Education For Life Academy

Education For Life Academy

Where Black History Lives!

Unit 1: Ancient Africa (200,000 B.C. – 646 A.D.)

The Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Curriculum

Around 3800 – 3500 B.C.E., Africans founded one of the first and most advanced civilizations in world history in the Nile Valley region of Africa, which included modern day Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. In fact, the oldest human remains ever found were discovered in Africa, with recent discoveries emerging in Ethiopia. According to Ethiopians and other historians of antiquity, Ethiopia is the oldest civilization on earth. It fostered the civilization of Nubia to the west, which in turn influenced the civilization of Egypt in the north. Although Egypt represents some of highest cultural achievements of Nile Valley civilizations, it is the product of the collective African genius. For example, pyramids were built in Nubia before they were built in Egypt, and the foundations of Egyptian religion can be found in both Nubia and Ethiopia.The Nile River, the longest in the world, connected Africans in the south to those in the north and the interior. Together, these Africans shared and expanded their knowledge and resources and practiced similar cultural and religious rituals.

Egypt, by its location, had the highest contact with the non-African world, and was subsequently invaded and conquered in ancient times by the Hyksos, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Turks, the French and the British. Thus, Egyptian society was always a melting pot of African and foreign cultures, resulting in a population with highly varied skin colors. Yet the people who established Egypt – its first Dynastic Pharaohs and those who built the Great Pyramids, were from southern and eastern Africa.

Because of the splendor and unequivocal brilliance of Ancient Egypt, those who cultivated the modern racist theories of the 18th – 19th centuries began to claim that Egypt was actually established by Caucasians – not Africans. Therefore, the first class of this unit will explore the racialization of Ancient Egypt. The Greeks referred to this extraordinary civilization as Aegyptos, the origin of the name Egypt. But Africans called their land “KMT” or Kemet. The people of Ancient Kemetic/Egypt invented one of the oldest writing systems, including paper made out of papyrus, and established the world’s first libraries and universities. They pioneered the arts and sciences and provided the foundations for many different fields including religion, philosophy, astronomy, agriculture, mathematics, architecture, medicine, government and engineering.