stockades. The inner stockade protected the livestock during the night from wild animals and thieves. The outer stockade served as a fortified barrier to protect the settlement against enemy attack. The huts were constructed in a beehive shape and featured mud brick walls with grass domes. The outer walls were made from thorny acacia trees and were tightly compacted to create an impenetrable shield. The huts were arranged in ranking order and the one nearest the entrance was reserved for the village chief. Kraals were built on gentle slopes with the entrance facing downhill. This position allowed rainwater to drain away faster and made it difficult for an enemy having to attack uphill.

The Inuit

The Inuit people migrated and inhabited the various regions of the Arctic circle extending from Alaska to Greenland. They are the most recent arrivals in the Americas prior to the European crossing of the Atlantic. Scientific evidence points to an arrival time from Siberia and their expansion out of Western Alaska at about 1000 AD. The Inuit have adapted themselves well to their harsh and isolated environment, a factor in helping them to remain somewhat intact as a cultural group. Inuit society was based strictly on hunting and was highly mobile as the nomadic communities followed the seasonal migration of the seals, whales, and caribou. They were able to build comfortable living quarters made of snow and ice. These igloos were constructed in various sizes to serve as either temporary hunting shelters, family quarters or as community dwellings able to accommodate twenty people.

The Kwakwaka'wakw

The Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest were the first people to inhabit Northern Vancouver Island and the coastal areas of present day British Columbia. They are noted for their exceptional skills in carving intricate totem poles for the purpose of tracing and recording relationships with their ancestors. Animal bone, sea shells, and wood were primarily used by the Kwakwaka'wakw to carve items for personal and ceremonial functions or as a commodity to be traded with other clans. The western red cedar was a preferred tree used in fashioning totem poles. The tree was abundant and the red wood was soft with few knots. For smaller carvings, the Kwakwaka'wakw used yellow cedar,  a hard wood, but still easy to be worked over by hand. The current population consists of approximately 6,000 people of whom less than 5% continue to speak their native language.

The Maya

 

 

Mayan Glyphs - The classic period of Maya history was a period of spectacular achievements in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, architectural design, agricultural planning, and urban development. The Maya built cities larger than those of Europe and elegant pyramids rivaling those of Egypt. The Maya codices were folding books inscribed with colorful glyphs. The books, made from the bark of fig trees, recorded various aspects important to Maya civilization: astronomical tables, divination, almanacs, and other issues. In an attempt to subdue the Maya culture, the Spanish suppressed or destroyed the books; a few have survived. Maya writing is based on logograms, a written character is used to represent a word or morpheme. There are other Mesoamerican scripts, but the Mayan style, dating from 2,200 years ago, is the most highly developed.

The Pirates

Spain was the first European power to establish a hold in the Americas, but the other European powers began to compete with Spain for the riches of the newly discovered Americas. The English, Dutch, and French were as determined in staking out their own claims in the New World as the Spanish were reluctant in sharing it. This friction led to a period of piracy in the Americas lasting until the early 18th century.

The Golden Age of piracy in the Americas began in the 1650’s and was centered in the Caribbean Sea. The loaded treasure fleets sailing to Europe were heavily guarded, but not enough to discourage characters such as William Kidd, Frederick Philipse, Edward Teach, Bartholomew Roberts or Oliver de Buze from the risk of swinging from the gallows if captured. Women also managed to command crews of buccaneers plundering the Spanish Main: Anne Bonny and Mary Read. These raiders were usually secretly sanctioned by legitimate heads of state in their attempts to undermine Spanish power.

Britain had been an early and staunch supporter of many buccaneers as a means of fighting a proxy war against Spain, but this changed once they established their own American colonies. It was in Britain’s best interest to play a leading role in the fight to eliminate piracy from the high seas. It was in their best interest to co-exist with their former enemy and promote trade between Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

The Aztec

The Aztec Sun Stone was derived from the Mayan calendar, but was not used as an astrological or astronomical resource guide. The exact purpose of the stone is unknown; it may have served as a ceremonial altar. The massive carving is 358 centimeters in diameter, 98 centimeters thick, and weighs 24 tons. The Spanish were eager to rid themselves of anything related to Aztec culture and buried the basalt stone in the Zócalo, the main plaza of Mexico City, where it remained for several decades. In 1790, the Sun Stone was unearthed during an extensive repair project on the nearby cathedral. The stone was incorporated into the cathedral’s structure and remained there until 1885; it was removed from the cathedral and added to the extensive collection of the Museo Nacional de Antropología. The Aztec referred to the ceremonial stone as the “Cuauhxicalli Eagle Bowl.”

The Diné

The Navajo, also known as the Diné, are the largest remaining group of Native Americans in the United States; there are over 300,000 individuals counting themselves as Navajo. Arizona and New Mexico are hosts to the largest population centers. They are noted for their remarkable adaption to the desert regions of the American southwest and their skills in silver-smithing and weaving. Incorporating turquoise with silver-smithing in fashioning jewelry has become iconic of Diné culture. The Diné refined their weaving skills when they adapted themselves to the upright looms used by the Pueblo people. The finely woven blankets of the Diné have three basic design patterns referred to as phases. Blankets woven in first phase patterns are limited to horizontal stripes, second phase patterns use red rectangular designs, and the third phase patterns make use of red diamond shapes.

