Ancient Africa for Kids

Mosque at Djenne, Mali

All the world's people probably first came from Africa, and so did most of our most important inventions - cooking, fishing, knives, boats, the bow and arrow, and numbers, for instance. So did coffee, hopscotch, cat's cradle, and jacks.

By 3500 BC Africans were beginning to organize states - first in Egypt, then further south in Kerma. Gradually states formed in North Africa (Carthage), West Africa (Djenne-Djeno), East Africa (Kilwa), and Central Africa (Great Zimbabwe and others, 1000 AD).

Africans bought things from all over the world: they got linen and cotton cloth, glass, jewelry and wine from West Asia and Europe in exchange for ivory, furs, and gold. They bought glass beads from India and Chinese silk. They learned from Indians to plant rice and grow bananas, and how to innoculate against smallpox. By the Middle Ages, African traders sold slaves and gold to Egypt and North Africa and bought sugar and wheat and salt. People, too, began to come back to Africa from other continents - Indo-Europeans came with the Roman Empire, Semites came with the Islamic Empire, and then Altaic Turks came with the Ottoman Empire.