1. Pre-Agriculture Civilizations and Beyond
Africa
Pre-Agriculture Civilizations and Beyond

2. 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.

3. Geography
Sahara Desert
Sahel
Rainforest
Congo
Kalahari Desert

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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.

7. Bantu Migrations 3 Phase Migration from Middle Eastern Africa.
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.

9. Early Kingdoms of Africa
Kush
Aksum
Swahili and Ghana
Look these 2 up independently

10. 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.

11. Kush Kingdom
White Nile
Blue Nile

12. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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!

16. 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.