African History

Africa is the place where people first originated, so African history goes back further than in any other place on earth. At first there were not very many people in Africa, and they lived by gathering wild plants and by scavenging meat that other, stronger animals had killed. Gradually they began using stone tools, and fire, and then hunting for themselves. These first people probably started out in south-east Africa.

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 as an Ice Age set in (not the most recent Ice Age but the one before that), people began to drift into West Asia, following the herds of animals.

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.

In the more fertile parts of Africa, the population kept on growing. By 300 BC, some people called the Bantu, who lived along the Niger river in West Africa, began to get too crowded where they lived. West Africa (now Nigeria and Cameroon) had fertile land in the zone between the Sahara desert and the rain forest, but it was small. Gradually the Bantu began to spread out from their home to other parts of Africa, mainly to the south and east, through the rain forest to the grasslands on the other side. Europe, too, was getting more crowded at this time, and soon North Africa had its second major invasion when the Romans attacked in the 200’s BC. The Carthaginian general, Hannibal, terrified the Romans. But in the end, Carthage and the rest of North Africa, including Egypt, had to submit to Roman rule.

During the next several hundred years, southern Africa also saw a lot of political changes. The old kingdom of Kush was taken over by a new kingdom to their south called Aksum (modern Ethiopia), who also traded with the Parthians, the Indians, and the Romans. When Roman North Africa converted to Christianity, many Axumites converted too. At the same time, the Bantu kept expanding, and learned how to farm and how to make iron weapons. By the 400’s AD, the Bantu had taken over some of the East Coast of Africa and some of the grasslands in southern Africa.