African history and African heritage are topics that are crucial in the study of the human civilization. Not only is the study of African history important as it relates to the rest of the world, but furthermore, it is also one of the most extensive and complex to undertake. The African history and African heritage can trace back their roots to what is arguably the single most important piece of human history. It has been concluded that man originated somewhere in the eastern regions of the African continent.
Africa, in fact, can be considered to be the birthplace of the human race. This simple yet important fact are not only crucial in African history, but also in the history of man and of the Earth. Though there has been much to study in terms of artifacts and other important pieces of history left behind, much of African history is still very much an elusive, complex, and difficult concept to explain. Much of this is due to the fact that there is not very much of African history that was committed to writing. For the very few exceptions left behind by the Ancient Egyptians of other early civilizations, it seems that most of African history and heritage has relied on its people to provide for an extensive and complex oral history.
In addition to having scarce written sources of historical context, Africa’s different cultures and tribes have their own different and unique versions of their people’s history. It has been studied and documented that in certain tribes or cultures, there will be an elder responsible for the history of his/her people and is given the task of passing down that history to future generations. In some instances, the oral history of a certain tribe or culture has been known to take days or even weeks to verbally recount the origins of a particular group of people or tribe.
Though oral history accounts may prove to be extremely useful in some occasions, their very nature provide for a complex system of learning the historical beginnings of African history. Oral history accounts are not only important because they offer one of the very few frameworks that scholars have to work from, but also because they preserve an important essence of its culture. Oral history itself is very much an important facet to African culture, and it provides for a certain sense of beauty and artful depiction of the various languages and dialects that would be lost in written accounts of African history and African heritage. It is interesting how the very history of Africa is contained in an aspect of its culture and heritage that itself is a crucial part of that same history. Without the ability to study the oral history of Africa, much of its key and important aspects of cultural understanding would be lost because of the fact that each account of oral history is unique, and provides for source of information and knowledge that is otherwise limited by the use of the written word.
