- published: 11 Oct 2009
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The Berber calendar is the agricultural calendar that is traditionally used in North Africa regions. It is also known in Arabic as the ﻓﻼﺣﻲ fellāḥī "rustic" or ﻋﺠﻤﻲ ʿajamī "foreign" calendar. It is employed to regulate the seasonal agricultural works, in place of the Islamic calendar which, being of lunar type, without any relation with the seasonal cycles, is useful to calculate religious festivals but ill-adapted for agriculture.
The Berber calendar, a legacy of Roman Mauretania, is a surviving form of the ancient Julian calendar (with month names derived from the Latin) which was used in Europe before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, and which is also still in use in the Eastern churches.
There have been other indigenous calendars among the Berber peoples in the past, for example that of the Guanches of the Canary Islands, but relatively little is known of these.
Not much is known about the division of time among ancient Berbers. Some elements of a pre-Islamic, and almost certainly pre-Roman, calendar emerge from some medieval writings, analyzed by Nico van den Boogert. Some correspondences with the traditional Tuareg calendar suggest that in antiquity there existed, with some degree of diffusion, a "Berber" time computation, organized on native bases.
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States that have ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa.
African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States. However, some immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations, or their descendants, may be identified or self-identify with the term.
African-American history starts in the 16th century with African slaves who quickly rose up against the Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón and progresses to the present day, with Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those landmarks there have been events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, including slavery, racism, Reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.