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A bewildering variety of currencies circulated freely in the various states and societies of Africa during the pre-colonial period.
A century before Mansa Musa’s famous pilgrimage, the political and cultural landscape of medieval West Africa was dominated by the empire of Kānem.
Up to 90% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s material cultural legacy is kept outside of the continent, according to a French government-commissioned 2018 report by Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French historian Bénédicte Savoy.
No single body of primary sources in the literary heritage of West Africa has attracted as much attention and attained as much celebrity as the fabled manuscripts of Timbuktu.
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This is the first post in a series discussing the basic contours of life – birth, marriage, labor, subsistence, death – of pre-modern peasants and their families. Prior to the industrial revolution, peasant farmers of varying types made up the overwhelming majority of people in settled societies (the sort with cities and writing). And when … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part I: Households →
Less than 30 percent of the world’s surface is covered in land, yet this is still a massive amount of space that humans have sought to explore and exploit. Included in all this land are around 200,000 islands. From the icy Arctic to the tropics, here are the five biggest islands in the […]
We’ve been to East London in the 1960s with Tony Hall before, heading down the pub and to the shops. Now we get to see the streets in panoramic pictures taken by his Horizont (Горизонт) camera. Made between 1967 and 1973 by Russia’s Krasnogorsky Mekhanichesky Zavod (KMZ), the 35mm camera had a rotating lens that … Continue reading "1960s London Through A Russian Horizont Panoramic Camera" The post 1960s London Through A Russian Horizont Panoramic Camera appeared first on Flashbak.
Medieval battles were brutal, blood-soaked grind. Clever tactics and strong leadership often mattered, yet true upsets happened only when the weaker side found an edge. Whether better weapons, better tactics, knowledge of the terrain, or an unbreakable esprit de corps. The battles below illustrate moments when determined underdogs defied the odds and claimed stunning […]
