Cheikh Anta Diop challenges the theories of human development created during European colonialism and chattel slavery.
In The Cultural Unity of Black Africa, what are examined are the family systems of matriarchy and patriarchy and the relationship they share with environmental conditions and the two general types of state formations that arise from the two.
Diop challenges the classical theory of a “Universal Matriarchy.”
This theory states that there was a transition from matriarchy to patriarchy and that humanity socially evolved in that order.
Diop points out that from the beginning that humanity was divided into two distinct geographical “cradles” that were more favorable for the development of either matriarchy or patriarchy.
