Chapter 10

Chapter 10

1. What is the geography of Africa like?

· Five main climatic zones roughly divide the continent. Fertile and with unpredictable rainfall borders parts of the Mediterranean coast in the north and the southwestern coast of the Cape of Good Hope in the south. Inland from these areas lies dry steppe country with little plant life. The stepped gradually gives way to Africa’s great deserts: the Sahara in the north and the Namib and Kalahari in the south. The savanna—flat grassland—extends in a swath across the widest part of the continent across parts of south-central Africa, and the eastern coast.

· It accounts for perhaps 55 percent of the African continent. Tropical train forests stretch along coast west Africa and on both sides of the equator in central Africa. Africa’s climate is mostly tropical, with subtropical climates limited to the northern coasts and to regions of high elevation.

Africa covers 20 percent of the earth’s land surface.

2. How did African geography shape its economic development?

· Geography and climate have significantly shaped Africa economic development.in the eastern Africa plains the earliest humans hunted wild animals. The drier steppe regions favored herding. Wetter savanna religions, like the Nile valley, encouraged grain-based agriculture. Tropical forests favored hunting and gathering and, later, root-based agriculture.

· Rivers and lakes supported economies based on fishing.

3. What is the Hamitic thesis?

· When Europeans first stared exploring sub-Saharan Africa’s interior in the nineteenth century, they were amazed at the quality of the art and architecture they came across. In response they develop the Hamitic thesis, which argued that Africans were not capable of such work, so a “Hamitic race” related to the Caucasian race much have settle in Africa in the distant past, bringing superior technology and knowledge, and then blended into nearly African populations or departed. Although...