B00466902Introduction to African History (AFST/HIST 283A)December 16, 20131. (a) Africans and Europeans have relationships that date back to the origins of humans and human migrations. Scholars have hypothesized that the Homo erectus found in Europe about 800,000 years ago originated and migrated from Africa. Europeans and Africans also had religious relationships; this is evident from the spread of Christianity, introduced by the Byzantines, throughout Africa, particularly in North Africa, the Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa. In addition to religious relations, Africans and Europeans also had economic and political relations following European colonization and conquest of African regions. Economic relations were the result of Europeans arriving in Africa and taking natural resources from which to benefit in the production of goods and trade. Another specific example of economic relations between Europeans and Africans is the practice of mercantilism, in which European nations were the mother countries and African countries were the colonies. Since the mother country, the Europeans, would take natural resources from the colony, from the African regions, to produce goods, which would then be resold to the colony. This was also attributed to political relations between Africans and Europeans because Europeans' economic desires often led them to control Africans to maximize profits and their own personal benefits; which is directly related to slavery, one of the largest relationships between Africans and Europeans. Slavery and the slave trade in turn created social relationships because slaves were considered a class unto themselves. Another social relationship that resulted from slavery was the creation of a “new race” known as… the paper resource center. Post-independence Africans, although not ruled by European nations such as Great Britain, France, and the Dutch, were still dependent on these nations for goods and other commercial purposes. Culturally, post-independence Africans and pre-colonial Africans were different because post-independence Africans were greatly influenced by the mother countries that ruled them because the cultures of their motherland were inflicted on them, whether it was language, food, religion or even clothing. Pre-colonial and post-independence Africans also differed politically in that pre-colonial African governments were more like tribes, while post-independence African governments had Western influence and in some cases led to dictatorships, as seen in Liberia dictated by Samuel Doe, Zaire dictated by Mobutu Sese Seko and Somalia dictated by Muhammad Siad Barre.