Africa

The history of Africa begins with the prehistory of Africa and the emergence of Homo sapiens in East Africa, continuing into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states. The recorded history of early civilization arose in Egypt, and later in Nubia, the Sahel, the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa. During the Middle Ages, Islam spread through the regions. Crossing the Maghreb and the Sahel, a major center of Muslim culture was Timbuktu. Some notable pre-colonial states and societies in Africa include the Nok culture, Mali Empire, Ashanti Empire, Kingdom of Mapungubwe, Kingdom of Sine, Kingdom of Saloum, Kingdom of Baol, Kingdom of Zimbabwe, Kingdom of Kongo, Ancient Carthage, Numidia, Mauretania, the Aksumite Empire, the Ajuran Sultanate and the Adal Sultanate.
From the late 15th century, Europeans and Arabs captured Africans from West, Central and Southeast Africa and kidnapped them overseas in the African slave trade.^[1] European colonization of Africa developed rapidly in the Scramble for Africa of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is widely believed that Africa had up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs before it was colonized.^[2] Following struggles for independence in many parts of the continent, as well as a weakened Europe after the Second World War, decolonization took place.
Africa's history has been challenging for researchers in the field of African studies because of the scarcity of written sources in large parts of the continent. Scholarly techniques such as the recording of oral history, historical linguistics, archaeology and genetics have been crucial.

Paleolithic

Main articles: Lower Paleolithic, Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age

The first known hominids evolved in Africa. According to paleontology, the early hominids' skull anatomy was similar to that of the gorilla and chimpanzee, great apes that also evolved in Africa, but the hominids had adopted a bipedal locomotion and freed their hands. This gave them a crucial advantage, enabling them to live in both forested areas and on the open savanna at a time when Africa was drying up and the savanna was encroaching on forested areas. This occurred 10 to 5 million years ago.^[3]
By 3 million years ago, several australopithecine hominid species had developed throughout southern, eastern and central Africa. They were tool users, and makers of tools. They scavenged for meat and were omnivores.^[4]
By approximately 2.3 million years ago, primitive stone tools were first used to scavenge kills made by other predators and to harvest carrion and marrow from their bones. In hunting, Homo habilis was probably not capable of competing with large predators and was still more prey than hunter. H. habilis probably did steal eggs from nests and may have been able to catch small game and weakened larger prey (cubs and older animals). The tools were classed as Oldowan.^[5]
Around 1.8 million years ago, Homo ergaster first appeared in the fossil record in Africa. From Homo ergaster, Homo erectus evolved 1.5 million years ago. Some of the earlier representatives of this species were still fairly small-brained and used primitive stone tools, much like H. habilis. The brain later grew in size, and H. erectus eventually developed a more complex stone tool technology called the Acheulean. Possibly the first hunters, H. erectus mastered the art of making fire and was the first hominid to leave Africa, colonizing most of the Old World and perhaps later giving rise to Homo floresiensis. Although some recent writers suggest that Homo georgicus was the first and most primitive hominid ever to live outside Africa, many scientists consider H. georgicus to be an early and primitive member of the H. erectus species.^[6][7]

African biface artifact (spear point) dated in Late Stone Age period.

The fossil record shows Homo sapiens living in southern and eastern Africa at least 100,000 and possibly 150,000 years ago. Around 40,000 years ago, the species' expansion out of Africa launched the colonization of the planet by modern human beings. By 10,000 BCE, Homo sapiens had spread to all corners of the old world. Their migration is traced by linguistic, cultural and genetic evidence.^[5][8][9]

