This phrase interests me. Forced implies it was against there will. Public pressure from whom? Europeans? Why would they not want to help?

I feel like saying this is dangerous while putting illegal in quotes is contradictory. To fight the battle for the "illegal" immigrants is to acknowledge they are not criminals and their association with other immigrants shouldn't be deemed dangerous.

It intrigues me how meaning is so human dependent and can change throughout time. What from our time will get misunderstood by future generations? What will get a new meaning assigned to it? Is there anyway to prevent this?

Did this have advantages to a certain extent? It reminds me how past people called an icy terrain Greenland and a bountiful terrain Iceland though there to deter people from coming to exploit Greenland of its fruits.

So was it a safety issue or a territorial one? what other purposes did it have? Did they have the foresight to assume future generations would find it?

This reminds me of Essi Catherine comment in which she said that African texts should be preserved by writing them down in comparison to oral history. I wonder how many stories, identities, and lives we have lost because we have not recorded them.

The abstract category really caught my eye. These engravings were more about storytelling, they were about expression. I wonder if they truly are "abstract" or if they fall more under the lines of "non-figurative" which is essentially code for one of the following: the interpreter couldn't make out what it was, it has weathered with time, or the artist simply chose poorly for his profession.

This is similar to the Ancient watercourses and biogeography of the Sahara explain the peopling of the desert article, in which the authors discuss how location influence where people resided, what language they spoke, etc. These facts are very intriguing to me in regards to the nature vs nurture argument. How much are we a product of our environment and how much does that allow us to extrapolate from past societies to now if our societies and environments look so different?

It is very interesting how language interacts with our surroundings. This reminds me of the Hmong who use whistles in their speech.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170525-the-people-who-speak-in-whistles#:~:text=In%20reality%2C%20the%20enchanting%20melody,to%20each%20in%20their%20forest.

Why is this controversial?

This type of knowledge always puzzles me, though it is really the only way to go about discovering history. This assertion runs under the assumption that the present requirements and ingredients that make up lakes are the same as the past requirements and ingredients which isn't certain, just very probable. What if we are missing something or came to the wrong conclusion and there was no green Sahara? What are the impacts of such a claim that there was once a green Sahara? Is it harmless?

Would this also help us to predict the future of the Sahara as well? How would climate change function within these records?

The impact that language has on history is astounding. With translators and everything accessible to us in current days, it is hard to imagine a time where certain information was not accessible because it was not able to be read.

This point confuses me. Why does intent matter here but not when someone who is not African uses it? Doesn't the word carry the same weight when an African says it? Or is this to say it is an attempt for redefinition when an African person says it?

This is a great example and what allowed me to completely understand this piece. This is the point the paper is making: if other ethnicities, identifies, and social groups can reclaim or redefine themselves, then so can "tribes".

I have actually not heard about these stereotypes. Are these common stereotypes projected?

These strong and rather negative stereotypes functionally put the African people in a box but they do not include the full picture. These stereotypes that surround violence, nudity, and starvation are tactics seen in Hollywood films as well. They try to appeal to the reader by advertising these things in their artificial world that is really just a set. However, when these things that are just meant to catch the readers attention extend beyond a set, it then becomes an issue. These stereotypes leave out the mundanity that is fundamental is everyday life which can be damaging and limiting.