History of Africa
The history of Africa begins with the emergence of hominids, archaic humans and—at least 200,000 years ago—anatomically modern humans, in East Africa, continues unbroken into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states. In the Kingdom of Kush and in Ancient Egypt, the Sahel, the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa. Following the desertification of the Sahara, North African history became entwined with the Middle East and Southern Europe while the Bantu expansion swept from modern day Cameroon across much of the sub-Saharan continent in waves between around 1000 BC and 0 AD, creating a linguistic commonality across much of the central and Southern continent. During the Middle Ages, Islam spread west from Arabia to Egypt, crossing 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, Oyo Empire, Ashanti Empire, Ghana Empire, Mossi Kingdoms, Mutapa Empire, Kingdom of Mapungubwe, Kingdom of Sine, Kingdom of Sennar, Kingdom of Saloum, Kingdom of Baol, Kingdom of Cayor, Kingdom of Zimbabwe, Kingdom of Kongo, Empire of Kaabu, Kingdom of Ile Ife, Ancient Carthage, Numidia and the Aksumite Empire.
At its peak, prior to European colonialism, it is estimated that Africa had up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs. From the mid-7th century, the Arab slave trade saw. Following an armistice between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Kingdom of Makuria after the Second Battle of Dongola in 652 AD, they were transported, along with Asians and Europeans, across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Sahara Desert. From the late 15th century, Europeans joined the slave trade. One could say the Portuguese led in partnership with other Europeans; that includes the triangular trade, with the Portuguese acquiring slaves through trade and by force as part of the Atlantic slave trade. They transported enslaved West and Southern Africans overseas. Subsequently, European colonization of Africa developed from around 10% to over 90% in the Scramble for Africa; however following struggles for independence in many parts of the continent, as well as a weakened Europe after the Second World War, decolonization took place across the continent, culminating in the 1960 Year of Africa.
Africa's pre-colonial history has been challenging to research due to the extreme lack of documentation and architecture that the continents of Europe and Asia are so richly dense in. Disciplines such as the recording of oral history, historical linguistics and genetics have been crucial; the first known hominids evolved in Africa. According to paleontology, the early hominids' skull anatomy was similar to that of the gorilla and the chimpanzee, great apes that evolved in Africa, but the hominids had adopted a bipedal locomotion which freed their hands; this gave them a crucial advantage, enabling them to live in both forested areas and on the open savanna at a time when Africa was drying up and the savanna was encroaching on forested areas. This would have occurred 10 to 5 million years ago, but these claims are controversial because biologists and genetics have humans appearing around the last 70 thousand to 200 thousand years. Https://web.archive.org/web/20150907140051/http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD020876.html By 4 million years ago, several australopithecine hominid species had developed throughout Southern and Central Africa.
They were tool users, makers of tools. They were omnivores. By 3.3 million years ago, primitive stone tools were first used to scavenge kills made by other predators and to harvest carrion and marrow from their bones. In hunting, Homo habilis was not capable of competing with large predators and was still more prey than hunter. H. habilis did steal eggs from nests and may have been able to catch small game and weakened larger prey. The tools were classed as Oldowan. Around 1.8 million years ago, Homo ergaster first appeared in the fossil record in Africa. From Homo ergaster, Homo erectus evolved 1.5 million years ago. Some of the earlier representatives of this species were still small-brained and used primitive stone tools, much like H. habilis. The brain grew in size, H. erectus developed a more complex stone tool technology called the Acheulean. The first hunters, H. erectus mastered the art of making fire and was the first hominid to leave Africa, colonizing most of Afro-Eurasia and later giving rise to Homo floresiensis.
