HISTORY OF AFRICA

History Of Africa

History Of Africa

Africa is the place where people first originated, so African history goes back further than in any other place on earth. At first, about two million years ago, there may have been only about 2000 people in all of Africa, and they lived by gathering wild plants and by scavenging meat that other, stronger animals had killed. About 1.9 million years ago, they began using stone tools, and about 800,000 years ago they began to use fire. Cooking their food on the fire to make it easier to digest may be what gave early people the extra energy to grow bigger brains and become modern people. These first modern people probably started out in south-east Africa. (Diamond, 1999)

Genetic evidence shows that until about 60,000 years ago Africa was the only place on earth where modern people lived. Then some people spread out along the coasts, going around the Arabian Peninsula and India and all the way to Australia. Still most people lived in Africa. But at the end of an Ice Age (not the most recent Ice Age but the one before that), people began to drift into West Asia, following the herds of animals. (Diamond, 1999)

Around 6000 BC, the climate in Africa (and other places) got gradually hotter and drier. The Sahara Desert was forming again. It was harder to find enough food. Some people in Africa began farming to get more food. They probably got the idea from West Asia.

But with farming the population expanded quickly. By 3000 BC, there were so many people in Africa that they started to form into kingdoms. The first African kingdom (and probably the first big kingdom anywhere) was in Egypt, where the Pharaohs built the pyramids. South of Egypt, along the upper Nile river, the kingdom of Kush (modern Sudan) developed too. Kush and Egypt traded with the Babylonians in Western Asia and the Harappans and Aryans in India.

Around 1550 BC, with the establishment of the New Kingdom in Egypt, the Egyptians conquered Kush, and they ruled Kush for the next four hundred and fifty years, until the collapse of the New Kingdom in Egypt around 1100 BC. Then Kush became independent again, and by 715 BC Kush's King Piankhy was able to conquer Egypt.

But soon after this, West Asian people showed North Africans how to use iron to make weapons, and the people who knew how to use iron soon conquered the people who didn't. About 700 BC, the Phoenicians conquered part of North Africa and founded the city of Carthage. In 664 BC, the Assyrians conquered Egypt. The Kushites learned how to make iron from the Assyrians, and they used their iron to become even more powerful than they were before. When the Persians conquered the Phoenicians in 539 BC, Carthage became an independent kingdom that ruled most of the Western Mediterranean. (Diamond, 1999)

In the more fertile parts of Africa, the population kept on ...