African weeks

Hal Fleming and I were colleagues and friends in the Anthropology Department and the African Studies Center at Boston University for years and remained close after retirement. We had even co-taught a course one year trying to establish a diachronic anthropology. The four fields of American Anthropology are the basis for whatever diachronic dimension is attainable in the study of non-literate peoples. Hal is better steeped in Linguistics and Genetics than I, so I will not try to match him there, but this story of a culture-complex that runs through many millennia is one I know he enjoys. He had heard it before, but it has never been previously published.

The planetary week as a culture-complex is traced from its origins in Babylonia, through the cultures of the Mediterranean Basin, and eventually to its development in the Akan cultures of the Guinea Coast of West Africa.

• Affiliations: 1: Boston University