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Africa Information

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² (11.7 million sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area.[2] With 1.0 billion people (as of 2009, see table) in 65 territories (including 54 recognized states), it accounts for about 14.72% of the world's human population.

The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, both the Suez Canal and the Red Sea along the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagoes and has 54 sovereign states ("countries") and two states with limited recognition.

Africa, particularly central Eastern Africa, is widely regarded within the scientific community to be the origin of humans and the Hominidae clade (great apes), as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest hominids and their ancestors, as well as later ones that have been dated to around seven million years ago – including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo sapiens (modern human) found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago.[3]

Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones.[4] The African expected economic growth rate is at about 5.0% for 2010 and 5.5% in 2011.[5]

Contents

Etymology

Afri was a Latin name used to refer to the Carthaginians who dwelt in North Africa in modern-day Tunisia. Their name is usually connected with Phoenician afar, "dust", but a 1981 hypothesis[6] has asserted that it stems from the Berber word ifri or ifran meaning "cave" and "caves", in reference to cave dwellers.[7] Africa or Ifri or Afer[7] is the name of Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania (Berber Tribe of Yafran).[8]

Under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of Africa Province, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya.[9] The Latin suffix "-ica" can sometimes be used to denote a land (e.g., in Celtica from Celtes, as used by Julius Caesar). The later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name.

Other etymological hypotheses that have been postulated for the ancient name "Africa":

The Irish female name Aifric is sometimes anglicised as Africa, but the given name is unrelated to the geonym.

History

Main article: History of Africa Further information: History of North Africa, History of West Africa, History of Central Africa, History of East Africa, and History of Southern Africa

Paleohistory

The African prosauropod Massospondylus.

At the beginning of the Mesozoic Era, Africa was joined with Earth's other continents in Pangaea.[12] Africa shared the supercontinent's relatively uniform fauna, which was dominated by theropods, prosauropods and primitive ornithischians by the close of the Triassic period.[12] Late Triassic fossils are found throughout Africa, but are more common in the south than north.[12] The boundary separating the Triassic and Jurassic marks the advent of an extinction event with global impact, although African strata from this time period have not been thoroughly studied.[12]

Early Jurassic strata are distributed in a similar fashion to Late Triassic beds, with more common outcrops in the south and less common fossil beds which are predominated by tracks to the north.[12] As the Jurassic proceeded, larger and more iconic groups of dinosaurs like sauropods and ornithopods proliferated in Africa.[12] Middle Jurassic strata are neither well represented nor well studied in Africa.[12] Late Jurassic strata are also poorly represented apart from the spectacular Tendaguru fauna in Tanzania.[12] The Late Jurassic life of Tendaguru is very similar to that found in western North America's Morrison Formation.[12]

Midway through the Mesozoic, about 150–160 million years ago, Madagascar separated from Africa, although it remained connected to India and the rest of the Gondwanan landmasses.[12] Fossils from Madagascar include abelisaurs and titanosaurs.[12]

The African theropod Spinosaurus was the largest known carnivorous dinosaur.

Later into the Early Cretaceous epoch, the India-Madagascar landmass separated from the rest of Gondwana.[12] By the Late Cretaceous, Madagascar and India had permanently split ways and continued until later reaching their modern configurations.[12]

By contrast to Madagascar, mainland Africa was relatively stable in position through-out the Mesozoic.[12] Despite the stable position, major changes occurred to its relation to other landmasses as the remains of Pangea continued to break apart.[12] By the beginning of the Late Cretaceous epoch South America had split off from Africa, completing the southern half of the Atlantic Ocean.[12] This event had a profound effect on global climate by altering ocean currents.[12]

During the Cretaceous, Africa was populated by allosauroids and spinosaurids, including the largest known carnivorous dinosaurs.[12] Titanosaurs were significant herbivores in its ancient ecosystems.[12] Cretaceous sites are more common than Jurassic ones, but are often unable to be dated radiometrically making it difficult to know their exact ages.[12] Paleontologist Louis Jacobs, who spent time doing field work in Malawi, says that African beds are "in need of more field work" and will prove to be a "fertile ground ... for discovery."[12]

Prehistory

Lucy, an Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered on November 24, 1974, in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression

Africa is considered by most paleoanthropologists to be the oldest inhabited territory on Earth, with the human species originating from the continent.[13][14] During the middle of the 20th century, anthropologists discovered many fossils and evidence of human occupation perhaps as early as 7 million years ago. Fossil remains of several species of early apelike humans thought to have evolved into modern man, such as Australopithecus afarensis (radiometrically dated to approximately 3.9–3.0 million years BC),[15] Paranthropus boisei (c. 2.3–1.4 million years BC)[16] and Homo ergaster (c. 1.9 million–600,000 years BC) have been discovered.[2]

Throughout humanity's prehistory, Africa (like all other continents) had no nation states, and was instead inhabited by groups of hunter-gatherers such as the Khoi and San.[17][18][19]

At the end of the Ice Ages, estimated to have been around 10,500 BC, the Sahara had again become a green fertile valley, and its African populations returned from the interior and coastal highlands in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the warming and drying climate meant that by 5000 BC the Sahara region was becoming increasingly dry and hostile. The population trekked out of the Sahara region towards the Nile Valley below the Second Cataract where they made permanent or semi-permanent settlements. A major climatic recession occurred, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in Central and Eastern Africa. Since this time dry conditions have prevailed in Eastern Africa, and increasingly during the last 200 years, in Ethiopia.

The domestication of cattle in Africa preceded agriculture and seems to have existed alongside hunter-gathering cultures. It is speculated that by 6000 BC cattle were already domesticated in North Africa.[20] In the Sahara-Nile complex, people domesticated many animals including the donkey, and a small screw-horned goat which was common from Algeria to Nubia. In the year 4000 BC the climate of the Sahara started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace.[21] This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink significantly and caused increasing desertification. This, in turn, decreased the amount of land conducive to settlements and helped to cause migrations of farming communities to the more tropical climate of West Africa.[21]

By the first millennium BC ironworking had been introduced in Northern Africa and quickly spread across the Sahara into the northern parts of sub-Saharan Africa[22] and by 500 BC metalworking began to become commonplace in West Africa. Ironworking was fully established by roughly 500 BC in many areas of East and West Africa, although other regions didn't begin ironworking until the early centuries AD. Copper objects from Egypt, North Africa, Nubia and Ethiopia dating from around 500 BC have been excavated in West Africa, suggesting that trans-saharan trade networks had been established by this date.[21]

Early civilizations

Main article: Ancient African history Colossal statues of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel, Egypt, date from around 1400 BC.

At about 3300 BC, the historical record opens in Northern Africa with the rise of literacy in the Pharaonic civilisation of Ancient Egypt.[23] One of the world's earliest and longest-lasting civilizations, the Egyptian state continued, with varying levels of influence over other areas, until 343 BC.[24][25] Egyptian influence reached deep into modern-day Libya, north to Crete[26] and Canaan.

An independent centre of civilisation with trading links to Phoenicia was established by Phoenicians from Tyre on the north-west African coast at Carthage.[27][28][29]

European exploration of Africa began with Ancient Greeks and Romans. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great was welcomed as a liberator in Persian-occupied Egypt. He founded Alexandria in Egypt, which would become the prosperous capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death.[30] Following the conquest of North Africa's Mediterranean coastline by the Roman Empire, the area was integrated economically and culturally into the Roman system. Roman settlement occurred in modern Tunisia and elsewhere along the coast. Christianity spread across these areas at an early date, from Judaea via Egypt and beyond the borders of the Roman world into Nubia; by AD 340 at the latest, it had become the state religion of the Aksumite Empire thanks to Syro-Greek missionaries who arrived by way of the Red Sea.

In the early 7th century, the newly formed Arabian Islamic Caliphate expanded into Egypt, and then into North Africa. In a short while the local Berber elite had been integrated into Muslim Arab tribes. When the Ummayad capital Damascus fell in the 8th century, the Islamic center of the Mediterranean shifted from Syria to Qayrawan in North Africa. Islamic North Africa had become diverse, and a hub for mystics, scholars, jurists and philosophers. During the above mentioned period, Islam spread to sub-Saharan Africa, mainly through trade routes and migration.[31]

9th–18th centuries

African horseman of Baguirmi in full padded armour suit 9th century bronzes from the Igbo town of Igbo Ukwu, now at the British Museum[32]

Pre-colonial Africa possessed perhaps as many as 10,000 different states and polities