In studying the remote past of nonliterate peoples in Africa (and throughout the world), the historian depends for pratically all his material on archaeology. This means that the empahsis in the methodology of African history is differentfrom the emphasis in that of other histories. This is not to say that attempts to accurately reconstruct the remote past of peoples outside Africa do not involve a similar technique of discovery from material as well as physical remains, but that a greater part of their history is documented and is revealed through the use of conventional historical methods.