Joey Herder
Mr. Anderson
Enriched World History
10/15/13
Report on Ancient African Civilization
If you were told to do a report on an Ancient African civilization, what's the first thing that comes to mind? The Egyptian Empire is what I think of. Of course, we already know a lot about this great empire, and so it's kind of pointless to do a report on it. The point of a report is to present something that you researched and present it, informing your audience on something new (or that's the general idea of it, anyways). So with that in mind, I decided to go for the Ancient civilization of Kush, or Cush. Now, this wasn't my first pick. That's always reserved for Egypt. However, due to restrictions, Egypt wasn't an option. So why not choose something close to home?
Kush was very close to Egypt, practically bordering the southern part of the empire (See Figure 1). The Kushites started their civilization in what is now Nubia. This wasn't a giant community, maybe a group of a hundred people. Starting in 3500 BCE the kingdom slowly but surely grew to become the first empire in the interior of Africa. Around 2000 BCE, began the start of a bountiful kingdom. There isn't much written history from that time period, but we most likely know this because of oral history. Oral history is where people in the tribe/empire memorize their peoples' history, and speak it through stories, songs, etc. Historians have probably found out a lot from this method.
One of the reasons it was so prosperous was because of the geography. Nubia had rich and fertile soil in ancient times, and was also plentiful in gold, copper and stone. How they dealt with this wealth among themselves is not known, but there are two theories. One is that they worked on the land and didn't contribute to the empire, and in return got nothing from them. However, this probably isn't accurate, as they grew to a great size, and had many riches. Therefore, they must have had a central government system...