Although some recent writers have suggested that Homo georgicus was the first and primary hominid to live outside Africa, many scientists consider H. georgicus to be an early and primitive member of the H. erectus species. The fossil record shows Homo sapiens living in Southern and Eastern Africa at least 200,000 to 150,000 years ago. Around 40,000 years ago, the species' expansion out of Africa launched the colonization of the planet by modern human beings. By 10,000 BC, Homo sapiens had spread to most corners of Afro-Eurasia, their disperals are traced by linguistic and genetic evidence. The earliest physical evidence of astronomical activity appears to be a lunar calendar found on the Ishango bone dated to between 23,000 and 18,000 BC. Scholars have argued that warfare was absent throughout much of humanity's prehistoric past, that it emerged from more complex political systems as a result of sedentism, agricultural farming, etc. However, the findings at the site of Nataruk in Turkana County, where the remains of
This page discusses the Ghanaian kingdom of Gonja. The word can refer to the people of this kingdom; the Gonja are a Guan people who have been influenced by Akan and Hausa people. With the fall of the Songhai Empire, the Mande Ngbanya clan moved south, crossing the Black Volta and founding a city at Yagbum; the Gonja kingdom was divided into sections overseen by male siblings of Sumaila Ndewura Jakpa including their children and grandchildren. Under the leadership of Naba'a, the Ngbanya dynasty of Gonja was founded; the capital was established at Yagbum. The Ngbanya expanded conquering several neighbors in the White Volta valley and beginning a profitable gold trade with the Akan states through nearby Begho. By 1675, the Gonja called the Yagbongwura, to control the kingdom; the Ngbanya dynasty has controlled this position from its founding to the present day, with only two brief interregnums. The current Yagbongwura, Tuntumba Sulemana Jakpa Bore Essa, has held his position since 2010. Precolonial Gonja society was stratified into castes, with a ruling class, a Muslim trader class, an animist commoner class, a slave class.
Its economy depended on trade in slaves from Central Africa and kola nuts through the market town of Salaga, sometimes called the "Timbuktu of the South." The Gonja language is a Tano language within the Kwa languages family related to Akan languages. Rulers of the Northern state of Gonja Jack Goody, "The social organisation of the LoWiili", Oxford University Press, 1956 Jack Goody, The Ethnology of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, West of the White Volta, 1958 Jack Goody, Death and the Ancestors: A study of the mortuary customs of the Lodagaa of West Africa, Stanford University Press, 1962 Jack Goody and J. A. Braimah, "Salaga: The Struggle for Power", Longmans, 1967 Jack Goody, The Myth of the Bagre, Oxford University Press, 1972 Goody and Jack Goody. "The Circulation of Women and Children in Northern Ghana." Man, New Series. 2.2: 226-248. Wilks, Ivor. "Wangara and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries II: The Struggle for Trade." Journal of African History 23:4: 463-472.
Ethnologue entry on Gonja language Gonja Association of North America Official website of the Gonja Association of Ghana
Mandé is a family of ethnic groups in Western Africa who speak any of the many related Mande languages of the region. Various Mandé groups are found in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Sierra Leone; the Mandé languages are divided into two primary groups: East Mandé and West Mandé. The Mandinka and Malinke people, two western branches of the Mandé, are credited with the founding of the largest ancient west African empires. Other numerous Mandé groups include the Soninke, Susu and Dyula. Smaller groups include the Ligbi and Bissa. Mande people inhabit various environments, from coastal rainforests to Sahara, they have a wide range of cultures and beliefs and are organized by language groups. Descended from ancient central Saharan people, the Mandé are an identifiable language family, with associated peoples spread throughout West Africa, they are known as having been early producers of woven textiles, by a process known as strip-weaving.
The Mandé have been credited with the independent development of agriculture about 3000–4000 BC. They founded the Ghana and Mali empires and led the expansion of the Songhai Empire across West Africa. Archaeological evidence supports; these were built on the rocky promontories of Tichit-Walata and the Tagant cliffs of Southern Mauritania between 2500 BC and 2000 BC by the sub-group known as the Soninke. Hundreds of stone masonry settlements with clear street layouts have been found in this area; some settlements had massive defensive walls. In a now arid environment where arable land and pasturage were once at a premium, the population grew. Large-scale political organizations emerged, leading to the development of military hierarchical aristocracies; the agro-pastoral society had a mixed farming economy—millet production combined with the rearing of livestock. They had learned, they traded in semi-precious stones from distant parts of the Sahara and Sahel. They are believed to be the first to domesticate African rice.
