The Tents of Kedar: Pre-European Africa

Despite its isolation from the mainstream of human development, Basil Davidson writes, African society before the coming of the Europeans was neither savage nor stagnant.

“I am black but comely,” sang the maiden in the Song of Solomon: black “as the  tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”

Look not upon me, because I am black
Because the sun hath looked upon me:
My mother’s children were angry with me;
They made me the keeper of the vineyards;
But mine own vineyard have I not kept.

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