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Title: The Cambridge History of Africa : Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC by J. Desmond Clark ISBN: 0-521-22215-X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 25 February, 1982 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $230.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: An incredibly valuable resource!
Comment: This is an eight-volume history of Africa that I can't recommend highly enough. Patiently working my way through it over the course of several months did more to reduce my ignorance of human history than anything else I have ever done. I found several discussions particularly helpful:

- the physical evidence for human origins in Africa south of the Sahara

- The colonization of Madagascar by voyagers from Malaysia, which introduced the banana and several other valuable food crops into Africa in classical times

- How the conquest of valley-dwelling, agricultural Hutu by hilltop-dwelling, cattle-herding Tutsi serendipitously benefited both cultures, since manure from Tutsi cattle enabled greater Hutu cultivation of the banana

- How the Iron Age came to Africa south of the Sahara (this was what led me to this work in the first place)

- The breadth and depth of Arab learning and philosophy at the height of the Muslim empires during Europe's Middle Ages

I did find the discussions of late-Christian Egypt and Arab civilization more difficult to follow than the rest, because these discussions make heavy use of italicized Egyptian and Arabic words without bothering to explain them to the non-expert reader. This forced me to keep going back and re-reading earlier passages as I figured out these terms' likely meanings from their context in later passages.

Overall, however, this is a work I would love to have on my own bookshelf, if it weren't so very costly to purchase. The copy I read belongs to the King County Library system. (Seattle and Redmond, Washington, are the best-known cities in King County.)