Early History to 1500
Africa has the longest human history of any continent. African hominins date from at least 4 million years ago; agriculture, brought from SW Asia, appears to date from the 6th or 5th millennium b.c. Africa's first great civilization began in Egypt in 3400 b.c.; other ancient centers were Kush and Aksum. Phoenicians established Carthage in the 9th cent. b.c. and probably explored the northwestern coast as far as the Canary Islands by the 1st cent. b.c. Romans conquered Carthage in 146 b.c. and controlled N Africa until the 4th cent. a.d. Arabs began their conquest in the 7th cent. and, except in Ethiopia, Muslim traders extended the religion of Islam across N Africa and S across the Sahara into the great medieval kingdoms of the W Sudan. The earliest of these kingdoms, which drew their wealth and power from the control of a lucrative trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and slaves, was ancient Ghana, already thriving when first recorded by Arabs in the 8th cent. In the 13th cent. Ghana was conquered and incorporated into the kingdom of ancient Mali, famous for its gold and its wealthy capital of Timbuktu. In the late 15th cent. Mali was eclipsed by the Songhai empire and lost many provinces but remained an autonomous kingdom.
There are few written accounts of the southern half of the continent before 1500, but it appears from linguistic and archaeological evidence that the older inhabitants were gradually absorbed or displaced by agricultural, iron-working peoples speaking related Bantu languages who originated from near the modern Nigeria-Cameroon border. Between the 1st cent. b.c. and 1500, Bantu-speaking peoples became dominant over most of the continent S of the equator, establishing small farming villages and in places powerful kingdoms, such as Kongo, Luba, and Mwememutapa. Prior to and after 1500, pastoralists moved south until they encountered the various Bantu groups and founded the kingdom of Kitara in the 16th cent. They subsequently founded the kingdoms of Bunyoro, Buganda, Rwanda, and Ankole, all of which had elaborate social structures based on a cattle-owning aristocracy.
Sections in this article:
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Oceans and Continents
