African Society and Culture Life in Medieval Africa

1. African Society and Culture Life in Medieval Africa MAIN IDEA: The Bantu migrations helped shape many cultures in Africa south of the Sahara. • Wherever they went, Bantu took their culture with them and spread skills such as pottery making, mining, and ironworking. • The Bantu migrations or movements of a large number of people are the reason people all across Africa share some common ideas and traditions. • The family formed the basis of African society • People often lived in extended families and many villages especially bantu villages, were matrilineal.

2. Role of Woman • As in most medieval societies, African women acted mostly as wives/mothers, but also soldiers. Dahia al Kahina led the fight against Muslim invasion of her kingdom. • Queen Nzinga who ruled lands in today’s Angola and Congofought the Portuguese slave traders (40yrs)

3. Slavery MAIN IDEA: the African slave trade changed greatly when Muslims and Europeans began taking captives from the continent. Slavery within Africa • Europeans did not invent slavery and Bantu chiefs raided nearby villages for captives that became laborers or were freed for a payment. • Africans also enslaved criminals or enemies taken in war and they became part of the Saharan trade.

4. The European Slave trade • Portuguese ship docked a port in Portugal with enslaved Africans in the cargos • Some merchants who had hoped to sell gold brought humans from Africa and sold them as laborers • Harvesting sugarcane was labor intensive hard and planters could not pay high wages to get workers. • Late 1400s= Europeans arrived in the Americas (with African slaves) and set up sugar plantations.

5. African Culture MAIN IDEA: Enslaved Africans developed rich culture that influenced many other cultures, including our own. • When slave traders seized Africans like Equiano from their homelands, they also uprooted their cultures. • African’s and their decedents held on to memories of their cultures and passed them down from generation to generation.

6. Music and Dance • Music played a part in almost every aspect of African life used to express religious feelings / every day tasks. • Musical instruments were used such as drums, whistles, horns, flutes, banjos to keep the beat. • Africans believed dance allowed the spirits to express themselves /used it to celebrate important events such as birth and death. • Music was used by enslaved Africans to remind them of their homeland.

7. Storytelling •Africans also kept alive their storytelling and tradition a few that escaped were able to record their stories. • Some African Americans have renewed ties with their past heritage by taking or giving African names.