An archaeologist described their ancient, abandoned sites as representing "a great wealth of rather spectacular prehistoric ruins". Since around 1500 BCE, a number of clans of proto-Soninke descent, the oldest branch of the Mandé peoples, came together under the leadership of Dinga Cisse; the nation comprised a confederation of three independent allied, states and 12 garrisoned provinces. Located midway between the desert, the main source of salt, the gold fields of the upper Senegal River to the south, the confederation had a good location to take advantage of trade with the surrounding cities, they traded with the north by a coastal route leading to Morocco via Sijilmasa. Ghanaian society included large agricultural communities, its commercial class was the most prosperous. The Mandé merchants of Ghâna came to dominate the luxury slave trade, they enslaved neighboring Africans, either to use them for domestic purposes. Leather goods, salt and copper were sold in exchange for various finished goods.
By the 10th century, Ghâna was an immensely rich and prosperous empire, controlling an area the size of Texas, stretching across Senegal and Mauritania. When visiting the capital city of Kumbi Saleh in 950 AD, Arab traveler Ibn Hawqal described the Ghanaian ruler as the "richest king in the world because of his gold." In the 11th century, the kingdom began to decline for numerous reasons. The king lost his trading monopoly, a devastating drought damaged the cattle and cultivation industries, the clans were fractured, the vassal states were rebelling, according to Arab tradition, it is said that Almoravid Muslims came from the North and invaded Ghâna; the western Sanhaja had been converted to Islam sometime in the 9th century. They were subsequently united in the 10th century. With the zeal of converts, they launched several campaigns against the "Sudanese", idolatrous Black peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa. Under their king Tinbarutan ibn Usfayshar, the Sanhaja Lamtuna erected or captured the citadel of Awdaghust, a critical stop on the trans-Saharan trade route.
After the collapse of the Sanhaja union, Awdagust was taken by the Ghana empire. The trans-Saharan routes were taken over by the Zenata Maghrawa of Sijilmassa. Before the Almoravids, the Islamic influence was gradual and did not involve any form of military takeover. In any event, following their subsequent withdrawal, new gold fields were mined further south and new trade routes were opening further east. Just as it appeared that Ghâna would reemerge, it became the target of attacks by the Susu and their leader Sumanguru. From this conflict in 1235, the Malinké people emerged under Sundiata Kéita. By the mid-13th century, the once great empire of Ghâna had utterly disintegrated, it soon became eclipsed by the Mali Empire of Sundiata. The most renowned Emperor of Mali was Sundiata's grandson, Mansa Musa known as “Kan Kan Mussa" or "The Lion of Mali", his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 quite put Mali on the map. He took 60,000 porters with him, each carrying 3 kg of pure gold, he had so much gold that when he stopped in Egypt
The Black Volta or Mouhoun is a river that flows through Burkina Faso flowing about 1,352 km to the White Volta in Dagbon, Ghana. The Black Volta forms part of Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso. Within Ghana, it forms the border between the Brong-Ahafo Region; the Bui Dam is built on the river in Ghana. The river bisects Bui National Park in Ghana
Portugal the Portuguese Republic, is a country located on the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost sovereign state of mainland Europe, being bordered to the west and south by the Atlantic Ocean and to the north and east by Spain, its territory includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments. Portugal is the oldest state on the Iberian Peninsula and one of the oldest in Europe, its territory having been continuously settled and fought over since prehistoric times; the pre-Celtic people, Celts and Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigoths and Suebi Germanic peoples. Portugal as a country was established during the Christian Reconquista against the Moors who had invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 AD. Founded in 868, the County of Portugal gained prominence after the Battle of São Mamede in 1128; the Kingdom of Portugal was proclaimed following the Battle of Ourique in 1139, independence from León was recognised by the Treaty of Zamora in 1143.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established the first global empire, becoming one of the world's major economic and military powers. During this period, today referred to as the Age of Discovery, Portuguese explorers pioneered maritime exploration, notably under royal patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator and King John II, with such notable voyages as Bartolomeu Dias' sailing beyond the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India and the European discovery of Brazil. During this time Portugal monopolized the spice trade, divided the world into hemispheres of dominion with Castille, the empire expanded with military campaigns in Asia. However, events such as the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the country's occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, the independence of Brazil, a late industrialization compared to other European powers, erased to a great extent Portugal's prior opulence. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established being superseded by the Estado Novo right-wing authoritarian regime.
