Akan (ethnic Group)
The Akan () people live primarily in present-day Ghana and Ivory Coast in West Africa. The Akan language (also known as ''Twi/Fante'') are a group of dialects within the Central Tano branch of the Potou–Tano subfamily of the Niger–Congo family.Languages of the Akan area: papers in Western Kwa linguistics and on the linguistic geography of the area of ancient. Isaac K. Chinebuah, H. Max J. Trutenau, Linguistic Circle of Accra, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 1976, pp. 168. Subgroups of the Akan people include: the Agona, Akuapem, Akwamu, Akyem, Ashanti, Bono, Fante, Kwahu, Wassa, and Ahanta. The Akan subgroups all have cultural attributes in common; most notably the tracing of matrilineal descent, inheritance of property, and succession to high political office. Oral tradition and Ethnogenesis Akan people are believed to have migrated to their current location from the Sahara desert and Sahel regions of Africa into the forest region around the 11th century. Many Akans ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Akan Language
Akan () is a Central Tano language and the principal native language of the Akan people of Ghana, spoken over much of the southern half of Ghana. About 80% of Ghana's population can speak Akan, and about 44% of Ghanaians are native speakers. It is also spoken in parts of Côte d'Ivoire. Four dialects have been developed as literary standards with distinct orthographies: Asante, Akuapem, Bono (collectively known as Twi), and Fante; which, despite being mutually intelligible, were inaccessible in written form to speakers of the other standards until the Akan Orthography Committee (AOC)'s development of a common Akan orthography in 1978, based mainly on Akuapem Twi. This unified orthography is used as the medium of instruction in primary school by speakers of several other Central Tano languages, such as Akyem, Anyi, Sehwi, Fante, Ahanta, and the Guan languages. The Akan Orthography Committee has worked on the creation of a standard orthography. With the Atlantic slav ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bono People
The Bono, also called the Brong and the Abron, are an Akan people of West Africa. Bonos are normally tagged Akan piesie or Akandifo of which Akan is a derivative name. Bono is the genesis and cradle of Akans. Bono is one of the largest ethnic group of Akan and are matrilineal people. Bono people speak the Bono Twi of Akan language. Twi language, thus the dialect of Bono is a derivative of a Bono King Nana Twi. In the late fifteenth century, the Bono people founded the Gyaaman kingdom as extension of Bono state in what is now Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.Effah-Gyamfi, E. "Aspects of the Archaeology and Oral Traditions of the Bono State. Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana"(1974) 15(2):217-227. In the 12th century when Bonos discovered gold at the Twi river and Prabom across the Tain river, Bonos became very powerful owing to its wealth in gold at Bonoman. Bonos used the gold dust as a measure of currency in Bonoman and at the various market centres of Djenne, Timbuktu a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa that had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders,Thornton, p. 112. while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; Europeans gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade (which was prior to the widespread availability of quini ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 33: "[16c: from the feminine of ''Americus'', the Latinized first name of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). The name ''America'' first appeared on a map in 1507 by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, referring to the area now called Brazil]. Since the 16c, a name of the western hemisphere, often in the plural ''Americas'' and more or less synonymous with ''the New World''. Since the 18c, a name of the United States of America. The second sense is now primary in English: ... However, the term is open to uncertainties: ..." The term gained prominence in the early 16th century, during Europe's Age of Discovery, shortly after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci concluded that America (now often called ''the Am ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ashanti Region
The Ashanti Region is located in southern part of Ghana and it is the third largest of 16 administrative regions, occupying a total land surface of or 10.2 percent of the total land area of Ghana. In terms of population, however, it is the most populated region with a population of 4,780,380 according to the 2011 census, accounting for 19.4% of Ghana's total population. The Ashanti Region is known for its major gold bar and cocoa production. The largest city and regional capital is Kumasi. Geography Location and size The Ashanti Region is centrally located in the middle belt of Ghana. It lies between longitudes 0.15W and 2.25W, and latitudes 5.50N and 7.46N. The region shares boundaries with six of the sixteen political regions, Bono, Bono East and Ahafo Regions in the north, Eastern region in the east, Central region in the south and Western region in the South west. The region is divided into 27 districts, each headed by a District Chief Executive. Economy Tourism ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bambuk