The Han

Most people in China refer to themselves ethnically as Han, the largest of several ethnic groups making up the country’s population. The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China and flourished, with a brief interruption, from 206 BC to 220 AD. This time span is often referred to as the “Golden Age” for China. The Han Dynasty ushered in a period of renaissance in promoting innovations such as a new method of producing better paper, the wheelbarrow, glazed pottery, hot air balloons, and an early version of a seismograph. Zhang Heng, a court astronomer, had devised the first known seismograph. When an earthquake occurred, the bronze jar would shake open the dragon’s mouth and cause a ball to fall into the toad’s mouth directly beneath it. This device had a limited range in detecting distant earthquakes, but it worked well enough on a local level.

The Alemanni

The list of Germanic people is extensive and includes the well-known: the Alemanni, Saxons, and Vandals, and the not so well-known: the Bavarii, Heruli, and Raetovari. The various Germanic tribes had a common ethno-linguistic bond and point of origin, Northern Europe. Early Roman accounts listed five distinct groups of Germanic people: the North Germans, the North Sea Germans, the Weser-Rhein Germans, the Elbe Germans, and the East Germans. Germanic settlements were small and leadership was delegated to a chieftain. Villages were linked together through kinship rather than loyalty to distant rulers. A village found success in practicing good agricultural and animal husbandry skills. Plows were used to work the soil and wheeled carts to transport the surplus. Large cattle herds were a badge of honor and provided the people with dairy products, draft animals, and meat.

Neandertal Man

Several bone fragments recovered in 1856 from a limestone quarry located in the Neander Valley became the type specimen for eandertal man. Originally, the bones were dismissed as belonging to a cave bear, but further examination concluded the remains having distinctive hominoid features. A comparison of the typical modern human skull (top) with a Neandertal skull shows the characteristic forward projection in the middle of the face, the voluminous nose, rounded eye orbits, double-arched brow ridges, and the lack of chin. Viewed from the side, the skull is low and long. The rear view reveals the globular outline of the braincase of the Neandertal as compared to the “breadloaf” shape of the modern human skull. Despite the close DNA similarities, scientists are uncertain if Neandertal should be classified as a subspecies of Homo sapiens or as a distinctive species.

Oceania - Introduction

Archeological records show evidence of a migration known as “Out of Taiwan” having occurred between 3000 and 1000 BC. Polynesian people, a subset of the Austronesian people, began migrating from Taiwan into Southwest Asia, Indonesia, East Malaysia, and the Philippines. By 1400 BC, the islands of Melanesia had been settled and within four centuries the distant islands of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa had been reached and established as thriving communities. The entire Pacific Ocean lay open for colonization by the Polynesian people and they managed to reach the limit when they arrived on Rapa Nui, Easter Island, by the 13th century. Polynesian ability to migrate and settle the Pacific islands was not based on a stroke of good luck. Their vessels and navigational equipment must have been as exceptional as their knowledge and skills in being able to sail the vast Pacific Ocean.

Indigenous People of Australia

The term “aborigine” is often used as a broad definition when referring to the indigenous people of Australia. The word encompasses all the original inhabitants of the Australian landmass and surrounding islands, but does not acknowledge any specific group.  When the Europeans arrived in Australia, they found over 250 different languages being spoken by almost as many distinct groups of people. Pitjantjatjara is still one of the most widely spoken native languages in Australia. The Pitjantjatjara people had settled in Australia’s central desert, an area stretching from Uluru in the north to Nullarbor Plain in the south. The scientific community is beginning to form a consensus in their evaluation of the pre-colonial history of Australia. Evidence strongly suggests the first inhabitants of the Australian continent arrived from Africa 65,000 to 75,000 years ago and used Southeast Asia as a land bridge.

The Māori

When the Maori arrived to colonize New Zealand, they brought with them special design patterns. These patterns, referred to as Kowhaiwhai, are slightly different for each tribe. They were used in paintings or as a means of decorating the bow of war canoes, canoe paddles, containers, and the community meeting house, known as the wharenui. The ridge pole and rafters of these meetings houses as well as the window trimmings and doors were covered with these intricate patterns. Each curve or swirl would have a specific name and some of the patterns were made to represent natural objects such as sharks or the beaks of parrots and sometimes as rolling waves. The colors used for painting these designs were limited to black, red, and white. The black color was usually made from soot and the red from ochre mixed with shark oil.

The Vikings

The Vikings were Germanic seafarers, who despite their fierce reputation of engaging in acts of plundering and piracy, were also successful merchants, traders, and colonists. They used their skills in seamanship to open and maintain extensive trading routes in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. At a time when the compass and sextant were unknown, they had mastered the skill of celestial navigation with uncanny precision. In their quest for new trading markets and to satisfy the need for establishing new settlements, the Vikings migrated as far as Iceland, Greenland, and North America. The Viking Age began in the late 8th century and endured until the mid 11th century. Their ability to build advanced ships and boats; longships, karves, and faerings, provided the Vikings with the opportunity to overwhelm their rivals with military might and commercial entrepreneurship.