What happened to the Original Empires of Africa?

This picture of Mansa Musa was made soon after he ruled the Mali Empire.

He was the king of the Mali Empire from 1312-1337, when it was larger than all of Western Europe.

This was before European settlers arrived in Africa.

You can click on the picture to make it larger.

Mansa Musa was the grand-nephew of the founder of the Mali Empire, Sundiata Keita, and ruled over Mali while it was the source of almost half the world's gold.

Musa was a devoted Muslim, and Islamic scholarship flourished under his rule. Craftsmen and especially Islamic scholars came from all over the Muslim world to receive a free education at Sankore's guilds and madrasas.

By the end of Mansa Musa's reign, the Sankoré Masjid had been converted into a fully staffed MadrassaLibrary of Alexandria. The level of learning at Timbuktu's Sankoré University was superior to that of all other Islamic centers in the world. The Sankoré Masjid was capable of housing 25,000 students and had one of the largest library in the world with between 400,000 to 700,000 manuscripts. (Islamic school or in this case university) with the largest collections of books in Africa since the

Musa expanded Mali's influence across Africa by bringing more lands under the empire's control, including the city of Timbuktu, and by enclosing a large portion of the western Sudan within a single system of trade and law. This was a huge political feat that made Moussa one of the greatest statesmen in the history of Africa. Under Moussa's patronage, the city of Timbuktu grew in wealth and prestige, and became a meeting place of the finest poets, scholars, and artists of Africa and the Middle East.

On the way to Mecca, when he passed through Cairo in July of 1324, he was reportedly accompanied by a caravan that included thousands of people and nearly a hundred camels, giving away so much gold that it took over a decade for the economy across North Africa to recover, due to the rapid inflation that it initiated.

The Arab [historian] al-Umari records that Musa "performed so many acts of charity and kindness" that he ran out of money and had to take out a loan to be able to afford the journey home.

Musa's hajj, and especially his gold, caught the attention of both the Islamic and Christian worlds. According to Professor Ross E. Dunn, "In the history of medieval West Africa no single incident has been more celebrated."

Musa was succeeded in 1337 by his son Maghan and in 1341 by his brother Suleyman.

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What happened to the Original Nations of North America?

How did the original languages of North America die?

(You can click on the picture to make it larger).

This man was the last surviving member of the Yahi people, north of San Francisco.

His family, and his entire community, was dead. They had been hunted, for sport, by white settlers.

He was found in 1911, frightened, and near starvation.

He was taken to the University of California at Berkeley.

He made sound recordings of the Yahi language and Yahi songs.

He recorded everything he could remember about Yahi history and civilization.

The most qualified experts in Native American languages had a hard time understanding what he was saying.

He died in 1916. No one ever knew his real name.

You can find a film about this man at: http://www.jedriffefilms.com/ishi.htm

The Yahi people were part of the Yana nation of Native Americans.

When a settler named James Marshall discovered gold in 1848, gold-miners ran straight to Yana territory, and got busy killing Indians.

By 1865, there were fewer than 50 Yahi people left in the world. The Three Knolls Massacre of 1865 left only 30 survivors. The remaining Yahi retreated after the 1865 massacre and hid themselves in the mountain wilderness for over 40 years.

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Now let's look back a few hundred years.

This is what North America looked like in 1492, before the European settlers arrived:

On the map, you can see where the largest Native American nations were living.
You can click on the picture to make it larger.

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