History of Africa

The history of Africa begins with the emergence of Homo sapiens in East Africa, and continues into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states. The recorded history of early civilization arose in the Kingdom of Kushand later in Ancient Egypt, the Sahel, the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa. During the Middle Ages, Islam spread west from Arabia to Egypt, crossing the Maghreb and the Sahel. Some notable pre-colonial states and societies in Africa include the Ajuran Empire, D'mt, Adal Sultanate, Warsangali Sultanate, Kingdom of Nri, Nok culture, Mali Empire, Songhai Empire, Benin Empire, Ashanti Empire, Ghana Empire.

South Africa

A detailed timeline showing the events from 7 million years ago, Out of Africa II migration and the aftermath.

The Sahara desert.

First domestication of cattle in Africa.

Tropical climate of West Africa.

Metalworking introduced and began to become commonplace in West Africa.

Akan; Edo, Yoruba, and Igbo people in West Africa; and the Swahili coastal trading towns of Southeast Africa.

San people of southern Africa; family clan groupings of the Bantu-speaking peoples of central, southern, and eastern Africa; heavily structured clan groups in the Horn of Africa; the large Sahelian kingdoms.

Pre-colonial Africa possessed perhaps as many as 10,000 different states and polities.

Earliest Hausa states from the western regions to central Sudan.

Ghana, Gao, and the Kanem-Bornu Empire.

Mali Empire in western Sudan in the thirteenth century.