Democracy was restored after the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to all its overseas territories; the handover of Macau to China in 1999 marked the end of what can be considered the longest-lived colonial empire. Portugal has left a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe, a legacy of around 250 million Portuguese speakers, many Portuguese-based creoles, it is a developed country with a high-income advanced economy and high living standards. Additionally, it is placed in rankings of moral freedom, democracy, press freedom, social progress, LGBT rights. A member of the United Nations and the European Union, Portugal was one of the founding members of NATO, the eurozone, the OECD, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries; the word Portugal derives from the Roman-Celtic place name Portus Cale. Portus, the Latin word for port or harbour, Cala or Cailleach was the name of a Celtic goddess – in Scotland she is known as Beira – and the name of an early settlement located at the mouth of the Douro River which flows into the Atlantic Ocean in the north of what is now Portugal.
At the time the land of a specific people was named after its deity. Those names are the origins of the - gal in Galicia. Incidentally, the meaning of Cale or Calle is a derivation of the Celtic word for port which would confirm old links to pre-Roman, Celtic languages which compare to today's Irish caladh or Scottish cala, both meaning port; some French scholars believe it may have come from ` Portus Gallus', the port of the Celts. Around 200 BC, the Romans took the Iberian Peninsula from the Carthaginians during the Second Punic War, in the process conquered Cale and renamed it Portus Cale incorporating it to the province of Gaellicia with capital in Bracara Augusta. During the Middle Ages, the region around Portus Cale became known by the Suebi and Visigoths as Portucale; the name Portucale evolved into Portugale during the 7th and 8th centuries, by the 9th century, that term was used extensively to refer to the region between the rivers Douro and Minho. By the 11th and 12th centuries, Portugallia or Portvgalliae was referred to as Portugal.
The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula located in South Western Europe. The name of Portugal derives from the joined Romano-Celtic name Portus Cale; the region was settled by Pre-Celts and Celts, giving origin to peoples like the Gallaeci, Lusitanians and Cynetes, visited by Phoenicians, Ancient Greeks and Carthaginians, incorporated in the Roman Republic dominions as Lusitania and part of Gallaecia, after 45 BC until 298 AD. The region of present-day Portugal was inhabited by Neanderthals and by Homo sapiens, who roamed the border-less region of the northern Iberian peninsula; these were subsistence societies that, although they did not establish prosperous settlements, did form organized societies. Neolithic Portugal experimented with domestication of herding animals, the raising of some cereal crops and fluvial or marine fishing, it is believed by some scholars that early in the first millennium BC, several waves of Celts invaded Portugal from Central Europe and inter-married with the local populations, forming differe
Trade involves the transfer of goods or services from one person or entity to another in exchange for money. A system or network that allows trade is called a market. An early form of trade, saw the direct exchange of goods and services for other goods and services. Barter involves trading things without the use of money. One bartering party started to involve precious metals, which gained symbolic as well as practical importance. Modern traders negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money; as a result, buying can be separated from earning. The invention of money simplified and promoted trade. Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade, while trade involving more than two traders is called multilateral trade. Trade exists due to specialization and the division of labor, a predominant form of economic activity in which individuals and groups concentrate on a small aspect of production, but use their output in trades for other products and needs. Trade exists between regions because different regions may have a comparative advantage in the production of some trade-able commodity—including production of natural resources scarce or limited elsewhere, or because different regions' sizes may encourage mass production.
