The continent of
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
has the longest record of human activity of any part of the world and along with its geographical extent, it contains an enormous archaeological resource. Scholars have studied
EgyptologyEgyptology Egyptology Egyptology (from Egypt and Greek , -logia. , is a major field of archaeology, the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century...
for centuries but archaeologists have only paid serious attention to the rest of the continent in more recent times.
The earliest evidence of archaeological activity anywhere comes from the
Rift ValleyIn order of specificity, Rift Valley can refer to:*a rift valley in general*the Great Rift Valley*the valley of the East African Rift*Rift Valley Province, Kenya and border with Uganda...
sites of
East AfricaEast Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
such as
Olduvai GorgeThe Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge is commonly referred to as "The Cradle of Mankind." It is a steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley, which stretches along eastern Africa. Olduvai is in the eastern Serengeti Plains in northern Tanzania and is about long...
in modern-day
TanzaniaThe United Republic of Tanzania is a country in central East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.The United...
.
The continent of
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
has the longest record of human activity of any part of the world and along with its geographical extent, it contains an enormous archaeological resource. Scholars have studied
EgyptologyEgyptology Egyptology Egyptology (from Egypt and Greek , -logia. , is a major field of archaeology, the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century...
for centuries but archaeologists have only paid serious attention to the rest of the continent in more recent times.
Pliocene and Pleistocene Africa
The earliest evidence of archaeological activity anywhere comes from the
Rift ValleyIn order of specificity, Rift Valley can refer to:*a rift valley in general*the Great Rift Valley*the valley of the East African Rift*Rift Valley Province, Kenya and border with Uganda...
sites of
East AfricaEast Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
such as
Olduvai GorgeThe Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge is commonly referred to as "The Cradle of Mankind." It is a steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley, which stretches along eastern Africa. Olduvai is in the eastern Serengeti Plains in northern Tanzania and is about long...
in modern-day
TanzaniaThe United Republic of Tanzania is a country in central East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.The United...
. It is thought that the earliest
hominidThe Hominidae The Hominidae The Hominidae (anglicized Hominids, also known as great apes
["Great ape" is a common name rather than a taxonomic label and there are differences in usage...]
s evolved in Olduvai or somewhere similar around 4 million years ago. They are known as
australopithecineThe term australopithecine refers to two very closely related genera within the Hominina subtribe of the Hominini tribe. They appeared in the Pliocene:* Australopithecus, appeared about 4 million years ago;...
s and
fossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record...
s of them include the famous
LucyAustralopithecus afarensis is an extinct hominid which lived between 3.9 and 2.9 million years ago. A. afarensis was slenderly built, like the younger Australopithecus africanus. It is thought that A. afarensis was ancestral to both the genus Australopithecus and the genus Homo, which includes the...
. The first, crude Oldowan stone tools produced there were made as long as 2.5 million years ago by the later
homo habilisHomo habilis is a species of the genus Homo, which lived from approximately 2.5 million to at least 1.6 million years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene period. The discovery and description of this species is credited to both Mary and Louis Leakey, who found fossils in Tanzania, East...
. Around a million years later, Developed Oldowan and then Acheulian
industriesAn archaeological industry is the name given to a consistent range of assemblages connected with a single product, such as the Langdale axe industry...
produced more advanced handaxes made by
homo erectusHomo erectus is an extinct species of the genus Homo, which originated in Africa and spread as far as China and Java. Depending on the definition of the species, it is considered to be either a direct ancestor of modern humans, or a separate species which co-existed with the distinct Homo...
. Archaeological study of this era was pioneered by people such as
Louis LeakeyLouis Seymour Bazett Leakey was a Kenyan archaeologist and naturalist whose work was important in establishing human evolutionary development in Africa. He also played a major role in creating organizations for future research in Africa and for protecting wildlife there...
and his family and has centered on the earliest development of tool use, fire and diet in hominid societies. Sites such as
Kalambo FallsKalambo Falls on the Kalambo River is a 772ft single drop waterfall on the border of Zambia and Tanzania at the southeast end of Lake Tanganyika. The falls are the second-highest uninterrupted falls in Africa...
have produced well-preserved evidence of this activity.
By the beginning of the Middle Palaeolithic, around 120,000 BC, African societies were
hunter-gathererA hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either...
s proficient in exploiting the herds of large mammals that populated the continent for meat, including elephants and the fearsome
African BuffaloThe African Buffalo, Affalo or Cape Buffalo is a large African bovid. It is up to 1.7 meters high, 3.4 meters long. Savannah type buffaloes weigh 500-900 kg, with only males, normally larger than females, reaching the upper weight range...
. The area that is now the
SaharaThe Sahara , , "The Greatest Desert") is the world's largest hot desert. At over 9,000,000 square kilometres , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe. The desert stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean...
desert was open grassland and it seems that early humans preferred this plains environment to the jungles in the centre. Coastal peoples also existed on seafood and numerous
middenA midden, also known as a kitchen midden, or a shell heap, is a dump for domestic waste. The word is of Scandinavian via Middle English derivation, but is used by archaeologists worldwide to describe any kind of feature containing waste products relating to day-to-day human life...
s indicate their diet.