Emergence of agriculture

Around 16,000 BCE, from the Red Sea hills to the northern Ethiopian Highlands, nuts, grasses and tubers were being collected for food. By 13,000 to 11,000 BCE, people began collecting wild grains. This spread to Western Asia, which domesticated its wild grains, wheat and barley. Between 10,000 and 8000 BCE, northeast Africa was cultivating wheat and barley and raising sheep and cattle from southwest Asia. A wet climatic phase in Africa turned the Ethiopian Highlands into a mountain forest. Omotic speakers domesticated enset around 6500–5500 BCE. Around 7000 BCE, the settlers of the Ethiopian highlands domesticated donkeys, and by 4000 BCE domesticated donkeys had spread to southwest Asia. Cushitic speakers, partially turning away from cattle herding, domesticated teff and finger millet between 5500 and 3500 BCE.^[10][11]
In the steppes and savannahs of the Sahara and Sahel, the Nilo-Saharan speakers and Mandé peoples started to collect and domesticate wild millet, African rice and sorghum between 8000 and 6000 BCE. Later, gourds, watermelons, castor beans, and cotton were also collected and domesticated. The people started capturing wild cattle and holding them in circular thorn hedges, resulting in domestication.^[12] They also started making pottery and built stone settlements (look up Tichitt- Oualata). Fishing, using bone tipped harpoons, became a major activity in the numerous streams and lakes formed from the increased rains.
In West Africa, the wet phase ushered in expanding rainforest and wooded savannah from Senegal to Cameroon. Between 9000 and 5000 BCE, Niger–Congo speakers domesticated the oil palm and raffia palm. Two seed plants, black-eyed peas and voandzeia (African groundnuts) were domesticated, followed by okra and kola nuts. Since most of the plants grew in the forest, the Niger–Congo speakers invented polished stone axes for clearing forest.^[13]
Most of southern Africa was occupied by pygmy peoples and Khoisan who engaged in hunting and gathering. Some of the oldest rock art was produced by them.^[14]
Just prior to Saharan desertification, the communities that developed south of Egypt in what is now Sudan were full participants in the Neolithic revolution and lived a settled to semi-nomadic lifestyle, with domesticated plants and animals.^[15] It has been suggested that megaliths found at Nabta Playa are examples of the world's first known archaeoastronomical devices, predating Stonehenge by some 1,000 years.^[16] The sociocultural complexity observed at Nabta Playa and expressed by different levels of authority within the society there has been suggested as forming the basis for the structure of both the Neolithic society at Nabta and the Old Kingdom of Egypt.^[17] The southern Egyptian Naqada culture were culturally and ethnically similar to Sub-Saharan Africans as the northern Egyptian cultures had extensive ties and links to the Levant. The union of these cultures would later start the dynastic period in ancient Egypt.^{[citation needed]}
By 5000 BCE, Africa entered a dry phase, and the climate of the Sahara region gradually became drier. The population trekked out of the Sahara region in all directions, including towards the Nile Valley below the Second Cataract, where they made permanent or semipermanent settlements. A major climatic recession occurred, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in central and eastern Africa. Since then, dry conditions have prevailed in eastern Africa.

Metallurgy

9th century bronze staff head in form of a coiled snake, Igbo-Ukwu, Nigeria

The first metals to be smelted in Africa were lead, copper, and bronze in the fourth millennium BC.^[18]
Copper was smelted in Egypt during the predynastic period, and bronze came into use not long after 3000 BC at the latest^[19] in Egypt and Nubia. Nubia was a major source of copper as well as gold.^{[citation needed]} The use of gold and silver in Egypt dates back to the predynastic period.^[20][21]
In the Aïr Mountains, present-day Niger, copper was smelted independently of developments in the Nile valley between 3000 and 2500 BC. The process used was unique to the region, indicating that it was not brought from outside the region; it became more mature by about 1500 BC.^[21]
By the 1st millennium BC, iron working had been introduced in northwestern Africa, Egypt, and Nubia.^[22] In 670 BC, Nubians were pushed out of Egypt by Assyrians using iron weapons, after which the use of iron in the Nile valley became widespread.
The theory of iron spreading to Sub-Saharan Africa via the Nubian city of Meroe is no longer widely accepted. Metalworking in West Africa has been dated as early as 2500 BC at Egaro west of the Termit in Niger, and iron working was practiced there by 1500 BCE.^[23] In Central Africa, there is evidence that Iron working may have been practiced as early as the 3rd millennium BCE.^[24] Iron smelting was developed in the area between Lake Chad and the African Great Lakes between 1000 and 600 BCE, long before it reached Egypt. Before 500 BCE, the Nok culture in the Jos Plateau was already smelting iron.^[25][26]

Antiquity

The ancient history of North Africa is inextricably linked to that of the Ancient Near East. This is particularly true of Ancient Egypt and Nubia. In the Horn of Africa the Kingdom of Aksum ruled modern-day Eritrea, northern Ethiopia and the coastal area of the western part of the Arabian Peninsula. The Ancient Egyptians established ties with the Land of Punt in 2350 BC. Punt was a trade partner of Ancient Egypt and it is believed that it was located in modern-day Somalia, Djibouti or Eritrea.^[27] Phoenician cities such as Carthage were part of the Mediterranean Iron Age and classical antiquity. Sub-Saharan Africa developed more or less independently in those times.