In such circumstances, trade at market prices between locations can benefit both locations. Retail trade consists of the sale of goods or merchandise from a fixed location, online or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption or use by the purchaser. Wholesale trade is defined as traffic in goods that are sold as merchandise to retailers, or to industrial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services. Commerce is derived from the Latin commercium, from cum "together" and merx, "merchandise."Trade from Middle English trade, introduced into English by Hanseatic merchants, from Middle Low German trade, from Old Saxon trada, from Proto-Germanic *tradō, cognate with Old English tredan. Trade originated with human communication in prehistoric times. Trading was the main facility of prehistoric people, who bartered goods and services from each other before the innovation of modern-day currency. Peter Watson dates the history of long-distance commerce from circa 150,000 years ago.
In the Mediterranean region the earliest contact between cultures were of members of the species Homo sapiens principally using the Danube river, at a time beginning 35,000–30,000 BCE. Some trace the origins of commerce to the start of transaction in prehistoric times. Apart from traditional self-sufficiency, trading became a principal facility of prehistoric people, who bartered what they had for goods and services from each other. Trade is believed to have taken place throughout much of recorded human history. There is evidence of the exchange of flint during the stone age. Trade in obsidian is believed to have taken place in Guinea from 17,000 BCE; the earliest use of obsidian in the Near East dates to the Middle paleolithic. Trade in the stone age was investigated by Robert Carr Bosanquet in excavations of 1901. Trade is believed to have first begun in south west Asia. Archaeological evidence of obsidian use provides data on how this material was the preferred choice rather than chert from the late Mesolithic to Neolithic, requiring exchange as deposits of obsidian are rare in the Mediterranean region.
Obsidian is thought to have provided the material to make cutting utensils or tools, although since other more obtainable materials were available, use was found exclusive to the higher status of the tribe using "the rich man's flint". Obsidian was traded at distances of 900 kilometres within the Mediterranean region. Trade in the Mediterranean during the Neolithic of Europe was greatest in this material. Networks were in existence at around 12,000 BCE Anatolia was the source for trade with the Levant and Egypt according to Zarins study of 1990. Melos and Lipari sources produced among the most widespread trading in the Mediterranean region as known to archaeology; the Sari-i-Sang mine in the mountains of Afghanistan was the largest source for trade of lapis lazuli. The material was most traded during the Kassite period of Babylonia beginning 1595 BCE. Ebla was a prominent trading centre during the third millennia, with a network reaching into Anatolia and north Mesopotamia. Materials used for creating jewelry were traded with Egypt since 3000 BCE.
Long-range trade routes first appeared in the 3rd millennium BCE, when Sumerians in Mesopotamia traded with the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley. The Phoenicians were noted sea traders, traveling across the Mediterranean Sea, as far north as Britain for sources of tin to manufacture bronze. For this purpose they established trade colonies. From the beginning of Greek civilization until the fall of the Roman empire in the 5th century, a financially lucrative trade brought valuable spice to Europe from the far east, including India and China. Roman commerce allowed its empire to endure; the latter Roman Republic and the Pax Romana of the Roman empire produced a stable and secure transportation network that enabled the shipment of trade goods without fear of significant piracy, as Rome had become the sole effective sea power in the Mediterranean with the conquest of Egypt and the near east. In ancient Greece Hermes was the god of trade and weights and measures, for Romans Mercurius god of merchants, whose festival was celebrated by traders on the 25th day o
The Akan are a meta-ethnicity predominantly speaking Central Tano languages and residing in the southern regions of the former Gold Coast region in what is today the nation of Ghana. Akans who migrated from Ghana make up a plurality of the populace in the Ivory Coast; the Akan language is a group of dialects within the Central Tano branch of the Potou–Tano subfamily of the Niger–Congo family. Subgroups of the Akan proper include: Asante, Akuapem and Akyem, Kwahu, Wassa and Bono. Subgroups of the Bia-speaking groups include: the Anyin, Baoulé, Sefwi, Nzema and Jwira-Pepesa; the Akan subgroups have cultural attributes in common, notably the tracing of matrilineal descent, inheritance of property, succession to high political office. Akan culture can be found in the New World. A number of Akans were taken as captives to the Americas. Ten-percent of all slave ships embarked from the Gold Coast; the primary source of wealth within Akan economy was gold. However as wars culminated in the region the capture and sale of Akan people peaked during the Fante and Ashanti conflicts as prisoners of war.
