In class last week, our professor mentioned something that struck me. We were talking about the sub-Saharan ruins of Great Zimbabwe, and Mr. Watrall said that when one thinks of African archaeology, one usually assumes it is Ancient Egypt. He proceeded to discuss about the society of sub-Saharan Africa and I couldn’t help but think of the context of Africa and how it relates to Egypt. Egypt and Great Zimbabwe hold some characteristics in common, as in that it was run by a structured hierarchy and administered to trade. In terms of culture and history however, they could not be further.

Egypt’s trade, agriculture, infrastructure, and even religion revolved around the Nile. The two were and are inseparable, like other river civilizations. Civilization in ancient Egypt advanced rapidly through the Bronze Age and Iron Age, creating magnificent religious and royal structures that surpass even our modern day technology-based cities. Add to this that Egypt has been continuously governed by some form of a state for more than 5,000 years.

The same can’t be said for Great Zimbabwe. It became a place of settlement around the fourth century A.D. and it did not achieve a status of administrative sophistication that Egypt had until the eleventh century A.D. The culture is incredibly different too. Language, which is usually regarded as one of the key elements of culture, differ immensely between the two civilizations. Egypt’s language was based from an Afro-Asiatic language closely related to other Semitic languages, according to Wikipedia. The culture and language of Great Zimbabwe was  Bantu, a language exclusively of sub-Saharan Africa. Thus with two different languages, one can assume that the cultures of ancient Egypt and Great Zimbabwe were quite distinct.

The reason for this distinction is to address an observation that was mentioned both in the Egyptian unit and the Great Zimbabwe unit. The first is to highlight the incredible diversity that the continent of Africa has. It is a massive continent: it can fit three United States of America’s within it. From Mediterranean Africa to Saharan Africa to sub-Saharan Africa, there is so much to discover in one place, which is kind of comical, given that many people have generalized Africa as a jungle since European colonization. The generalization of the continent of Africa boils down to the argument that Africans as a whole were unintelligent people who were unable to establish systems of government and construct incredible features of architecture. The creation of both Egyptian and Zimbabwean material culture has been attributed to other cultures or beings by a significant proportion of the population. In order for people to understand the diversity of the continent, more focus should be put on the developments of Africa so that we today can appreciate the wonderful mosaic of cultures that it is.