African rice domesticated in fourth millennium BC
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Wow, I didn't know you were starting to make actual installments on the TL. Woot woot!
That was exactly my thought!
Looking at this, it seems that this is during the period when the Green Sahara became just the Sahara, so my guess is that the grazing tribes Sama came from inhabited the (future) desert itself, and the conflict has to do with the gradual southward movement of the Sahel belt away from their homelands. Is that correct?
The story's at post 79 on the previous page.
I'm not sure this will be a timeline as such: one project the scale of Malê Rising is more than enough. But there will be occasional myths and stories as well as more speculation to flesh out the history and culture. This world has caught my imagination.
That's exactly right - his tribe was a victim of the same centuries-long process that brought some of the *Malians' own ancestors to the Niger Valley in the early fourth millennium.
This story is still at an early stage of *Malian civilization - technological advances are occurring, some recognizable cultural traits are already there, and local centers with populations of 500 to 1000 are becoming proto-cities and the seats of early rulers, but the full-fledged urban society of a thousand years later doesn't yet exist. The next story, when it comes, will probably be set at a much later time.
Wow, I didn't know you were starting to make actual installments on the TL. Woot woot!
I'm not sure this will be a timeline as such: one project the scale of Malê Rising is more than enough. But there will be occasional myths and stories as well as more speculation to flesh out the history and culture. This world has caught my imagination.
That's exactly right - his tribe was a victim of the same centuries-long process that brought some of the *Malians' own ancestors to the Niger Valley in the early fourth millennium.
This story is still at an early stage of *Malian civilization - technological advances are occurring, some recognizable cultural traits are already there, and local centers with populations of 500 to 1000 are becoming proto-cities and the seats of early rulers, but the full-fledged urban society of a thousand years later doesn't yet exist. The next story, when it comes, will probably be set at a much later time.
The Masque of the Red Death
2185 BC
2185 BC
“The rice-mother bless you,” said Sakary to Akun the peasant.
Akun, bent down in a rice-paddy, straightened and shook water from his hair. The man in front of him seemed to have come from nowhere, from the muck that bordered the irrigation canal. And he was an apparition in more ways than that. He was old, with his ebony face deeply lined and his hair shot through with gray; his tunic was ripped and tattered and his skin full of cuts and abrasions. His eyes were lined in dark red and had a hunted look.
“Her blessings on you too, stranger,” Akun answered warily, holding his knife in front.
Sakary saw, and opened his hands. “I won’t harm you,” he said. He looked down at the flooded field, and the farmer could sense that he was wondering what to say next. “I…” he began, but then asked “What city rules here?”
“Tiyedogo,” answered Akun, too surprised by the question even to think of demurring or lying. “The road’s up there. But if you need a doctor, Kessedogo is closer – eleven miles that way.”
Sakary smiled – a hunted man’s smile, but a smile all the same. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. There’s a death sentence on me in Kessedogo.”
Akun stared at the stranger and gripped his knife again. Who would admit to fleeing from a death sentence? Then he noticed, for the first time, the pattern on Sakary’s tunic and under-robe – interlocking triangles in deep green, the sign that meant “speech is justice” – and another question came to him.
Who would sentence a griot to death?
“What was your crime, then?” he asked, buying time.
“Ah, my crime.” Sakary looked down to the ducks swimming in the rice paddy, then beyond them to the shadowy forms of fish. “My crime… I told the people that there’s a way to treat the ricewater sickness.”
The farmer looked suddenly interested, and Sakary could tell he wanted to ask what the treatment was. Akun had the gaunt look of someone who’d taken ill with the ricewater sickness and survived, and others in his village must be sick with it even now: the fact that there were so many men doing what was usually women’s work was a testament to that. But as the griot watched, Akun’s expression changed. It might not be wise to know the treatment if it had earned Sakary a death sentence, and pestilences weren’t supposed to be treated. From the most ancient times, plagues were different from ordinary diseases, and their victims were sacrifices to the plague-father who made the people strong…
“You should go to Tiyedogo. They’ll decide what to do with you there, and with your treatment.”
“It’s not my treatment. A slave-child in Madogo thought of it.” But Sakary nodded, and took a step toward the road.
