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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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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 →
In the earliest days of cinema, when pictures moving at all was still shocking, one visionary saw the fantastical possibilities of this exciting new technology. Artist, magician, inventor, and director Georges Méliès created worlds filled with magic and adventure that revolutionized filmmaking when it was just beginning. He remains one of the most creative […]
“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.
Active in the 4th century BCE, the Sacred Band was an elite military unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers. The central idea was that by placing each soldier alongside his beloved, they would fight more fiercely, to both protect one another and to avoid dishonoring themselves in their partner’s eyes. Through their […]
