More from African History Extra
The eastern plateau of South Africa, known as the Highveld, is dotted with the ruins of numerous stone towns founded at the end of the Middle Ages.
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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“My object has not been to write a text-book on firework-making, but rather to trace the art from earliest times, and to give a description of the development and process of manufacture… My excuse for adding another volume to the literature of the art is that I am of the eighth generation of a family … Continue reading "The Fireworks King: Brock’s Pyrotechnics: The History and Art of Firework Making, 1922" The post The Fireworks King: Brock’s Pyrotechnics: The History and Art of Firework Making, 1922 appeared first on Flashbak.
Porto is famous for its incredible past and its monuments. This mesmerizing city holds some of the most iconic historical buildings in the country besides renowned contemporary art galleries. Baroque, Neo-Classical, and Art Nouveau Landmarks Igreja and Torre dos Clérigos Built in 1779, the Clérigos Church and Tower are among the […]
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 […]