“Wait,” Akun said, and the griot’s foot returned to earth rather than making the second step. The farmer bent over, seized a fish from the rice-paddy with expert skill, and tossed it to Sakary. “Take this as an offering to justice. And bring your cure back to us.”
The griot bowed, said nothing, and headed on his way.
*******
It was fourteen miles to Tiyedogo. No one was hunting Sakary here, so he could follow the road rather than keeping to bushes and brambles, but he was old and badly hurt. What should have been a journey of four hours took all day.
The road led past villages much like the one where he’d encountered Akun, with thatched huts and raised granaries and rice-fields and pastures all around. They looked at peace, as they might have looked in other times: buffalo and goats were grazing, termite mounds waited to be harvested by people and birds alike, and egrets and cranes rose from the river as the morning must burned off. But there were half as many people working in the paddies as there should have been, and none at all working the roads or the canals: the corvee was suspended in time of pestilence.
On some of the huts, the thatching above the doorway had been twisted to form the plague-father’s eye – no, Lokoko’s eye, for in time of pestilence, the plague-god could be named. That sign guarded against illness. Other huts bore the brewer’s vessel, showing that sickness and death were already within. The people in the fields wore charms as bracelets or on thongs around their necks, and Sakary could see that the charms did little to dispel fear.
The city was much the same.
Tiyedogo was a town of twenty thousand, and life went on within. There were smells of cooking and noises from the workshops, and there were people in the streets and markets. The people showed little fear of each other: by now, they’d learned that the new pestilence didn’t pass from person to person. And the cats showed no fear at all.
But a pall still hung over the city, because the miasma that caused the ricewater sickness might touch anyone. The people in the streets were subdued, saying little. The taverns were empty and the masked men who told fortunes and carried messages to the ancestors had vanished. The watchmen were few, and gripped their staffs of office carefully. Only the street-cleaners and night-soil carters were out in full force: they were from Lokoko’s priesthood, and they would come out even were the Red Death abroad.
As in the villages, the buildings reflected the mood. There were herb-charms hung on the sticks that decorated the mud-brick, and the brightly-painted houses had been painted over: some bore Lokoko’s eye above the door as the village huts did; others showed the proverb-signs that the city people knew, two concentric diamonds for good life is good health or a circle above a line for the living are the strong. Charms, thought Sakary – charms are feeble weapons against a god who can poison the river.
The thought carried him through the twisted streets of the workmen’s quarter and into a district of artisans’ workshops and shrines. The streets were wider here and straighter, leading to the Plaza of the River-Father and the complex of palaces and temples that occupied the northern third of the city. People made offerings for themselves or their families; charlatans lurked in the shadows with protective amulets and phantom cures; and around them, work went on.
The place that Sakary sought was on the Street of Brewers, just off the central square and three doors down from a shrine sacred to Lalo, the mother of sickness and medicine. Within were the tools of the brewer’s trade, which was also the apothecary’s: great earthen cauldrons on the boil; jars with straws through the stopper where the madolo, the rice-beer, had been set to ferment; mortars and pestles and earthen spoons fragrant with honey and camphor. Within were two cats, one gray and one mottled black and brown, keeping guard over the grain. And within, also, were women – brewing had been women’s work from time immemorial – but not the woman the griot had hoped to see.
“Where is Mako…” he began, but he read the answer on her daughter’s face even before she spoke it.
“My mother is dead. The ricewater sickness.”
“The ancestors bless her.”
“She is one of them,” the brewer said, completing the ritual formula. She showed little emotion; Sakary, who had known her a long time, knew that this was because the shock of the death was still so recent.
“Is this your brewery now, Dolapo?”
“It is. My brother inherited the land, this was mine.” It was the law: sons inherited men’s things, women’s things went to the daughters.
“Then it’s you that I need to speak to.”
Dolapo looked at the griot and said nothing: it seemed that she was seeing him for the first time, appraising his injuries and ragged clothes. “Is this…” she said, and then seemed to remember something: “was it you that they condemned in Kessedogo?”
“Yes, it was me. I brought a treatment for the sickness that killed your mother.”
Dolapo had none of Akun’s hesitation. “What is it?”
“Madolo and mashed rice. As much weak madolo as the patient can drink, with boiled rice crushed into it. The illness kills with thirst – you don’t feel it, but the diarrhea and vomiting take the water out of you just as the sun does.”
