Longue durée and durée profonde

Abstract

Wandering and wondering along the transitional, liminal zones of contact and contingency between the landmass of Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean, it becomes difficult to ignore the fact that longue durée must be thought of in terms of both time and space. The complex temporal dimensions of longue durée encompass always dynamic and often contradictory continuities that extend from the very first years that hominins, including homo sapiens, emerged up until the present and into the future when, after centuries of demographic catastrophe due to the trade in the enslaved, the epicenter of the world’s population will continue to move ever more rapidly back to Africa. The complex spatial dimensions of longue durée encompass always dynamic and often contradictory continuities that extend across rainforests, mountains, deserts and oceans, none of which ever really constituted significant barriers for our wandering landborne and waterborne ancestors.