Ancient Capital of the Land of Gold

Abstract

This is the third article appearing in Practical Anthropology to throw light on Africa before the period of modern contact. During the European Middle Ages there were African kingdoms which rivaled the best in Europe except for the usual absence of writing and written literature. On March 6, 1957, a new state — Ghana, formerly the British-administered territory of the Gold Coast — came into existence on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea. The choice of Ghana as the name for the new-born state may have puzzled some students of African history. No part of the former Gold Coast was ever included in the Empire of Ghana, which extended over the western Sudan and the southern Sahara from the seventh until at least the thirteenth century, but whose southern expansion seems to have stopped at the Niger. Some writers have suggested that the Akan, one of the principal local, tribes, may have been connected with the Empire of Ghana. The selection of this name for the new West African State was actually probably due to the glamour surrounding the first great Sudanese Empire.