“Rice-beer, to cure the ricewater sickness?” Dolapo, gaunt and grief-stricken as she was, barked laughter.
“It’s fitting, isn’t it? A slave discovered it in Madogo – a child. She was tending a baby with the sickness, and she recognized his cries as cries of thirst. She knew that madolo is one of Lalo’s things, so she took a cloth with the health sign, soaked it in madolo and gave it to the baby to suck. He got better, and she’s a daughter of the family now.”
“But you were sentenced to death.”
“In Kessedogo, not Madogo. I brought the word, and the priesthood said it was sacrilege to Lokoko – that treating a pestilence would cheat him of his sacrifices and bring his wrath.”
Dolapo stared. “And the people supported them?”
“They were afraid, and no one has ever questioned Lokoko’s command…”
“That’s because there’s never been a plague that can be treated. If this one can… even the priests won’t stop it. Faced with sacrilege or death, most people will choose sacrilege, and they can’t condemn an entire city.”
“They realize that, I think. They argued over it in the back room, when I pled my case to them. But I think they want to keep the treatment a mystery – shroud it in ritual, make it their gift rather than a slave girl’s.”
“How can they do even that? Madolo and rice – the treatment is made of things everyone has. The temple dispensary can’t control that.”
“Hence my death sentence.”
She offered him a jar of madolo and he sipped from it, tasting the dika-fruit that had been used as a fermenting agent. “That won’t happen here,” she said.
Sakary smiled inwardly, knowing that he’d come to the right place. The politics of Tiyedogo were labyrinthine. The Four – the consuls elected by the aristocratic families – ruled the city in conjunction with the priesthood and the elders, but the guildmasters and the secret society controlled the city assembly, and they and the priests were rivals. They would champion the treatment that the priests of Kessedogo had rejected…
“It isn’t really a treatment at all, is it?” Dolapo asked.
“What?”
“Madolo and rice. That isn’t medicine, it’s food and drink. It’s never been sacrilege for plague victims to take nourishment.”
Sakary nodded. “Is the ricewater sickness really a pestilence at all?” he added. “One person can’t catch it from another, and you can get it more than once. That should make it one of Lalo’s sicknesses, not Lokoko’s.”
“That too, maybe,” said Dolapo, but she shook her head slightly, and the colored beads in her braids rustled against each other. “When this many people are sick, surely it’s a pestilence. And the peasants…”
But Sakary clapped his hands. “Are there members of the secret society among the brewers?”
“Yes, of course there are.”
“Bring them here, then. And bring those who are workmen or belong to other guilds.” He brought forth a scrap of cloth from the folds of his robe, covered with the scratches of true-writing, one of the few things he’d saved from Kessedogo. “I’m going to put on a play.”
*******
The secret society came, and they learned quickly. They represented the ancestors where the priesthood did the gods, and acting in plays was part of their function, and they learned lines fast and recited them well. It was only three days before Sakary, in a new tunic and robe, led them out to the Plaza of the River-Father, and horns and talking-drums summoned the people to watch.
People turned to see, and more did so when they saw who stood at the center of the square. Lokoko himself was there, his mask fierce and his robe splattered to mimic the red-brown rash of the Red Death, the oldest and deadliest of plagues. A murmur passed through the plaza: yes, Lokoko could be named in time of pestilence, but this…
Before anyone could say anything, the horn blew again and a masked chorus surrounded Lokoko, doing a dance that grew faster and wilder with the drumbeat. They showed no fear: with their masks on, they were the characters, not the actors, and they were immune from punishment for sacrilege. Sakary, his face bare, was not, and the gathering crowds in the square stood in fascination, wondering what had possessed him to take such a risk.
The play began with the ancient tale of Lokoko: how he struck down an invading army with plague, and how the people took credit for the victory and gave none to him, and how he condemned them to suffer pestilence forevermore as the price of their strength. “The sick shall be sacrifices to me, and it will be my sacrifices that strike down your enemies,” he told the cowering kings and warriors, and the choral dance grew slow and mournful.
Then another actor appeared, and the narrator, speaking over the talking drum, made clear that thousands of years had now passed. The actor wore a mask of rice-straw and the clothing of a peasant, and he walked slowly and painfully in the manner of one who was ill. He paused in front of Lokoko, heaving and miming the passing of diarrhea, and another murmur ran through the audience as they realized that he was portraying a victim of the ricewater plague.
“I call you to trial, Lokoko!” he shouted, and led the choral dancers in song:
Lokoko, god of pestilence
Promised plagues would make us strong,
But sent one that protects us not!
Those who live fall sick again
Kept from work and field for long,
And their death protects us not!
Others – peasants, tradesmen, even an actor in the regalia of a king – added to the complaint: unlie other plagues, which hardened the survivors and left invading enemies vulnerable, the ricewater sickness could be caught more than once and weakened the people again and again. They surrounded Lokoko, cried out in betrayal and called him to trial, and suddenly, the ancestors appeared to support them.
“You must answer the charges, Lokoko,” said one who the audience recognized as Tiyeke, the legendary founder of Tiyedogo and the first physician. “Yes, you must answer them,” the other ancestors said, and they gathered opposite the plague-god to form a court.
The charges were laid and the trial began: Lokoko defended himself by quoting the proverbs about plague as sacrifice and plague making strength, and the ancestors laughed at him and shouted him down. “Is it a plague at all,” said Tiyeke, “when it doesn’t leave us stronger? Is it a plague at all when it can be so easily cured?” He administered madolo and rice to the suffering actors, who suddenly straightened up and joined the choral dancers.
“Did you call it the ricewater sickness because ricewater can defeat it?” Tiyeke cried. The line caught the people’s attention, and some even applauded: Sakary silently thanked Dolapo for the inspiration.
Lokoko cried out in betrayal, but Tiyeke shouted that food and drink were no sacrilege, and that a sickness that could be treated was Lalo’s, not Lokoko’s. The other ancestor-judges took up the cry: the ricewater sickness was outside Lokoko’s realm, and treating it was an act of praise to Lalo, not a sacrilege to the plague-god…
The choral dancers began the victorious dance that would mark the play’s end, but there was a sudden, angry murmur from the square. Sakary could see that it was coming from the peasants who’d come to the city to sell their produce. He strained to hear them, and then the murmur became a rhythmic shout, not against the madolo cure but against the corvee.
It took only a second for him to realize why the peasants were angered: the corvee was suspended during pestilence, but if the ricewater sickness weren’t a plague, then the peasants would be liable again to work on the roads and canals and temples. They considered their labor duties an imposition at the best of times – especially now, when years of drought and poor inundation meant that the irrigation works needed to be expanded – and if the healthy were taken for labor when so many were ill…
But now the city-dwellers, the artisans and workmen, were shouting too, and they were crying out against the peasants. Most of them were too far away to hear that the peasants were shouting against the corvee, and they believed the farmers were condemning the cure. And the priests were shouting against the cure, calling sacrilege against townsmen and peasants alike and adding to the confusion.
Sakary never saw who threw the first punch, who cast the first stone. But when one did, the others followed: hundreds and then thousands, fighting with sticks and fists and knives. He looked for Dolapo in the audience, but a knot of peasants was in the way, and their leader saw him and called to the others to chase him. Sakary ran, knowing he couldn’t fight that many and hoping to lose them in the city streets.
No doubt they’ll suspend the corvee when the ricewater sickness is in the land, whether it’s a pestilence or not, he thought. But now… now, at least, they know the cure.
He got most of the way to the river gate before he realized he’d lost his race. He was still weak, still injured, and the peasants were whole and strong, and they caught him. Sakary fought, but they were many and he was one: they seized him and dragged him and beat him, and he never felt them throw him in the river.
*******
Sakary woke on a rocky beach by the riverside. Night was falling, but he couldn’t be sure if it were the same night, or if not, how many days had passed. He was hungry and weak, and while the pain of the beating had dulled, it was still there.
He dragged himself up to the embankment and vomited. The ricewater sickness, he realized: the water he’d swallowed floating down the river must have given it to him. He could tell that he’d voided himself as well. No doubt that was why no crocodile had touched him: they could sense the sickness on him.
Somewhere up ahead was Temendogo, the last city before the river’s streams came together and flowed away into the desert. He had to tell them, too, about the treatment, but he knew he would never make it unless he treated himself first.
He felt in his clothing and found a bag of rice; the peasants hadn’t taken it and the river hadn’t swept it away. But he had no madolo, and that was the more important part of the cure. He remembered the brewing that made madolo safe, and wondered if brewing water – boiling it, as one might do for an herb-tea or medical decoction – might do.
He found a dry piece of driftwood and struck a flint to light it, and filled a crab-shell with water to boil. The shell didn’t hold much water, and he’d have to boil many shells full to replace what he had lost, but at least bringing each one to a boil wouldn’t take long.
Sakary rigged a small frame of wood to hold the shell above the flame, and waited. Maybe he’d be strong enough to go to Temendogo tomorrow. Maybe they’d take the news better than the priests of Kessedogo or the peasants of Tiyedogo had. Or maybe they wouldn’t. It didn’t matter – they could do with him what they wanted. What mattered was that all the cities learned that the ricewater sickness had a cure.
Tomorrow, or maybe the day after. He would have to rewrite the play.
Brechtian.
In my culture, Justice is a bloody lady who doesn't look where she cuts. I think in Sakary's culture something similar holds.
That's how science works, but Sakary is surprisingly honest: speech really is justice for him.
Probably in that the balance of class forces is against central elites during plagues when their bodies of pampered armed men are sick.
Four hours walk from the next? Densely settled. With what we are soon to find is a highly developed urban crafting semi-elite, that isn't suborned to the priestly caste.
Matrilineal descent in land?
And the Gods make sense of our world.
Tiyedogo has a more developed artisinal layer for some reason, that is reflected in the balance of class forces.
Too clever by half. Too modern by half. Treats the instrumental phenomena of society as the instruments articulating the real relations between people, rather than for their ideological functions. Too clever by half.
At least this is what happens to prescient clever-cloggs historically.
* * *
The permanent partial suspension of the corvee is an important thing here. Obviously it represents a response to the genuine and underlying balance of power, but it also institutionalises peasant rights. Perhaps the conflict between mythic security in the old religion and innovation isn't portrayed strongly, but Sakary is an innovator who makes new songs and is (suitably) blind to why the old songs are held so strongly.
In terms of the conflicts among the orders, we are seeing the birth of the urban demos and the use of plays as a demos-cratic tool.
yours,
Sam R.
Great work as always and I am loving this world as well. Will we see a "China" like civilization here? And how will this affect the Bantu down the line? Damn you're talented.
Also, I know you're super busy but have you considered doing a story about the Buddha traveling through the Nok Steel Africa? I would love to see the Great Lakes region.
Also, I know you're super busy but have you considered doing a story about the Buddha traveling through the Nok Steel Africa? I would love to see the Great Lakes region.
Ideals are often different from the reality, yes. The ideal in *Mali is that the just cause is always the most persuasive. The reality is that power relations often speak loudest.
That, and the central elites understand that the fields can't be left untended. The food supply is the city-state's most immediate need, and when the labor supply is reduced by an epidemic, it needs to go to food production first.
Of course, the limits on the cities' coercive power during an epidemic also play a part. The peasants are mostly disenfranchised, but revolt is always their trump card, and the elites are careful not to push them when their own power is at an ebb. As you point out, one of the things that will result from the ricewater sickness and its accompanying social upheaval is institutionalization of (some) peasant rights.
Kessedogo and Tiyedogo are actually a full day apart - the story begins at a point 11 miles from the one and 14 miles from the other. The distance between the two isn't much different from that between Ur and Uruk.
I figure that the settlement will be about as dense as in Sumer, given that the environment (low rainfall but reliable annual floods and lots of marshland) is similar and the *Malians have a high-yield crop available to them. There's room for 15 or even 20 city-states in the inner delta.
Inheritance of land is mostly patrilineal, as happened in Dolapo's family - land is considered something that women work but men own, although there are exceptions. Trades that are traditionally undertaken by women, though, pass from mother to daughter, which means that many of the businesses in the city-states are inherited through the female line.
That's why we have them, after all. *Mali in the 22nd century BC is a civilization on a par with Sumer a millennium earlier; it will be many centuries yet before they develop anything like a scientific outlook.
Kessedogo has a large artisan class too, but Sakary went to the priests first - in Tiyedogo, he knew not to do that. On the other hand, Kessedogo is one of the more autocratic city-states while Tiyedogo has retained more balance between the classes, possibly because Tiyedogo's largest cottage industries are ones that can't be easily controlled from the palace.
Well, the *Malian theater at this time is still in an early stage of coalescence from religious pageants and processions, and the griots are just starting to come to terms with what it is and can do. Sakary thinks of the theater as a way to challenge and ultimately change religious doctrine - to create new proverbs and wisdom - and, like most *Malians, he believes that spoken wisdom is the same thing as the society it describes. Speech is justice, after all; this is a society where verbal eloquence is the most prized skill of griot and priest alike.
Of course, the word isn't always the thing. As you say, "Sakary is an innovator who makes new songs and is (suitably) blind to why the old songs are held so strongly," and sometimes that bites him and other innovators in the ass.
Thanks!
There will be a "China" in the sense of a unified empire (two of them, in fact), although it will function on very different ideological premises.
In post 53, I sketched out some thoughts on further development of *Mali and neighboring regions, including the Bantu.
I've considered it, yes. At some point the thought may become the deed.
BTW, in case it's unclear, the ricewater sickness in the story is a mutated super-dysentery with symptoms and mortality rate similar to cholera (at this time, cholera itself was confined to India). It's called ricewater sickness for several reasons, of which its origin in contaminated river water is only one: another reason relates to one of the cholera-type symptoms.
Thanks! The Michener analogy occurred to me as well, although I was thinking more of The Source or Centennial, both of which started more than 10,000 years ago. Actually, if I wanted to give TTL the full Michener treatment, the first chapter would have to be geological.
Is there any time, place or theme that anyone particularly wants to see?
Thanks! The Michener analogy occurred to me as well, although I was thinking more of The Source or Centennial, both of which started more than 10,000 years ago. Actually, if I wanted to give TTL the full Michener treatment, the first chapter would have to be geological.
Is there any time, place or theme that anyone particularly wants to see?
Can't think of a time but maybe the forest kingdoms of West Africa outside the Niger River region? As for the theme, maybe death and rebirth or a civilization/dynasty in its twilight years?
yboxman
Banned
Thanks! The Michener analogy occurred to me as well, although I was thinking more of The Source or Centennial, both of which started more than 10,000 years ago. Actually, if I wanted to give TTL the full Michener treatment, the first chapter would have to be geological.
Is there any time, place or theme that anyone particularly wants to see?
Ecological fragility and it's interaction with with social and political upheval. Both Michener and uniquely suited to the Sahel. I'm still holding out for a Hybrid Senegal/Tartessos/Carthage sea reaver culture and the Khoisian Zebra Nomads of the High Veld....
The *Malian Axial Age, considered as a reincarnation:
I don’t buy the more extreme versions of the Axial Age theory, which posit that the mid-to-late first millennium BC was the dawn of human self-examination. There are plenty of earlier examples of people wrestling with ethics and the nature of the soul and being, albeit in less sophisticated fashion. But at the same time, the foundations of modern spirituality and philosophy were laid across much of the world in a remarkably short period as the effects of the Bronze Age collapse, the rise of Iron Age market economies and the greater interconnectedness of the world played out. And ITTL, *Mali has gone through these things as well.
So let’s take stock of *Mali in the sixth and fifth centuries BC – i.e., during the waning days of the Second Empire and immediately after its fall. It’s an animist society, certainly – that may be the most important thing. It’s a culture where speech and voice are intimately connected to the soul and justice and where theater and pageantry are major parts of spiritual life. There’s a strong element of the apocalyptic, following from periodic plagues and the population crash that accompanied the fall of the First Empire. It’s a stratified society but one with assertive lower orders and a long history of class conflict, and like many Iron Age societies, it has seen some breakdown of class lines. Lastly, it has become aware that the world is much larger than previously thought due to camel-borne trans-Saharan trade, a Silk Road-like route to Egypt and the seafaring daughter culture of the lower Niger delta.
What kind of religious awakening might come out of all this? I could imagine a faith that in some ways is an outgrowth of animism – one that emphasizes the continuity of humanity through the presence of ancestral souls in every newborn person. That, in turn, would lead to a notion of individual worth based on the belief that everyone carries the souls of kings, heroes and even gods. It wouldn’t be monotheistic, which is a bad fit for an animist culture, but could be a mix of pantheism and henotheism: the moral notions that follow from a universal ancestral presence would coexist with worship of traditional gods, while at the same time, the greater breadth of the world could increase the creator god’s prominence over more local and intimate deities. And in a culture where voice is so important, it would be a prophetic rather than a scholarly faith, one that emphasizes radical class justice rather than affirming social hierarchy (albeit one that, like the Abrahamic religions and Buddhism, can easily be twisted to justify oppression and massacre).
A faith like this could potentially be key to the development of classical *Mali, possibly through an Ashoka-like unifier. Further thoughts?
I don’t buy the more extreme versions of the Axial Age theory, which posit that the mid-to-late first millennium BC was the dawn of human self-examination. There are plenty of earlier examples of people wrestling with ethics and the nature of the soul and being, albeit in less sophisticated fashion. But at the same time, the foundations of modern spirituality and philosophy were laid across much of the world in a remarkably short period as the effects of the Bronze Age collapse, the rise of Iron Age market economies and the greater interconnectedness of the world played out. And ITTL, *Mali has gone through these things as well.
So let’s take stock of *Mali in the sixth and fifth centuries BC – i.e., during the waning days of the Second Empire and immediately after its fall. It’s an animist society, certainly – that may be the most important thing. It’s a culture where speech and voice are intimately connected to the soul and justice and where theater and pageantry are major parts of spiritual life. There’s a strong element of the apocalyptic, following from periodic plagues and the population crash that accompanied the fall of the First Empire. It’s a stratified society but one with assertive lower orders and a long history of class conflict, and like many Iron Age societies, it has seen some breakdown of class lines. Lastly, it has become aware that the world is much larger than previously thought due to camel-borne trans-Saharan trade, a Silk Road-like route to Egypt and the seafaring daughter culture of the lower Niger delta.
What kind of religious awakening might come out of all this? I could imagine a faith that in some ways is an outgrowth of animism – one that emphasizes the continuity of humanity through the presence of ancestral souls in every newborn person. That, in turn, would lead to a notion of individual worth based on the belief that everyone carries the souls of kings, heroes and even gods. It wouldn’t be monotheistic, which is a bad fit for an animist culture, but could be a mix of pantheism and henotheism: the moral notions that follow from a universal ancestral presence would coexist with worship of traditional gods, while at the same time, the greater breadth of the world could increase the creator god’s prominence over more local and intimate deities. And in a culture where voice is so important, it would be a prophetic rather than a scholarly faith, one that emphasizes radical class justice rather than affirming social hierarchy (albeit one that, like the Abrahamic religions and Buddhism, can easily be twisted to justify oppression and massacre).
A faith like this could potentially be key to the development of classical *Mali, possibly through an Ashoka-like unifier. Further thoughts?
I can definitely see the creator god's domain being enlarged at the expense of local deities but I don't understand how the idea of an enlarged world would translate into a religion developing where the continuity of humanity is emphasized through the idea of ancestral souls in everyone. Could you expand more on this idea?
Is the *Malian society pre-literate?
Sorry if I was unclear. The idea about ancestral souls doesn't come from broadened horizons: it's an outgrowth of *Malian animism and the traditional idea of ancestors remaining part of the community.
*Mali isn't preliterate any more in the sixth and fifth centuries BC - it developed writing in the late third millennium and had a literate society by the height of the city-state period.
One more thing: given the cycles of plague and conquest, I'd expect the *Malians to conceive of evil as a very active force, and for one of their gods to evolve into an Ahriman-analogue during the later first millennium.
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This is such a good summary that I will probably reuse it in class, with your permission.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
I found something that might add some flavour to the timeline:
Lagos Silk Rubber
Lagos silk rubber is from Futumia elastica, a large tree of tropical West Africa. Discovered in 1894, it was immediately exploited to the point of near extermination. In 1898 over 6 million pounds were exported. The tree has been cultivated and an attempt made to reestablish the industry. However, plantations of Hevea rubber are the chief source of rubber in West Africa.
Landolphia Rubber
Other former sources of African rubber were several woody climbers in the genus Landolphia. The most important were L. kirkii on the east coast and L. heudelotis and L. owariensis on the west coast. The huge vines, sometimes 6 in. in diameter. Were pulled down and cut into small pieces. The latex that exuded was coagulated with plant juices or the heat of the sun, sometimes even on the bodies of the native collectors (Hill 1952). The most wasteful methods were employed, for a large immediate yield was desired.
Source:
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/botany/rubber.htm
Maybe a denser settled Eastern Africa might start to cultivate rubber like the natives of South America did.
Lagos Silk Rubber
Lagos silk rubber is from Futumia elastica, a large tree of tropical West Africa. Discovered in 1894, it was immediately exploited to the point of near extermination. In 1898 over 6 million pounds were exported. The tree has been cultivated and an attempt made to reestablish the industry. However, plantations of Hevea rubber are the chief source of rubber in West Africa.
Landolphia Rubber
Other former sources of African rubber were several woody climbers in the genus Landolphia. The most important were L. kirkii on the east coast and L. heudelotis and L. owariensis on the west coast. The huge vines, sometimes 6 in. in diameter. Were pulled down and cut into small pieces. The latex that exuded was coagulated with plant juices or the heat of the sun, sometimes even on the bodies of the native collectors (Hill 1952). The most wasteful methods were employed, for a large immediate yield was desired.
Source:
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/botany/rubber.htm
Maybe a denser settled Eastern Africa might start to cultivate rubber like the natives of South America did.
I think writing will have the same influnce as it had everywhere*) - religious beliefs and traditions that simply lived side-by-side before, will be felt to be contradictions that need to be resolved, by building hierarchies of spirits, by declaring (say) different harvest gods worshipped in different villages to be avatars of one harvest god, resolving contradictory accounts of one deity by splitting it into several deities or by them embodying separate aspects of one deity, etc. Someone will come up with the idea of "all is really one", like all literate religious cultures did - in the Abrahmic religions, that became the feature of the one god, in other cultures it was more a philiosophical position or a part of the mystic teachings. You will also have the conflict between folk religion(s) with its local variation, the book religion clinging to ritual and unified teachings, and the disruptive prophetic religion. As you say monotheism won't develop, China or India will probably be better models for *Malian religion, than the Middle East.
*) A very good book describing this process is Ernest Gellner's "Plough, Sword and Book".
*) A very good book describing this process is Ernest Gellner's "Plough, Sword and Book".
They could, although rubber has only limited usefulness without vulcanization or some other curing method. The Mesoamericans cured rubber with the juice of another naive plant; would there be anything suitable that West Africans could use?
If rubber harvesting does catch on, it would happen in the Lower Niger and Congo rather than *Mali. It would also, unfortunately, cement a slave society in those regions; one constant about wild-rubber harvesting is that it's nasty labor that few would do voluntarily for pre-industrial wages.
Hmmm. This process would be well under way by the time a book-religion gets started; writing and centralization would be ~1500 years old by then, and syncretization of village deities might have progressed somewhat like ancient Egypt. The book-religion will, as you say, add a new layer and also increase the drive for systematization. India and China might be good analogues; another person off-list has suggested Buddhism in Japan as a model.
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Anyway, a few more stray thoughts about the *Malian calendar and agriculture (which in any ancient society are closely intertwined): I doubt that the solstices and equinoxes will be very important to the *Malian year - the difference between the longest and shortest days at that latitude is only about an hour and 20 minutes, and crops depend on flood cycles rather than temperature cycles. Instead, the new year is likely to be celebrated in September when the floods begin, followed by a planting festival in October and a rice-harvest festival in February.
Between February and September, there's time for another growing season, but there probably isn't enough floodwater left for a second rice crop or anything else water-intensive. Maybe they'd learn to cultivate bambara beans as an intercrop - it's a relatively low-water crop that could be planted in April using reserved water from the rice paddies, eked out with the summer rains, and harvested in August before the next flood. Legumes are also good for nitrogen-fixing, so the beans could replenish the soil for the next rice crop, with the silt laid down by the annual floods also ensuring continued fertility. They'd have to breed a variety more tolerant of wet soils if they want to grow these beans in fallow rice paddies, but this seems like a manageable task compared to what the Mesoamericans did with maize.
The areas further from the river, where floodwaters aren't as high and irrigation is harder, are where they'd grow millet and yams. Vegetables could be grown as secondary crops in both zones, and date palms and fruit trees on the high ground. I'd guess that, based on the 3900-3700 date I set earlier for rice domestication, the full crop package would exist by the early third millennium (3000-2700), supplemented by sheep and goat's milk, microlivestock, and later by fish and waterfowl culture in the rice paddies.