Bambouk (sometimes Bambuk or Bambuhu) is a traditional name for the territory in eastern Senegal and western Mali, encompassing the Bambouk Mountains on its eastern edge, the valley of the Faleme River and the hilly country to the east of the river valley. It was a formally described district in French Sudan, but in 1895, the border between Sudan and Senegal was moved to the Faleme River, placing the western portion of the district within Senegal. The term is still used to designate the region, but there is no formal administrative area with that name. Bambouk is primarily home to the Malinké people, and a distinctive dialect of the Maninkakan language is spoken there. History According to Martin Meredith, the Carthaginians used Berber nomads to establish a packhorse trade route across the Sahara between Lixus and "the goldfields of Bambuk in the Senegal River valley." The Diakhanke established Diakha-ba and became Muslim clerics for the Malinke chiefs after Bambuk ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Volta River
The Volta River is the main river system in the West African country of Ghana. It flows south into Ghana from the Bobo-Dioulasso highlands of Burkina Faso. The main parts of the river are the Black Volta, the White Volta, and the Red Volta. In the northwest, the Black Volta forms the international borders between the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. The Volta flows southward along the Akwapim-Togoland highlands, and it empties into the Atlantic Ocean at the Gulf of Guinea at Ada Foah. It has a smaller tributary river, the Oti, which enters Ghana from Togo in the east. The Volta River has been dammed at Akosombo for the purpose of generating hydroelectricity. The reservoir named Lake Volta stretches from Akosombo Dam in the south to the northern part of the country, and is the largest man-made reservoir by area in the world. Volta was named by the Portuguese, meaning twist or turn. The country of Burkina Faso was formerly called Upper Volta, after the river. The reserv ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gold Mining
Gold mining is the extraction of gold resources by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. However, with the expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface, has led to more complex extraction processes such as pit mining and gold cyanidation. In the 20th and 21st centuries, most volume of mining was done by large corporations, however the value of gold has led to millions of small, artisanal miners in many parts of the Global South. Like all mining, human rights and environmental issues are common issues in the gold mining industry. In smaller mines with less regulation, health and safety risks are much higher. History The exact date that humans first began to mine gold is unknown, but some of the oldest known gold artifacts were found in the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria. The graves of the necropolis were built between 4700 and 4200 BC, indicating that gold mining could be at least 700 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gold Coast (region)
The Gold Coast was the name for a region on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa that was rich in gold, petroleum, sweet crude oil and natural gas. This former region is now known as the country Ghana. Etymology and position The Gold Coast, Slave Coast, Pepper Coast (or Grain Coast) and Ivory Coast were named after the main export resources found there, respectively. Early uses of the term ''Gold Coast'' refer strictly to the coast and not the interior. It was not until the 19th century that the term came to refer to areas that are far from the coast. The Gold Coast was to the east of the Ivory Coast and to the west of the Slave Coast. Territorial entities Gold Coast region territorial entities were: * Portuguese Gold Coast (Portuguese, 1482–1642) * Dutch Gold Coast (Dutch, 1598–1872) * Swedish Gold Coast (Swedes, 1650–1658; 1660–1663) * Couronian Gold Coast (Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, 1651–1661) * Danish Gold Coast ( Denmark-Norway, 1658–1850) * Bran ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ashanti Empire
The Asante Empire (Asante Twi: ), today commonly called the Ashanti Empire, was an Akan state that lasted between 1701 to 1901, in what is now modern-day Ghana. It expanded from the Ashanti Region to include most of Ghana as well as parts of Ivory Coast and Togo. Due to the empire's military prowess, wealth, architecture, sophisticated hierarchy and culture, the Ashanti Empire has been extensively studied and has more historic records written by European, primarily British authors than any other indigenous culture of Sub-Saharan Africa.Collins and Burns (2007), p. 140. Starting in the late 17th century, the Ashanti king Osei Tutu ( – 1717) and his adviser Okomfo Anokye established the Ashanti Kingdom, with the Golden Stool of Asante as a sole unifying symbol. Osei Tutu oversaw a massive Ashanti territorial expansion, building up the army by introducing new organisation and turning a disciplined royal and paramilitary army into an effective fighting machine. In 1701, the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ahanta People
The Ahanta/Ayinda are Akan People who live to the north and east of the Nzema. The Ahanta land has been historically known as one of the richest areas on the coast of what is now Ghana. The Ahanta land spans from Beposo to Ankobra in what is now the Western Region of the Republic of Ghana, a regional power in the form of a confederacy of chiefdoms which had come in early contact with the European nations settling on the Gold Coast for the purpose of trade. Etymology The name "Ahanta" derives from ''nta'', Akan for "the twins". History Ahanta means the land of twins. As to how Ahanta became known as the land of twins is not certainly known since there are other meanings or accounts which seem more accurate and convincing than this one. It could be linked to the fertility of Ahanta women and multiple births which was very predominant then on Ahanta lands then. Some indigenous cultural practices around that time also saw births of twins as a taboo and for Ahanta to welcome th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |