Vanessa’s Social Studies Blog

This is the url to the homework:

http://ssmeetsit.edublogs.org/2006/11/30/homework-for-block-e-and-h-thursday-30-november/

In class, we learnt about more about Africa and its history. I found some of the facts my classmates had researched quite interesting. We had to present what we had found out from the paragraphs given to us as information. I hardly knew anything about Africa’s history, but after a little reading, I found there is more to it than what it seemed. For example, before the discovery of iron, they used rock, which wasn’t very effective in hunting animals. So, instead of hunting animals, they ate berries and vegetables that were foraged. After the discovery of iron, it was much better for the people, because their food supplies were higher, farming was easier, and there was much more meat for everybody to eat rather than always eating berries and vegetables. Another was that Mansa Musa’s pilgramage was grander than any other pilgramage, which after the Europeans started to include Mali on the map.

The topic I found the most interesting out of all was the the conquest of the Songhai empire by Morocco. Al-Mansur, who was the sultan of Morocco wanted to conquer Songhai in 1580. He sent men to seize the salt from the Salt Mines at Taghaza, but when he found it deserted, muskerteers were sent to take over Songhai’s main city, Gao. After which, Songhai surrendered, and the after-effects were not very good. The politicial unity between Mali, Ghana and Songhai was destroyed, the salt and gold trade was disturbed, cultivated land fell to waste, and Moroccan rulers remained in the area.

To conclude, I enjoyed the presentations that everyone did, and I could tell that they had really prepared hard for the presentations. I found the facts very interesting.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 8:44 pm Filed under Social Studies and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.