Abstract
Based on the latest research and perception of how most African societies conceptualized gender and gender dynamics, this chapter will examine a very different understanding of women’s and men’s changing positions over a very long time span of African history. Since all humans originated in Africa and did not leave the African continent for at least 70,000 years, much of what is considered “human behavior” started in Africa. This chapter will begin with a brief discussion of African gender concepts and institutions. Since humanity started in Africa, the latest research on social relations among early human beings and the grandmother hypothesis are crucial to understanding gender in Africa over the longue durée of African history. The agricultural revolution, starting about 12,000 years ago in Africa, had ushered in a more sedentary way of life and transformations in gender relations. This is when most African societies began to organize into unilineal clans, and the latest genetic and linguistic evidence indicates that these clans were matrilineal. As the Sahara Desert became drier, centralized societies developed along the Nile River. Both ancient Nubia and Egypt developed more hierarchal societies, yet there were woman leaders, and most women enjoyed a great deal of independence and equality. In the Horn of Africa around 2500 years ago, Axum became an important state, but a local queen and her army led to its demise. Among the seminomadic peoples of Somalia and the Sahara Desert, women play significant positions based on oral traditions. Since a large portion of Africa south of the Sahara is populated by Bantu language-speaking peoples whose social institutions center on gender equity, matrilineal worldviews, and motherhood, a major discussion of the Bantu expansion and Bantu social history closes this chapter.
References
Ahmed, A. H. (1988). Sheckoxariirooyin Soomaaliyeed (Folktales from Somalia). Uppsala: Sweden, Somali Academy of Science and Arts, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.
Amadiume, I. (1987). Male daughters, female husbands: Gender and sex in an African society. London: Zed Press.
Andersen, K. T. (2000). The Queen of the Habasha in Ethiopian history, tradition and chronology. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 63(1), 31–63.
Berns, M. C. (1993). Art, history and gender: Women and clay in West Africa. African Anthropological Review, 11, 129–148.
Dafa’alla, S. (1993). Succession in the kingdom of Napata, 900–300 B.C. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 26(4), 167–174.
Destro-Bisol, G., et al. (2004). Variation of female and male lineages in sub-Saharan African populations: The importance of sociocultural factors. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 21, 1673–1682.
Ehret, C. (2002). The civilizations of Africa: A history to 1800. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Fagg, A. (1994). Thoughts on Nok. African Arts, 27, 79–83.
Fourshey, C., Gonzales, R., & Saidi, C. (2017). Bantu Africa. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gautier, E. F. (1934). The monument of tin Hinan in the Ahaggar. Geographical Review, 24, 439–443.
Gélard, M.-L. (2004). Representations of kinship. Agnatic ideology and uterine values in a Berber-speaking tribe (Southeast Morocco). Anthropos, 99(H.2), 565–572.
Gonzales, R. (2008). Societies, religion, and history: Central east Tanzanians and the world they created, c. 200 BCE to 1800 CE. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hannoum, A. (1997). Historiography, mythology and memory in modern North Africa: The story of Kahina. Studia Islamica, 1.
Harris, J. E. (1974). Pillars in Ethiopian history. Washington, DC: Howard University Press.
Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J., & Jones, N. B. (2018). Hunter-gatherer studies and human evolution: A very selective review. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 165(4), 777–800.
Herbert, E. W. (1994). Iron, gender, and power: Rituals of transformation in African societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hoffecker, J. F. (2017). Modern humans: Their African origins and global dispersal. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hollis, S. T. (1987). Women of ancient Egypt and the sky goddess nut. The Journal of American Folklore, 100(398), 496–503. Folklore and Feminism.
Lohwasser, A. (2001). Queenship in Kush: Status, role and ideology of royal women. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 38, 61–76.
Mace, R., & Holden, C. (1999). Evolutionary ecology and cross-cultural comparison: The case of matrilineal descent in sub-Saharan Africa. In P. C. Lee (Ed.), Comparative primate socioecology (pp. 387–405). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Muhonja, B. B. (2009). She loved and ruled that kitchen: Space and autonomy in Kenya kitchens. JENdA: Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies, 15, 7–25.
Murdock, G. P. (1959). Africa: Its peoples and their culture history. New York: McGraw-Hill.
O’Connell, J. F. O., Hawkes, K., & Blurton Jones, N. G. (1988). Hadza scavenging: Implications for Plio-Pleistocene hominid subsistence. Current Anthropology, 29, 356–363.
O’Connell, J. F. O., Hawkes, K., & Blurton Jones, N. G. (1999). Grandmothering and the evolution of Homo erectus. Journal of Human Evolution, 36, 461–485.
Oyewumi, O. (2001). Ties that (unbind): Feminism, sisterhood and other foreign relations. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Womens Studies, 1, 1–18.
Poewe, K. (1981). Matrilineal ideology: Male and female dynamics in Luapula, Zambia. London: International African Institute.
Sacks, K. (1982). Sisters and wives: The past and future of sexual equality. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.
Saidi, C. (2010a). Women’s authority and society in early East-Central Africa. Rochester: University of Rochester.
Saidi, C. (2010b). Nakabumba: God creates humanity as a potter creates a pot. In O. Oyewumi (Ed.), Gender Epistemologies in Africa (pp. 199–222). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Smith, B. (n.d.). Zambian rock art. Lusaka: National Heritage Conservation Commission.
Stephens, R. (2015). A history of African motherhood: The case of Uganda, 700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tamrat, T. (2009). Church and state in Ethiopia. Los Angeles: Tsehai Publishers.
Vail, L. (1989). The creation of tribalism in southern Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Watterson, B. (1997). Women in Ancient Egypt. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Wood, B. (2005). Human evolution: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Saidi, C. (2019). A History of African Women from Origins to 800 CE. In: Yacob-Haliso, O., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77030-7_1-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77030-7_1-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77030-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77030-7
eBook Packages: Springer Reference HistoryReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities