The Golden Rhinoceros
Histories of the African Middle Ages
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Narrated by:
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Michael Page
About this listen
A leading historian reconstructs the forgotten history of medieval Africa.
From the birth of Islam in the seventh century to the voyages of European exploration in the 15th, Africa was at the center of a vibrant exchange of goods and ideas. It was an African golden age in which places like Ghana, Nubia, and Zimbabwe became the crossroads of civilizations, and where African royals, thinkers, and artists played celebrated roles in the globalized world of the Middle Ages. The Golden Rhinoceros brings this unsung era marvelously to life, taking listeners from the Sahara and the Nile River Valley to the Ethiopian highlands and Southern Africa.
Drawing on fragmented written sources as well as his many years of experience as an archaeologist, François-Xavier Fauvelle painstakingly reconstructs an African past that is too often denied its place in history - but no longer. He looks at ruined cities found in the mangrove, exquisite pieces of art, rare artifacts like the golden rhinoceros of Mapungubwe, ancient maps, and accounts left by geographers and travelers - remarkable discoveries that shed critical light on political and architectural achievements, trade, religious beliefs, diplomatic episodes, and individual lives.
©2018 Princeton University Press: original French edition copyright 2013 by Alma éditeur, Paris (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Drawing on the latest discoveries that have only recently come to light, Scottish archaeologist Neil Oliver goes on the trail of the real Vikings. Where did they emerge from? How did they really live? And just what drove them to embark on such extraordinary voyages of discovery over 1,000 years ago? The Vikings: A New History explores many of those questions for the first time in an epic story of one of the world's great empires of conquest.
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Intriguing for a broad audience.
- By Grant on 08-07-18
By: Neil Oliver
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Babylon
- Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization
- By: Paul Kriwaczek
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Civilization was born 8,000 years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place. In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period.
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Solid overview 3000 years of history
- By Alsor2000 on 07-19-20
By: Paul Kriwaczek
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Ur: A Captivating Guide to One of the Most Important Sumerian City-States in Ancient Mesopotamia
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Duke Holm
- Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook is about the city which houses the mighty Ziggurat - the Biblical “Ur of the Chaldees” where Abraham was supposedly born. The site near which the earliest human cultures were found. The site which held the most glorious Sumerian Dynasty in ancient history. This is the story of the city that was destined to die and be reborn every millennium or so, a city full of intrigue, magnificence, tragedy, and glory.
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Highly Recommended
- By Wsil Ali on 12-09-18
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Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds
- By: Frank Joseph
- Narrated by: Blake Kubena
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds is the most up-to-date and comprehensive investigation of history's infamous sunken city. Nowhere else will you find a more dramatic and convincing presentation of the evidence for its archaeological reality.
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Good for a substitute for melatonin!
- By joshua on 02-12-19
By: Frank Joseph
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Children of Ash and Elm
- A History of the Vikings
- By: Neil Price
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The Viking Age - from 750 to 1050 saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture.
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Outstanding
- By Than on 10-06-20
By: Neil Price
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The Lost Empire of Atlantis
- History's Greatest Mystery Revealed
- By: Gavin Menzies
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times bestselling historian Gavin Menzies presents newly uncovered evidence revealing, conclusively, that “the lost city of Atlantis” was not only real but also at the heart of a highly advanced global empire that reached the shores of America before being violently wiped from the earth. For three millennia, the legend of Atlantis has gripped the imaginations of explorers, philosophers, occultists, treasure hunters, historians, and archaeologists. Until now, it has remained shrouded in myth. Yet, like ancient Troy, is it possible that this fabled city actually existed?
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Absolutely abominable!
- By Magdalene on 03-05-18
By: Gavin Menzies
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Arabs
- A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes, and Empires
- By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 25 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia.
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Good book bad narration
- By Anonymous User on 09-18-19
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Who Discovered America?
- The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas
- By: Gavin Menzies, Ian Hudson
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Greatly expanding on his blockbuster 1421, distinguished historian Gavin Menzies uncovers the complete untold history of how mankind came to the Americas - offering new revelations and a radical rethinking of the accepted historical record in Who Discovered America? The iconoclastic historian's magnum opus, Who Discovered America? calls into question our understanding of how the American continents were settled, shedding new light on the well-known "discoveries" of European explorers, including Christopher Columbus.
