Africa History

Africa – History (Prehistory)

In Africa there are the oldest traces of human travel. The continent has accommodated many peoples, which over time have merged and split up, expanded and wiped out, and some ethnic groups are during the 1900s. arose as a result of the administrative measures of the European colonial powers. Our knowledge of Africa’s history is based on a combination of written sources, oral traditions and archaeological, linguistic and ethnological analyzes.

In Africa, man can be followed further back in time than anywhere else on Earth. See Abbreviationfinder. From the Rift Valley in East Africa and from limestone caves in South Africa, numerous finds of skeletal parts come from a now extinct human genus, Australopithecus species, which lived for between 4 and 1 million. years ago. The most famous Australopithecus find is the skeleton of a flimsy female, Lucy, from Hadar in Ethiopia. However, there is no evidence that she and her relatives used tools.

Ancient mansion (About 2 million to 120,000 years ago)

Between 2 and 1.8 million years ago the species Homo habilis lived, which is regarded as the ancestor of man (see man). at the Koobi Forums in Kenya and the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, along with primitive stone tools, pebble tools. Findings of these oldest tools, the so-called ancientowan culture, are also known from Ethiopia, from the Omodale in the south and Hadar in the north.

The oldest finds of handcuffs are also from Olduvai and Koobi Fora in East Africa and are 1.5 million. years old. They belong to the acheulene culture that spread throughout most of Africa. The older stages are linked to the species Homo erectus, the younger to archaic or early sapiens types. Settlements were found on the lakes and along the great rivers Vaal, Zambezi and the upper Nile. In times of humid climate, in the Sahara, elephants and wild oxen have been hunted in environments that had the nature of savanna. From the coast of Casablanca, Morocco, the bones and bones of Homo erectus are known in caves from the middle and younger acheulées, for example at Sidi Abd al-Rahman. Similar findings are known from Ternifine in Algeria.

Middle and Younger Palaeolithic (About 120,000-10,000 years ago)

From the beginning of this period, a more developed set of tools appears, among other things. with slices of prepared blocks in the so-called levalloist technique, small towels and triangular tips, which characterize the moustéria in Europe and Asia. Traces of settlement include found in caves at the mouth of the Klasie River in South Africa, where fish were harvested, collected seafood and hunted wild oxen and antelopes. One of the earliest findings of Homo sapiens, known at all, dates from this. In the course of the Palaeolithic, different tooling cultures developed. There was no one-step development that would allow a clear transition from the Middle to the Young Palaeolithic in Africa. Microspotting technique tips, microliter known from Europe in the Mesolithic after 9500 BC, appears in Africa earlier than in other continents. At the mouth of the Klasie River and in Border Cave in South Africa, microliths are found in layers that are at least 38,000 years old. Elsewhere, the older tradition of making tools continued, for example in the Apollo 11 cave in Namibia, where one also finds the oldest rock art in Africa with an age of approx. 27,500 years.

After a period of dry climate, the Sahara was again populated for approx. 100,000 years ago by a population that used mosquito nets. Gradually, a special tool tradition was created: the Atéria, which was characterized in particular by slender, finely chopped tips with a shank tongue.

Until approx. 44,000 years ago, in the southwestern Egypt, gazelles could be hunted on the savannah. But during the strictest period of the last ice age, between 38,000 and 13,000 years ago, the Sahara again dried up and the glacier ice covered the highest of the Atlas Mountains.

Oldest food production

In Eastern Sahara, 19000-16000 years ago, various approaches to gathering wild grasses and grains, as well as selective hunting and perhaps beginning domestication of animals, occurred. The oldest millstones are approx. 16,000 years old. Collection of wild barley may have taken place for approx. 12,000 years ago, but at the time, as in West Asia, it did not lead to the development of long-term farming communities. By contrast, you look for approx. 9500 BC settlements both along the Nile, on the Turkana Lake in East Africa and along the Sahara rivers, where the predominant profession was fishing and hunting. The humid climate at the beginning of the current heating season may have created a wealth of natural resources that made it possible to live as permanent hunters, fishermen and collectors. Pottery began in Sahara 7500-6500 BC and at Khartoum approx. 6000 BC In Egypt, ceramics first appear approx. 4500 BC.

Neolithic

From approx. 7000 BC arose in Eastern Sahara the first permanent agricultural communities whose population included, among other things. fed on millet, barley and dates and kept sheep and goats. This peasant culture is believed to have originated locally in contrast to later communities in the Nile Valley, whose knowledge of arable farming and cattle breeding may have originated in West Asia. In central Sahara there is evidence of cattle farming from ca. 5000 BC Images of cattle along with hunting scenes are maintained in numerous rock paintings.

In the period 5000-3000 BC agricultural crops arose in West Africa, where it is believed that the cultivation of African rice and yam root may have started. Persistent habitation in northeastern Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon led to the formation of urban highlands.

In East Africa, a resident population of cattle breeders has existed from ca. 3000 BC and until less than 1000 years ago. Dehydration – which is still taking place – then forced the population to live as nomads.

Centralization

According to Countryaah, the current Africa population is 1.216 billion. Along the lower Nile were found from ca. 5000 BC a population that grew wheat, barley and flax and kept cattle, sheep, goats and donkeys. Settlements with small oval houses have been found in al-Fayyum and in the Nile Delta. During the pre-dynastic time in Egypt, until approx. 3100 BC, centers along the Nile developed with increasing occupational specialization and social division, forming the basis for the rise of Egyptian civilization.

Well-organized peasant communities existed from ca. 4000 BC along the upper Nile in Sudan, for example at Kadero, where the inhabited area comprised four hectares. Findings from Nubian burial sites from the same time testify to prosperity and connection with the northern regions along the lower Nile, from which artefacts of flint and copper originate. In Sudanese Nubia, approx. 1700 BC an important center in Kerma, whose rulers were buried in giant burial mounds, up to 80 meters in diameter.