First Take-Home Examination
 

Answer any TWO of the questions set out below. You are required to return your essays not later than Friday, October 12, 2001. Please make sure that your essays are well reasoned. The organization and presentation of your paper will be given some credit. You are free to make use of material from class lectures, readings from the recommended texts, and other sources that you may have consulted on your own. However, do not copy other people's words and thoughts, especially from the internet, without identifying your sources.
 

EITHER

1A. Discuss Africa's contribution to the evolution and development of humankind. What is the importance of the distinction between homo erectus and homo sapiens in Africa's contribution to humankind's evolution?
 

OR
 

1B. Assess Charles Darwin's contributions to the theory of evolution. Would it be fair to say that humankind's evolution in Africa and beyond followed Darwin's theory?
 
 
 

2. What are the causes and consequences of the desiccation of the Sahara? Include in your discussion the relationship between Egypt and the Nile, on the one hand, and the Sahara, on the other hand
 

3. Examine the relationship between ancient Mediterranean world and ancient civilizations of North Africa. To what extent could ancient Africa be said to have been part of the Mediterranean?
 

4. Write an essay on Egyptian civilization as a social formation of ancient African history.
 

5. Discuss the various phases of the Middle Nile civilization that encompasses Kush, Meroe, and Nubia.
 

5. Discuss Arnold Toynbee's theory of civilization. How helpful is the Toynbean notion of challenge-and-response in accounting for the rise and fall of ancient African civilizations?

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