MYTHING LINKS

 
Two Major Subcategories:

EGYPT & THE SAHARA
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

NOTE: each of these major subcategories is further divided
              into many smaller sections on its own opening page.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/africa/africasbook.html

"Internet African History Sourcebook":  this is a huge, educationally-focused collection of links to all of Africa, both ancient and modern, country by country, issue by issue.  It's compiled by Fordham's Paul Halsall and is one of several such sourcebooks designed by him that will be found in my pages.

http://www.he.net/~skyeagle/afro.htm

Afrocentric Debate Resource Homepage:  This site is valuable in considering important issues raised by Martin Bernal's Black Athena.  His argument, that Greece owes much of her mythology and culture to Afro-Egyptian influences, has caused a storm of protest among many, including classicists (with Mary Lefkowitz at the head of the debate).  The site offers information on both sides of the Bernal - Lefkowitz debate.  I found most interesting the balanced overview given by professional Africanist, Ibrahim Sundiata: "Afrocentrism: The Argument We're Really Having."  This website is linked to an Educating the Black Mind  "ring" of other sites -- one can enter the ring at any point and keep clicking to the next in a series.

http://www.library.nwu.edu/class/history/B94/B94lang.html

Dr. Peter A. Piccione of Chicago's Oriental Institute and Northwestern University is both an Egyptologist and an archaeologist.  In this paper based on a 1995 class lecture, Piccione discusses the "super family" of Egyptian and Afro-Asiatic languages.  The paper is engrossing, especially in light of the Afrocentric debate (see above).

Piccione points out linguistic and anthropological flaws in earlier models (e.g., one that assumed a prehistoric Indo-Aryan conquest of Egypt).  Most linguists now agree upon an Afro-Asiatic, or Hamito-Semitic, family of languages, which means that nearly all the languages of the Near East and Northern Africa are related.  Especially intriguing are speculations on the geographical origin of the proto-language -- some linguists argue for the Sahara Desert (which was a fertile grassland 6,000 years ago); others for the Southern Sudan and Ethiopia.

Piccione also discusses hieroglyphs and other aspects of ancient Egyptian language.  If you love languages and the mysteries of their origins, you'll be fascinated by this site.  (See Egyptian Hieroglyphs if you're interested in exploring this topic further.)