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Like reading an appendix
- By D. McCracken on 01-23-15
By: Gavin Menzies, and others
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African Origin of Civilization - The Myth or Reality
- By: Cheikh Anta Diop
- Narrated by: Frank Block
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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This classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.
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History told from an honest point
- By Lee on 12-19-21
By: Cheikh Anta Diop
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Scotland's Hidden Sacred Past
- By: Freddy Silva
- Narrated by: Freddy Silva
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Around 6000 BC, a revolution took place on Orkney and the Western Isles of Scotland. An outstanding collection of stone circles, standing stones, round towers, and passage mounds appeared seemingly out of nowhere. And yet many such monuments were not indigenous to Britain, but to regions of the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean. Their creators were equally mysterious. Traditions tell of the Papae and Peti, "strangers from afar" who were physically different, dressed in white tunics, and lived aside from the regular population.
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Magical
- By Mori on 12-17-21
By: Freddy Silva
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Do you refuse to laugh at offensive jokes? Have you ever been accused of ruining dinner by pointing out your companion’s sexist comment? Are you often told to stop being so “woke”? If so, you might be a feminist killjoy—and this handbook is for you. In this book, feminist theorist Sara Ahmed shows how killing joy can be a radical world-making project. Presenting sharp analysis of literature, film, and influential feminist works, and drawing on her own experiences as a queer feminist scholar-activist of color, Ahmed reveals the invaluable lessons of the feminist killjoy.
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Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "dark" continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe's yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies in the heart of West Africa.
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American History World History Our History
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The Spartacus War is the extraordinary story of the most famous slave rebellion in the ancient world, the fascinating true story behind a legend that has been the inspiration for novelists, filmmakers, and revolutionaries for 2,000 years. Starting with only 74 men, a gladiator named Spartacus incited a rebellion that threatened Rome itself.
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Interesting
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What listeners say about The Golden Rhinoceros
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-04-22
Excellent
I really enjoyed this! It is a fascinating area of study.
So often academics propose an hypothesis and then twist or cherry-pick facts in order to create a 'pretty' narrative. This author does not do that. Rather, he lays out what we know, what we don't know, and what possible explanations there are for the information we have available. It's a very welcome approach, and if you're interested in this topic, it's an excellent place to start.
However, it would be useful to provide a PDF download of maps depicting the various regions and cities that are described, a glossary of words used that aren't in the common vernacular, as well as a list of names of people mentioned. A lot of topics are covered, and it would make it so much easier to keep everything straight in my head if I had a reference guide. A bibliography would also be incredibly useful in directing me towards further reading on this topic.
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2 people found this helpful
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- jlwrvw
- 04-27-21
Excellent scholarly intro to a medieval Africa
This book has been unfairly panned by listeners perhaps interested in a more general intro to medieval African history. Rather, it is a methodologically intriguing book about the inconclusive nature of evidence and artifacts as a reflection of a world region that lacks documents so common in “Western” or the history of the “North.” If that makes sense to you, this is a fascinating book! It paints the broad strokes of connections within Africa as well as tantalizing stories about links to Asia, Europe, and possibly America.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Chris Hummel
- 09-12-23
Especially Enjoyable to a Historian
As a historian, a I enjoyed this more than those seeking a straight narrative may have. What the author does is to provide sketches and analysis based on the very limited material available from the sources, be they maps, commentary (mostly from outsiders), or artifacts. Thus, the reader see what an actual historian does--draw interpretations from the data. Since we don't have a full picture or Africa during the "middle ages," the author looks in a fascinating way, from the inside out. We get not only (albethey limited) views of Africa in this period, we are taught to better understand these limits and how history gets "done." This is an insider history that tells us at least as much about what we don't know as what we do, which makes it fascinating to a student of history.
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- Dipam
- 04-06-22
A Major Disappointment!
To call this a history book is to denigrate history.
This is simply a collection of unconnected snippets of particular moments in time, with no connection between any of the snippets. There is no context presented whatsoever. The author (I use that term very loosely) jumps from Senegal to Ethiopia to Morocco to Zimbabwe with absolutely no effort to create any sort of large picture out of these uninteresting pieces. There are no intros nor explanations as to how what we are about to hear or have just heard fits with the other uninteresting pieces. There is no thread connecting any of these little tidbits (mostly about 10 minutes or so each) whatsoever. After almost every one of them I came away thinking that I could not care less about what I had just heard. It was just one piece of drivel after another. Shame on François-Xavier Fauvelle for pawning this off as "Histories of the African Middle Ages."
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