Ancient Egypt

Main article: Ancient Egypt

Map of Ancient Egypt and nomes

After the desertification of the Sahara, settlement became concentrated in the Nile Valley, where numerous sacral chiefdoms appeared. The regions with the largest population pressure were in the delta region of Lower Egypt, in Upper Egypt, and also along the second and third cataracts of the Dongola reach of the Nile in Nubia. This population pressure and growth was brought about by the cultivation of southwest Asian crops, including wheat and barley, and the raising of sheep, goats, and cattle. Population growth led to competition for farm land and the need to regulate farming. Regulation was established by the formation of bureaucracies among sacral chiefdoms. The first and most powerful of the chiefdoms was Ta-Seti, founded around 3500 BCE. The idea of sacral chiefdom spread throughout upper and lower Egypt.^[28]

The pyramids of Giza, symbols of the civilization of ancient Egypt

Later consolidation of the chiefdoms into broader political entities began to occur in upper and lower Egypt, culminating into the unification of Egypt into one political entity by Narmer (Menes) in 3100 BCE. Instead of being viewed as a sacral chief, he became a divine king. The henotheism, or worship of a single god within a polytheistic system, practiced in the sacral chiefdoms along upper and lower Egypt, became the polytheistic religion of ancient Egypt. Bureaucracies became more centralized under the pharaohs, run by viziers, governors, tax collectors, generals, artists, and technicians. They engaged in tax collecting, organizing of labor for major public works, and building irrigation systems, pyramids, temples, and canals. During the Fourth Dynasty (2620-2480 BCE), long distance trade was developed, with the Levant for timber, with Nubia for gold and skins, with Punt for frankincense, and also with the western Libyan territories. For most of the Old Kingdom, Egypt developed her fundamental systems, institutions and culture, always through the central bureaucracy and by the divinity of the Pharaoh.^[29]
After the fourth millennium BCE, Egypt started to extend direct military and political control over her southern and western neighbors. By 2200 BCE, the Old Kingdom's stability was undermined by rivalry among the governors of the nomes who challenged the power of pharaohs and by invasions of Asiatics into the delta. The First Intermediate Period had begun, a time of political division and uncertainty.^[30]
By 2130, the period of stagnation was ended by Mentuhotep, the first Pharaoh of the Eleventh Dynasty, and the emergence of the Middle Kingdom. Pyramid building resumed, long-distance trade re-emerged, and the center of power moved from Memphis to Thebes. Connections with the southern regions of Kush, Wawat and Irthet at the second cataract were made stronger. Then came the Second Intermediate Period, with the invasion of the Hyksos on horse-drawn chariots and utilizing bronze weapons, a technology heretofore unseen in Egypt. Horse-drawn chariots soon spread to the west in the inhabitable Sahara and North Africa. The Hyksos failed to hold on to their Egyptian territories and were absorbed by Egyptian society. This eventually led to one of Egypt's most powerful phases, the New Kingdom (1580–1080 BCE), with the Eighteenth Dynasty. Egypt became a superpower controlling Nubia and Palestine while exerting political influence on the Libyans to the West and on the Mediterranean.^[30]
As before, the New Kingdom ended with invasion from the west by Libyan princes, leading to the Third Intermediate Period. Beginning with Shoshenq I, the Twenty-second Dynasty was established. It ruled for two centuries.^[30]
To the south, Nubian independence and strength was being reasserted. This reassertion led to the conquest of Egypt by Nubia, begun by Kashta and completed by Piye (Pianhky, 751–730 BCE) and Shabaka (716–695 BCE). This was the birth of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt. The Nubians tried to re-establish Egyptian traditions and customs. They ruled Egypt for a hundred years. This was ended by an Assyrian invasion, with Taharqa experiencing the full might of Assyrian iron weapons. The Nubian pharaoh Tantamani was the last of the Twenty-fifth dynasty.^[30]
When the Assyrians and Nubians left, a new Twenty-sixth Dynasty emerged from Sais. It lasted until 525 BCE, when Egypt was invaded by the Persians. Unlike the Assyrians, the Persians stayed. In 332, Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great. This was the beginning of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ended with Roman conquest in 30 BCE. Pharaonic Egypt had come to an end.^[30]