Africa
Pre-Agriculture Civilizations and
Beyond
Africa’s Geography
• Africa is the second largest continent in the world behind
Asia.
• Africa a variety of extreme features including the second
largest desert in the world and a large rainforest in the
center of the continent.
▫ Both of which are uninhabitable
▫ Tsetse Fly (Malaria)
• Sahel – means “coastline” in Arabic, Sahara’s coastline.
• Savannah’s of Africa
▫ Where most of Africa’s people live.
Geography
• Sahara Desert
▫ Sahel
• Rainforest
▫ Congo
• Kalahari Desert
First Humans to walk the Earth
• The first humans appeared in Africa’s Great Rift
Valley then spread outward into the early river
civilizations.
• Some groups people in Africa still embrace the
hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
▫ San – Kalahari
▫ BaMbuti (bah-uhm-Boo-tee) – Congo
• Agriculture is believed to have started in Africa
some time between 8000 and 6000 B.C.
Early African Culture
• Animism as a major part of early religion in
African societies.
▫ Belief that animal spirits play a role in regulating
daily life.
• Griots – oral history storytellers
Early African Iron Smelting
• Parts of Africa seem to have skipped the Copper
and Bronze Ages
• Straight to the Iron Age.
▫ Used to make farming tools and hunting weapons.
Bantu Migrations
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2h8A_nmFXU
• 3 Phase Migration from Middle Eastern Africa.
• Push-Pull Factors
▫ What pushes someone out of an area or attracts them
to migrate into an area.
 Slash and Burn Farming is a _______ factor?
• Proto-Bantu language tree
▫ Eventually develops into over 900 African languages.
Early Kingdoms of Africa
• Kush
• Aksum
• Swahili and Ghana
▫ Look these 2 up independently
Kush Kingdom (Chap. 4 p.92-94)
• Lived in an area called Nubia just South of Egypt.
• Ruled by Egypt during the New Kingdom.
• Kushites take over Egypt in 751 B.C. and rule for
over a thousand years.
▫ Becomes Egypt’s 25th dynasty
• After a war with Assyrians the Kush people retreat
from Egypt and set up a new capital Meroe further
south on the Nile.
Kush Kingdom
• White Nile
• Blue Nile
Aksum Kingdom
• Conquered the Kush in 350 A.D.
• Lived in modern day Ethiopia
▫ On the “Horn of Africa”
 Part of the Silk Road
• Legend traces this Kingdom to a son of King
Solomon and is first mentioned in written history of
the Greeks around 100 A.D.
• Dynasty lasts until the 20th Century when its last
ruler Haile Selassie dies in 1975.
Aksum Kingdom (continued)
• Monotheistic religion which worshiped
Mahrem, they believed their king was directly
descended from Mahrem.
• Believed in animism.
• Cultural diffusion that went along with
trade led to Aksum to convert to
Christianity.
Aksum Kingdom (continued 2x)
• The Aksum’s hilly landscape led them to develop
terrace farming, which held the soil and water
on hillsides.
• Terrace farming is
still used today!
Fall of the Aksum Empire
• Muslim conquerors forced the Aksum people to
retreat to modern Ethiopia.
• This movement cut off the Aksum to the vast
majority of its trade and caused a decline in the
civilization.
• They ruled a small portion of land for decades to
come as Christians… they never converted to
Islam.