Pyramids in Egypt
By K.E. CARR - May 2016 - The first people
evolved from primates like chimpanzees in Africa,
about two million years ago. At this time, there
may have been only about 2000 people in all of
Africa (or anywhere in the world). They lived by
gathering wild plants and by scavenging meat
that other, stronger animals had killed. About 1.9
million years ago, they began using stone tools ,
and about 800,000 years ago they began to use
fire . Cooking their food on the fire to make it
easier to digest may be what gave early people
the extra energy to grow bigger brains and
become modern people. These first modern
people probably started out in south-east Africa.
Around 100,000 years ago, people living in
Blombos Cave, on the seaside in South Africa,
were gathering shellfish to eat. They may have
been making bone fish-hooks to catch fish too.
Fishing encouraged people to move along the
coasts, following the fish, so people began to
spread out all along the coast of Africa and even
begin to leave Africa, following the coast. By
about 75,000 years ago, people in Blombos Cave
were mixing minerals to make paint and carving
abstract designs into blocks of red ochre. They
made seashells into beads for necklaces.
The Arabian Peninsula from Eretria,
across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait of the Red Sea
Probably the first people to leave - taking their
red ochre and seashell necklaces with them - first
went through Egypt , around the Red Sea to the
Arabian Peninsula, though some people may have
crossed the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula
from Eretria, where you can see Arabia across the
water. Still most people lived in Africa. But at the
end of an Ice Age (not the most recent Ice Age
but the one before that), people began to sail
north up the Persian Gulf into West Asia,
following the fish.
Starting around 8500 BC, African people began to
claim land and start farming . Groups of people
were fighting and killing each other in what's now
Kenya by 8000 BC. People in Sudan domesticated
millet and donkeys . In West Africa, people started
to press palm oil . In Egypt, people began to keep
bees for honey and grow figs . As these African
crops spread to West Asia, West Asian crops like
wheat and barley, and dates , chickpeas and lentils
also spread to Africa.
Farming let people have a lot more kids, and by
3000 BC , there were so many people in Africa
that they started to form into kingdoms . The first
African kingdom (and probably the first big
kingdom anywhere) was in Egypt , where the
Pharaohs built the pyramids . South of Egypt,
along the upper Nile river, was the kingdom of
Kush (modern Sudan).
Slowly, as more places got involved in farming
and trade, other parts of Africa also began to
form kingdoms. About 700 BC, the Phoenicians
conquered part of North Africa and founded the
city of Carthage . When the Persians conquered
the Phoenicians in 539 BC , Carthage became an
independent kingdom that ruled most of the
Western Mediterranean.
Palace at Kerma (Sudan, 1750 BC)
Less than 200 years later, about 300 BC, the
Bantu people, who lived along the Niger river in
West Africa, began to form kingdoms too, and
then to migrate south, taking over other people's
land. The Bantu went mainly southeast, through
the rain forest to the grasslands on the other
side. About the same time, the Romans
conquered North Africa, and then Egypt . When
Roman North Africa converted to Christianity in
the 300s AD, soon afterwards many Axumites
converted too. At the same time, the Bantu kept
moving southeast, and they started farming and
herding cattle and sheep . By the 400s AD , the
Bantu had taken over some of the East Coast of
Africa and some of the grasslands in southern
Africa.
Medieval African History
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