Kaiphranos
Donor
So an illiterate bureaucracy exists for a time? Is there precedent for that?
Possibly the Inca, depending on how you consider quipus.
So an illiterate bureaucracy exists for a time? Is there precedent for that?
Possibly the Inca, depending on how you consider quipus.
This could happen, possibly with the salt tribes as middlemen, but given the timetable of camel domestication, the empire that expands into the Sahara will probably be one of the Nok state's successors.
The Nok Empire was an Iron Age rather than Bronze Age society, and thus never developed a palace economy, but by this time, politics were very much a palace affair.
Ah, thanks--I caught one of those already on the Niger. Kind of a pity, it's a neat shape...
Very interesting, very interesting. Hopefully an alphabet will develop.
Alphabets (as in, full alphabets in the strict sense) appear to be counter-intuitive at first. They are not an easy or obvious step. (So arguably are abjads, if your language doesn't happen to be Afro-Asiatic). We seem to be naturally to perceive the syllable as the immediate phonetic unit, rather the single "segment".
By the way, is it Afro-Asiatic like Hausa or Niger-Kordofanian like most tohers OTL languages in the area? Or maybe something else (Nilo-Saharan?).
The Semites didn't because, as far as the documents lead us so far, their adaptation was a bottom-up process which probably involved complete destruction of the system and reuse of its materials for a new, much simpler one. The Nok are doing this top-down. It would look more like the Persians taking over cuneiform.
So an illiterate bureaucracy exists for a time? Is there precedent for that?
Possibly the Inca, depending on how you consider quipus.
Arguably the Aztecs as well. While they weren't an illiterate society AFAIK they didn't use writing for bureaucratic purposes, and they may have had an illiterate, or almost totally so, administration.
This seems to carry implicit assumptions I'm not familiar with. Could you elaborate on your meaning at all?
Would the Nok be likely to keep the abjad elements already present in hieratic script, though, or would they more probably recast it as an alphasyllabary (especially in their informal writing)?
Fair point - so West African writing will probably keep determinatives, and might carry them even to later alphabets.
I think that an alphasyllabary is more likely. Some abjad elements may be retained, but judging from rough historical parallels (none of which is really very well understood yet) there's something like a trend toward alphasyllabic systems.
For a Niger-Congo language, an Abjad would be cumbersome to use entirely as such (which didn't stop Arabic script to be used in West Africa though).
In a fully developed alphabetic system, determinatives would be sort of redundant, except in some languages (they could be useful in an alphabetic form of Chinese I guess, or in French if written phonetically). However, if the Nok languages has a system of prefixed classifiers like the Bantu languages, determinatives may be used for specific morphemes. If the system keeps some ambiguities from Hieratic, determinatives would be more useful.
The development of an alphabet so early in West Africa could have major implications for historiography in that region. OTL even where there were kingdoms and empires, comparatively little is known about them due to the lack of written records. ITTL, that won't be a problem, and Africa's history can take a much more prominent place on the world stage.
So my reading of this has been that events of this sort could well have happened at a variety of times in ancient history, but you went with the earliest plausible date for maximum effect?
Its trade routes extended to the desert and the sea
What is the role of these desert tribes? I mean for the most part they were "white" Saharan people. Were there any "white" people in the Nok army in the nobility or merchants? Or just "white" slaves? I guess some of them were good at warfare as charioteers or something?but others were captured in raids on desert tribes or bought from tribesmen encouraged to raid each other for that purpose
You never mentioned navigation/sailing and shipbuilding in the Nok Empire.
Did they use Niger for transporting goods and troops?
Did the Nok have Royal Navy on the river?
And if they did... did they venture to the sea? ...
Nice update as always, Jonathan. It's unfortunate to see the Nok become so stratified and become so reliant on slavery, although I suppose it's not that unusual for an ancient empire.
Things seem to be darkening for the Nok in the short term, but it's nice to see West African society blossom early with all that implies for the state of the "dark" continent by the present.
A earlier and more prosperous Nok culture is a very interesting scenario and you executed it nicely. Well done!
You never mentioned navigation/sailing and shipbuilding in the Nok Empire. Did they use Niger for transporting goods and troops? Did the Nok have Royal Navy on the river? And if they did... did they venture to the sea?
What is the role of these desert tribes? I mean for the most part they were "white" Saharan people. Were there any "white" people in the Nok army in the nobility or merchants? Or just "white" slaves? I guess some of them were good at warfare as charioteers or something?
An earlier civilization on the West African coast might accelerate the clock somewhat but the problem is, I gather, to include West Africa in the navigational circuit of the Old World the problems of deep seafaring have to be solved already, because the prevailing winds and currents near the coast take one southward with no easy, reliable, safe way back north until one develops deep seafaring to take advantage of the South Atlantic gyres--and these take one to South America. So as far as I know West Africa is a poor place for a venturesome seafaring people to be cultivated, though not a bad place to join the ranks of seafaring peoples once the basic arts of deep ocean navigation have been developed--elsewhere.
You mention "philosophy", and specifically, Ancient Egyptian philosophy. I guess that a lot depends on what one accepts to be "philosophy".
Fair enough. I tend to favor inclusive definitions, and sometimes that gets me in trouble (e.g., "alphabet").
I agree that the Nok literature, like the Egyptian, would be more correctly classified as wisdom than philosophy in the classical sense. It would certainly touch on some of the subjects philosophy embraces - morals and ethics, the nature of the soul and the divine, the ideal society - but without the systematized thinking of the classical Greek or Indian philosophers. They may or may not invent or import such analysis later.