1. Africa: Early History to 1000 C.E.  African Continent map.  East Africa was the original home of the human kind.  Although this is the case, African civilization, with exception of Egyptian Civilization, had not taken in history books as civilization.  There are reasons for this: The writers of history of civilizations have usually been white European.  Their biased approach has a great weight in the case.

2.  Another reason for that is hidden in the definition of civilization itself.  The term civilization attributes writing, urban life, metallurgy and use of technology.  Historians and archaeologists seek for some remains to infer or to get direct knowledge about a particular culture.  The African societies did not organize around a government or state.  So, not many official writings or documents have been found.  It is assumed that they lived a life close to the state of nature.

3.  It has been hard to find intellectual, cultural or artistic remains that reflect the customs and traditions of those African societies.  It is claimed that the tropical climate that prevails in much of sub-Saharan Africa unfortunately had destroyed many types of artifacts that survived in drier regions.  After all, it is being claimed that too little is known about Africa to write a complete history of African civilizations.  Another source for getting information about a civilization is reports from outside observers.  It is only after 950 C.E. that these reports help historians.

4.  Islamic and later on European travelers, historians, and geographers provided much depth descriptions of way of life and peoples beyond Egypt, in Ethiopia and North Africa.  Before that, there were only few brief Greek and Roman accounts of African civilization and way of life available to historians.  These accounts are too biased and one sided; sometimes degrading and stereotyping African people.

5. Physical Description of the Continent  Africa is usually discussed in 6 major regions.  North Africa – the Mediterranean coastal regions from modern Morocco through Libya and including the northern Sahara.  Nilotic Africa – roughly includes modern state of Egypt and Sudan, Sudan – the broad belt of Sahel and savanna below the Sahara, stretching from the Atlantic east across the entire continent.  West Africa – including the woodland coastal regions from Cape Verde to Cameroon and the western desert, Sahel, and savanna as far as the Lake Chad basin.

6.  East Africa - from the Ethiopian highlands to south over modern Kenya and Tanzania, an area split north to south by Great Rift Valley.  Central Africa – the region north of the Kalahari, from the Chad basin across the Congo basin and southeast of Lake Tanganyika and south to the Zambezi River.  Southern Africa - from the Kalahari Desert and Zambezi south to the Cape of Good Hope.

7. African Peoples  We are all African by descent. It is indicated that 1.5 million years ago our ancestors evolved in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa.  It is assumed that before 100 000 B.C.E. modern humans appeared and moved out to populate the world.  Archaeologists found that there had been substantial internal movement of African people and they also did trade with others from outside of the continent.  Particularly Egypt, engaged in Mediterranean trade throughout antiquity.

8.  It is argued that probably some Africans did trade with as far as India via sailing. Diffusion of Languages  Between 1000 and 3000 languages are found in Africa.  Some of these are dialects of the major languages.  The languages used in Africa can roughly be divided in 6 major indigenous families:  The Afro-Asiatic, the Nilo-Saharan, the Niger-Congo, Khoisan, the Austronesian language of Madagascar and Indo-European language family from Western Europe.

9. The Early Iron Age and the Nok Culture  Findings indicate that there were iron-smelting between 7 th century B.C.E. and 4 th century B.C.E. in various places in Africa.  The possibility is that this came from Near East and Egypt and as well as within the continent near Grate Lake region.  Today, findings show that Africa is very rich of minerals, particularly copper and iron.  Iron Age sites have been found near today’s Nigeria.  Iron Age people of this area are called Nok people.

10.  Archaeologists found stone tools, iron implements and sophisticated sculptures dated back to 900 B.C.E to 200 C.E.  The main economic activities were agriculture and cattle herding, in Nok culture.  The notion is that this culture laid a basis for Sudanic civilizations.

11. The Kingdom of Kush  Upper Nile basin, near Sudan, where lower Nubian land of Kush is located.  This area is sort of Egyptianized segment of Nilo-Saharan- speaking Nubians built the earliest known literate and politically unified civilization in Africa after Egypt in as early as 4 th millennium B.C.E.  It was a wealthy and prosperous kingdom between 1700- 1500 B.C.E.  They benefited from Nubian gold mines.  Egyptian influence was very visible in Kushite Kingdom.

12.  Egyptian colonial rule took over this kingdom for a while.  Then, from the 10 th century B.C.E. to the 4 th century C.E. a new empire emerged and prevailed.  This new Kushite Empire was ended by Ethiopian Aksumites.  Aksumites dominated northeastern Africa.

13. The Meroitic Empire  The heyday of Meroitic culture was from the mid-third century B.C.E. to the first century C.E.  Their position was what it is called today “Middleman” in trade.  They were middlemen for African goods in demand in the Mediterranean and Near East.  They were selling animal skins, ebony and ivory, gold, oils, perfumes and slaves.  The Kushites traded with the Hellenistic-Roman world, southern Arabia, and India.

14.  They also shipped quality iron to Aksum and the Red Sea.  They were doing cattle breeding and other animal husbandry and agriculture were the economic mainstays.  Cotton cultivation was also important; even it preceded the Egyptian cultivation and it was exported.  This was a prosperous time for the Meroitic Empire of Nile.  They built many monuments, created royal pyramids like those of Egypt, made fine pottery and jewelry.  The political system was obviously kingdom and the king would rule by customary laws.

15.  King, who violates the laws and taboos could be forced out of the power or commit suicide.  There was also a royal election system.  The priests present several candidates for king, and the god would choose the new king among those candidates.  Therefore, they consider the king as living god, an idea that could also be found in ancient Egypt and many other African societies.  Role of woman, as the mother of the king was important in the process.  The “queen mother” had a say.  In fact, a woman had become a sole monarch in the second century B.C.E.

16. The Aksumite Empire  Christianity spreaded with state of Aksum, which centered in the northern Ethiopian highlands where the Blue Nile rises in Africa.  The people of Aksum were the cultural mixture of African Kushitic speakers with Semitic speakers from southern Arabia.  Arabians infiltrated and settled on the Ethiopian plateau around 500 B.C.E. and gave Aksum and later Ethiopia, Semitic speech and script.  Alongside with the Aksumite Empire, there was Ethiopian and Sudanese people and cultures that had marks on the African continent.