Akan conflicts led to a high number of military captives being sold into slavery known as "Coromantee". These Coromantee soldiers and other Akan captives were notorious for a large number of slave revolts and plantation resistance tactics; these captives were feared throughout the Americas so much so that we can see their legacy within groups such as the Maroons of the Caribbean and South America. Akan people are believed to have migrated to their current location from the Sahara desert and Sahel regions of Africa into the forest region around the 11th century, many Akans tell their history as it started in the eastern region of Africa as this is where the ethnogenesis of the Akan as we know them today happened. Oral traditions of the ruling Abrade Clan relate, they migrated from the north, they settled in Nubia. Around 500 AD, due to the pressure exerted on Nubia by the Axumite kingdom of Ethiopia, Nubia was shattered, the Akan people moved west and established small trading kingdoms; these kingdoms grew, around 750 AD the Ghana Empire was formed.
The Empire lasted from 750 AD to 1200 AD and collapsed as a result of the introduction of Islam in the Western Sudan, the zeal of the Muslims to impose their religion, their ancestors left for Kong. From Kong they moved to Wam and to Dormaa; the movement from Kong was necessitated by the desire of the people to find suitable savannah conditions since they were not used to forest life. Around the 14th century, they moved from Dormaa South Eastwards to Twifo-Hemang, North West Cape Coast; this move was commercially motivated. The kingdom of Bonoman was established as early as the 12th century. Between the 12th and 13th centuries a gold boom in the area brought wealth to numerous Akans. During different phases of the Kingdom of Bonoman, groups of Akans migrated out of the area to create numerous states based predominantly on gold mining and trading of cash crops; this brought wealth to numerous Akan states like Akwamu Empire, led to the rise of the most well known Akan empire, the Empire of Ashanti, the most dominant of the Akan states.
From the 15th century to the 19th century the Akan people dominated gold mining and trading in the region. The Akan goldfields, according to Peter Bakewell, were the "highly auriferous area in the forest country between the Komoe and Volta rivers; the Akan goldfield was one of three principal goldfields in the region, along with the Bambuk goldfield, the Bure goldfield. This wealth in gold attracted European traders; the Europeans were Portuguese, soon joined by the Dutch and the British in their quest for Akan gold. Akan states waged wars on neighboring states in their geographic area to capture people and sell them as slaves to Europeans who subsequently sold the enslaved people along with guns to Akan states in exchange for Akan gold. Akan gold was used to purchase slaves from further up north via the Trans-Saharan route; the Akan purchased slaves. About a third of the population of many Akan states were indentured servants; the Akans went from buyers of slaves to selling slaves as the dynamics in the Gold Coast and the New World changed.
Thus, the Akan people played a role in supplying Europeans with indentured servants, who were enslaved for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In 2006 Ghana apologized to the descendants of slaves for the role some of its people may have played in the slave trade. Akan people the Ashanti people, fought against European colonists and defeated them on several occasions to maintain autonomy; this occurred during the Anglo-Ashanti wars: the war of the Golden Stool, other similar battles. By the early 1900s all of Ghana was a colony or protectorate of the British while the lands in the Ivory Coast were under the French. On 6 March 1957, following the decolonization from the British under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, the Gold Coast was joined to British Togoland, the Northern region, Upper East region and Upper West region of the Gold Coast to form Ghana. Ivory Coast gained independence on 7 August 1960; the Akans consider themselves one nation. Akan means first, foremo