Homo sapiens sapiens appears for the first time in the archaeological record around 100,000 BC in Africa and soon developed a more advanced method of flint tool manufacture involving striking
flakeIn archaeology, a lithic flake is a "portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure," and may also be referred to as a chip or spall, or collectively as debitage. The objective piece, or the rock being reduced by the removal of flakes, is known as a core. Once the proper...
s from a prepared
coreIn archaeology, a lithic core is a distinctive artifact that results from the practice of lithic reduction. In this sense, a core is the scarred nucleus resulting from the detachment of one or more flakes from a lump of source material or tool stone, usually by using a hard hammer percussor such...
. This permitted more control over the size and shape of finished tool and led to the development of composite tools, that is
projectile pointright|100pxIn archaeology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted and used either as knife or projectile tip or both, commonly called an arrowhead. Occasionally, projectile points made of worked bone or ivory are found at archaeological sites, but generally the term is reserved for a...
s and scrapers which could be hafted onto spears, arrows or handles. In turn this technology permitted more efficient hunting such as that demonstrated by the
AterianThe Aterian industry is a name given by archaeologists to a type of stone tool manufacturing dating to the Middle Stone Age in the region around the Atlas Mountains and the northern Sahara....
industry.
Although still homos, there is evidence that these early humans also actively managed the food resource as well as simply harvesting it. The jungles of the
Congo BasinThe Congo Basin is the sedimentary basin that is the drainage of the Congo River of west equatorial Africa. The basin begins in the highlands of the East African Rift system with input from the Chambeshi River, the Uele and Ubangi Rivers in the upper reaches and the Lualaba River draining wetlands...
were first occupied around this time; different conditions and diet there produced recognisably different behaviours and tool types. There are also the earliest signs of
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
appearing through the use of
ochreOchre or Ocher is term for both a golden-yellow or light yellow brown color and for a form of earth pigment which produces the color. The pigment can also be used to create a reddish tint known as Red ochre. The more rarely used terms Purple ochre and Brown ochre also exist for variant hues...
as a body decoration and paint and burial
ritualA ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc..A ritual may be...
s may have been practised.
Later Stone Age Africa
Around 10,000 BC, African societies developed
microlithA microlith is a small stone tool, typically knapped of flint or chert, usually about three centimetres long or less; They are typically one centimetre long and half a centimetre wide when finished. Microliths were either produced from small blades or made by snapping normal big blades in a...
technology which permitted even finer flint tools that could be mounted in rows on a handle. Such a tool was useful for harvesting wild grasses and also permitted fine shell and bone fish hooks, further varying diet. These nifty
NeolithicThe Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BCE in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age...
conditions led to eventual settlement sites being founded in parts of Africa as the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle was replaced by an agrarian and herding society. Other parts of the continent remained in the Palaeolithic however. Africa's earliest evidence for pottery and domesticated plants and animals comes from the north of the continent, in around 7000-6000 BC, and this different lifestyle is preserved in the images of
Saharan rock artSaharan rock art is a significant area of archaeological study focusing on the precious treasures carved or painted on the natural rocks found in the central Sahara desert. There are over three thousand sites discovered that have information about Saharan rock art...
. As the Sahara increased in size due to global climate change, its early farmers were forced south and eastwards, to the
NigerNiger , officially the Republic of Niger is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
and
NileThe Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world....
valleys spreading their new ideas as they moved.
Metal-using Africa
Wheat and barley, sheep and goats were quickly adopted from Asia by African farmers but the early use of metalworking was not widely introduced in Africa until the
EgyptianAncient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and...
s joined the
Bronze AgeThe Bronze Age of a culture is the period when the most advanced metalworking in that culture utilised bronze. This could either have been based on the local smelting of copper and tin from ores, or trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere...
around 4,000 BC. Pockets of bronze usage appeared in subsequent millennia but metal did not supplant stone in the continent until around 500BC when both iron and copper spread southwards through the continent, reaching the Cape around 200AD. The widespread use of iron revolutionised the Bantu farming communities who drove out the remaining hunter-gatherer societies they encountered as they expanded to farm wider areas of
savannaA savanna, or savannah, is a grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently small or widely spaced so that the canopy does not close...
The technologically superior Bantu spread across southern Africa and became rich and powerful, producing iron for tools and weapons in large, industrial quantities.
Historical Africa
Trade with the Near East and Europe led to strong mercantile empires growing such as the Ethiopian kingdom of
AxumAxum or Aksum is a city in northern Ethiopia which was the original capital of the eponymous kingdom of Axum. Axum was a naval and trading power that ruled the region from ca. 400 BC into the 10th century...
. The Bantu people built the impressive site of
Great ZimbabweThe Great Zimbabwe, or "stone buildings", is the name given to the stone ruins spread out over a 722 hectare area within the modern-day country of Zimbabwe, which itself is named after the ruins. It is near the town of Masvingo, which before majority rule was called Fort Victoria...
between the 10th and 15th centuries AD. The north of the continent had close cultural and economic ties with the Classical and medieval Mediterranean. Cattle herding became important in East Africa and huge earthwork enclosures were built to corral the animals. The people of Christian
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
produced impressive rock-cut
monolithic churchesA monolithic church or rock-hewn church is a church made from a single block of stone. They are one of the most basic forms of monolithic architecture....
such as that of St George at
LalibelaLalibela is a town in northern Ethiopia. Lalibela is one of Ethiopia's holiest cities, second only to Aksum, and is a center of pilgrimage for much of the country. Unlike Aksum, the population of Lalibela is almost completely Ethiopian Orthodox Christian...
during the 13th century and the first
PortuguesePortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east...
forts appeared soon after this, penetrating as far south as
ZambiaThe Republic of Zambia is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west. The capital city is...
.
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