SOURCES FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION OF AFRICAN PAST

1. THEME II
SOURCES FOR THE
RECONSTRUCTION
OF AFRICA’S PAST

2. What is a
historical
source?
 “Sources are artifacts that have been left
by the past. They exist either as relics,
what we might call ‘remains’, or as
testimonies of witnesses to the past.”
(Howell & Prevenier 2001, p. 17).

3. What is a historical
source? C’td.
• Hand axes – found in Kathu
(Northern Cape Province,
South Africa)
Credit: Credit: Steven James Walker
& et al.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0103436.g0
06

4. What is a historical source? C’td.
 Historians generally distinguish between two types of
sources:
a. Primary Sources
b. Secondary Sources

5. Reconstructing Africa’s Past: an impossible task?
 Two Key Challenges
a. Scepticism and dismissive attitude of the Western academy
“Perhaps in the future there will be
some African history to teach. But at
present there is none; only
the history of Europeans in Africa.
The rest is darkness.” Hugh Trevor-
Roper

6. Reconstructing
Africa’s Past
C’td.
Dearth of Written records on Africa

7. Major Sources
• Written Sources:
a. Ancient African scripts
Egyptian
Hieroglyphs

8. Major Sources C’td.
 Written Accounts of Muslim
travellers and geographers

9. Major Sources
• Written Accounts of
European traders,
Missionaries, and later
Colonial administrators

10. Major Sources
 Earlier Written accounts of African Missionaries
Carl Reindorf
Samuel Johnson

11. Critique of
earlier Written
Sources
Two key Issues!
 Biased and prejudiced observers?
 Narrowly focused?

12. Oral Sources to
the rescue?
 What is Oral History?
 “Personal reminiscence solicited by the
researcher in an interview format and it
may focus on the life history of the person
being interviewed, on specific events of
interest to the historian, or on the
interviewees idiosyncratic memories of a
family, neighbourhood, community or
movement.’’ (Babara M. Cooper, 2005)

13. Oral History C’td.
 Oral Tradition:
Memories of the past handed
down from one generation to
another through word of mouth.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/oral-tradition-and-indigenous-
knowledge

14. Critique of the
use of Oral
Tradition
 It is not precise in details
 Problems with chronology
 Tendency for an account to exaggerated
or distorted
 Raises difficult problems of interpretation
and ambiguity

15. History and other disciplines
• Archaeology:
Sterkfontein caves

16. • Anthropology
a. Palaeoanthropology
b. Social Anthropology

17. • Historical Linguistics