2000 BCE–300 CE: (The Deeper Questions — How Much Have Different Human Responses to Comparable Challenges Been Shaped by Differences in Natural Environments,…

2000 BCE–300 CE: (The Deeper Questions — How Much Have Different Human Responses to Comparable Challenges Been Shaped by Differences in Natural Environments, in Organizing Ideas About the Nature of Existence, and in Prior Systems of Social Relations, and the Insistence That African Developments Are Crucial for Understanding the Full Range of Human Historical Possibilities): These differences in how the Mediterranean and West African commercial revolutions came into being bring attention to another aspect important for world historical studies: that the overall historical trajectories toward our shared modern-day world followed different and often contrasting pathways in different regions. Human beings, even when faced with comparable challenges, have responded sometimes in parallel fashions, sometimes in alternative manners. How much have these different responses been shaped by differences in natural environments? How much by the different organizing ideas and explanations about the nature and meaning of existence that people in different places possessed? How much by the different systems of social relations and cultural expectations within which people had previously carried on their lives? Looking into these kinds of matters greatly enriches what we can learn and what we can teach about humankind and about the worlds we all came out of. And once again, the developments of this age in the African continent show the crucial importance of including Africa in any global reckoning. The questions that Africa raises for world history are not supplementary. They are foundational. Without Africa, the range of human historical possibilities appears narrower than it actually is, and every generalization about how civilizations develop is built on an incomplete sample. With Africa, the sample becomes representative, and the generalizations become honest.