Ancient Ghanan Empire

Created by:
Kenzy, Arisa and Aditi
 Sacrifice

The success of Ghana has also been explained mythically through the story of Bida,
the black snake: Bida demanded a sacrifice every year in exchange for prosperity
for the kingdom. Hence every year a virgin girl was offered to the black serpent,
until one year, Mamadou Sarolle, the fiancé of the intended victim rescued her and
put an end to this blasphemy. Cheated of his deal, Bida took revenge on the
kingdom… A terrible draught took hold of Ghana and gold minion fell into decline.
Archaeloligists have found evidence that confirms certain sections of this story;
until the 12th century cattle, such as sheep, cows, and goats, were abundant in the
country. But after this only the tougher and more resistant goats remained, this
significantly made things difficult for Ghana and played a major role in its decline.
 Decline there
There was more than one reason for their downfall, and unluckily for them, most of

them happened around the same time.

• The king lost his trading monopoly when new gold fields were found Bure (modern

Guinea) in the 11th and 12th century, unfortunately bure was out of the commercial reach

of Ghana; this made all of the traders go east instead of Ghana; this caused Ghana loss.

• There was a big drought, and it had caused serious long term problems, they were not able

to sustain their cattle and cultivation which caused survival very difficult.

• `
 Geography

Ancient kingdom of Ghana was situated between Niger and

Senegal rivers in West Africa. The rivers were important to the
kingdom because they relied heavily on trade, and before the
modern era, rivers were the fastest way to transport goods. Ghana is
only a few degrees north of the equator which means that it did
have weather variation though it must lean more on the hotter side.
Ancient Ghana was located only 400 miles north west of modern
day Ghana , so when the modern Ghana won independence they
took the name from their nearby famous country.
 Islam

Traders, naturally, bought islam with them. Initially

Muslims had remained a separate community some distance
away from the royal palace, they had their own mosques
and schools. However the king retained his traditional
religious beliefs, he drew on the book-keeping and literary
skills of Islamic scholars to help run the government of the
country. The state of takrur however adopted islam as its
official language and evolved closer to trading ties with
North Africa.
 Trade Route
The route taken by the traders of the Maghreb to
Ghana would have started in North Africa in Tahert,
sweeping down through Sijilimasa in Southern
Morocco. From there the trail went south and inland,
roughly running parallel with the coast. Then it
curved round to the south east through Awdaghust,
finally ending up in Kumbi Saleh - the royal town of
Ghana
 Overview of Africa
Negative
All countries have good and bad
things, some of the negatives
points were that they used to
trade slaves and sacrificed virgin
little girls. They were extremely
traditional and religious and that
sometimes came in their way of
seeing right and wrong.
Positive
They were advanced for their
time period. They used their
knowledge of metallurgy in their
advantage; they helped them
fight their way through trade.
This also kept the enemies away
as at first It was only Ghana that
had metal weapons, thanks to
Soninke people.
 Source A
Analyzing Ancient African Painting
 Observations
It looks like all the people are gathered for some sort of feast, some of them have

spears which makes look like they just came back from a hunt. There is a fire in the

corner, a large heap of what looks like grains, and about half a dozen birds. They are

seated in a big room rather than the open skies, which means they indeed have a

civilization. They have windows and a floor to their house, but the people are still

sitting on carpets which they most likely made themselves. This shows that they

were skilled in arts. Also in the middle there is a leader who is sitting behind two

large pots. Most of them are dressed in fine clothes making it seem that they are

from an upper class. This doesn’t only show that they are capable of making clothes,

this also shows that they have social levels; they have wealthy people who lead and

have the more fine things, then they have people who do their bidding for them.
They might say that they have a proper seating Negative
place and house which shows that they are
( They might use this picture to
civilised. The wealthy also have fine robes while
say that the Africans still hunted
the hunters barely have anything,  this lets us
like savages and did not have a
know that they also have social standards.
proper farm to get their meat
Though it is not pleasant it shows us that they

have some sort of system that they work with

from.. Which makes them less

(wealthy rule others work for them). We can see civilized than the Europeans (who

that  they have carpets on which the wealthy are
sitting on (creative contribution much?) they also
have a kind of mat or floor(?) which they sit on,
which shows us that they indeed were NOT 
barbarians.  They also have grains which shows
that they must have some kind of agriculture
were apparently the people who
decided everything). People might
even criticize their living
conditions, bearing in mind that
historians were mostly European
and this is very different than what