Should Europeans Study African History

Myths and stereotypes surrounding Africa are largely attributed to the lack of knowledge paired with humans innate ability to always be right. During the beginning of colonization, some europeans were initially interested in exploring the ideologies and cultures that Africans conform to. Befuddled by the idea that the majority of African cultures lacked physical textual history, explorers lost interest and some began to spread hearsay about African customs. Hence, methodologies used to study Africa were inaccurate, or incompetent at best. Rather than key in on textual written evidence, Europeans should have studied the importance of music and stories. Written history was largely confined to northern Africa, while the vast majority of African …show more content…
In West Africa, for example, different strings of a frame zither serve as different voices: that of the mother for a low-pitched string, and that of the child for a higher-pitched string. Two closely pitched strings may be called brother and sister strings (Grosz-Ngate, 197).
Clearly, music is far beyond the solitary use of entertainment in African cultures. For specific sounds and strings to coordinate with different characters, allows for stories to be passed on in ways that someone who does not closely study the music to miss. In turn, vital information surrounding the history and position of African cultures is not seen, which leads to a lack of holistic knowledge of a culture. This further solidifies the need for an all inclusive study of Africa to be done in order to correctly tell the history of …show more content…
If they were to be accepted, they were seen as simple tales that entertained more so than informed the audience. Azevedo mentions “Experts such as John Mbiti, Placide Temples, Geoffrey Parrinder, Benjamin Ray, and others, however, tell us that African religion is complex as other religions of the world, in its attempt to explain humankind’s existence on the planet and the issues of life and death” (Azevedo, 400). Due to the simple methodologies used to explore the complexities of African religion, stereotypes were spread, myths were passed on and the elaborate truth of African religions were boiled down to generalized falsifications. European explorers brought back a false, and vague idea of African cultures. Azevedo states “to the outsider, it looks as if African religion has no temples of worship, no representation of God, no reformers or prophets, and no complex dogmas. African religion prescribes no specific days of worship consistently held during the week, month, or year as in the West” (Azevedo, 400). The inability for explorers to comprehend the complexities of African cultures made it easy to consider them as primitive and simple. These thoughts further perpetuated the stereotypes of African which include the ideology of a primitive subspecies in need of western ruling. This made it easier to justify the implementation of