function with one another in a social group in order to hunt,
forage, grow crops, and perform other functions necessary
to survival. In particular, children early on were taught the
value of collecting food, taking it back to the community, and
sharing it with other family members.
Because of the importance of food gathering, mothers
learned to fashion slings so that they could carry their infants
while foraging. Indeed, the child’s ability to survive depended
heavily on a mother’s ability to carry the child long distances
until he could walk as well as on her ability to provide food.
Further, her survival and that of her off spring depended on
spacing the birth of children, in some instances as much as
four or fi ve years apart. Otherwise, the mother would be tied
down with nursing infants and unable to look for food. It was
also important for the mother to maintain ties with her own
brothers and sisters and those of her mate. Doing so provided
her and her children with protection and a community that
taught children the skills they needed to survive. Most an-
cient African cultures were probably matrilineal, meaning
that descent was traced through the mother’s ancestors rather
than the father’s. Th e father oft en gave the child a name, but
the matrilineal clan name remained an important part of the
child’s identity.
Th e concept of community in child rearing was im-
portant to ancient Africans. Every adult in the commu-
nity shared in the task of raising children and teaching
them not only physical skills (hunting, foraging, growing
crops, tool making, cattle herding, and the like, depend-
ing on the economy of the particular community) but also
social skills, leadership, confl ict resolution, and the like. A
common modern proverb that expresses this concept is “It
takes a village to raise a child.” Th is proverb, though, has
many diff erent variations from throughout Africa: “A child
does not grow up only in a single home,” “A child belongs
not to one parent or home,” and others. Skills tended not
to be specialized, for specialization would have made the
tribe—typically 30 to 100 people—dependent on the skills
of one person at a period of time when life was precarious.
Th us, children were early on taught the arts of cooperation.
Th ey oft en learned these lessons through community story-
tellers, who preserved and transmitted tales that promoted
the values of the group over the individual. Children—andBoys kept in seclusion in an initiation camp in Angola, southern Africa; such rites date back to ancient times. (© Board of Regents of the University
of Wisconsin System)
188 children: Africa