enduring understandings
- Human life, which is understood to have begun in Africa, developed over millions of years and radiated beyond the continent of Africa
- The earliest African art dates to 77,000 years ago. While interpretation of this art is conjectural at best, the clarity and strength of design and expression in the work is obvious
- Human beliefs and interactions in Africa are instigated by the arts. African arts are active; they motivate behavior, contain and express belief, and validate social organization and human relations
- Use and efficacy are central to the art of Africa. African arts, though often characterized, collected, and exhibited as figural sculptures and masks, are by nature meant to be performed rather than simply viewed. African arts are often described in terms of the contexts and functions with which they appear to be associated
- Outsiders have often characterized, collected, and exhibited African arts as primitive, ethnographic, anonymous, and static, when in reality Africa’s interaction with the rest of the world led to dynamic intellectual and artistic traditions that sustain hundreds of cultures and almost as many languages, contributing dramatically to the corpus of human expression
- African life and arts have been deeply affected by ongoing, cosmopolitan patterns of interaction with populations around the world and through time
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Major Civilizations
Key Ideas
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Resources
http://carlos.emory.edu/ODYSSEY/AFRICA/ahomepg.html