2000s CE: (The Agenda, What Must Be Done to Achieve True Integration of Africa into World History: Disseminating Awareness of Ancient African Developments wi…

2000s CE: (The Agenda, What Must Be Done to Achieve True Integration of Africa into World History: Disseminating Awareness of Ancient African Developments with the Same Depth Given to History Elsewhere, Conveying the Facts of African Technology, Invention, and the Export of Innovation, Acknowledging the Early Rise of African Towns and Long-Distance Commerce, and Recognizing What These Histories Mean Not Only for Africa but for Our Understanding of Common Human History Worldwide): Ehret lays out the agenda with the clarity of someone who has spent a career watching his discipline fail to do what it claims to value. First, we need to disseminate a wide historical awareness of what was happening among Africans during the long ages from the beginning of human expansion around the world through the first three centuries CE. Every student needs to encounter African history in those eras with the same depth and understanding they currently receive about history elsewhere. We need to know, and to incorporate integrally into our presentation of world history, the common directions and developments that Africa shares with the wider human story of the early ages. That means conveying the facts about technology and invention in ancient Africa, about the export of innovation from the continent, about the early rise of African towns and networks of long-distance commercial exchange. These histories have major implications not just for the integration of Africa into world history but for our understandings, as readers and writers of history, of our common human past worldwide. Among other things, these developments carry messages about the roles, contributions, and place of women in history. The agenda is not modest, but then modesty in the face of five centuries of erasure would be complicity.