1. History Similar to the Middle East, this continent is
home to some of the oldest human civilizations
Hominids present 3 million years ago
Australophithecines (southern apes)
Used tools, walked upright
Homo sapiens were there 100, ,000 years ago (wiser)
Central eastern Africa is believed by most scientists to be the origin place of both humans and great apes. The earliest remains of the modern human species Homo sapiens have been found in Ethiopia and date to roughly 200,000 years ago.h
The scientist Charles Darwin was the first to suggest that the ancestors of human beings may have originated in Africa. However, prejudicial attitudes toward the continent made many people in the Western world highly resistant to the idea until well into the twentieth century.h
In 1974, the skeleton of “Lucy,” a hominid who lived approximately 3.2 million years ago and has been considered a common ancestor to the human family, was discovered in Hadar, Ethiopia. In 1979, a 165-foot trail of the earliest hominid footprints was discovered in the Kibish region of Tanzania. The two discoveries indisputably marked northeastern Africa as the birthplace of humanity.h

3. The Bantu people are one of the most recognized, early groups found here
They started in the West, but slowly populated the rest of Africa
Started in western Africa, near Nigeria and Cameroon
Over 2,000 years, they migrated south and populated much of Africa
Around 500 BC they moved in search of farmland (to the west was the ocean) (and the Berbers were in the North)
It is thguht they went east along the Sahara before heading down to the rainforest
They made tools to clear the rainforest and settled the area (known for iron work)
Later generations left the rainforest and populated the rest of the continent

4. As the Bantu-speaking group moved about, they mixed with other smaller native groups, adapted to different environments, and ultimately became many small, unique tribes
Over time, they didn’t keep a single identity….they took on many exchanges of culture and ways of life and became almost isolated tribes
They all adapted to new environments
Although ancestors all spoke a common language, Bantu people today speak more than 200 different languages
These languages are all related, but unable to be understood by each other
They differ in the crops they grow, the clotes they wear, the houses they live in, etc.
They were so good at adapting, they became strangers to each other
“bantu” comes from modern day linguists who noticed all the different groups used “abantu” to refer to “the people”

5. From these tribes, organized African states and kingdoms eventually developed in central Africa
The Ashanti Empire (16 century) Ghana and Ivory Coast
The Kingdom of Nri in Nigeria in the 11th century
Kingdoms f Ife and Oy in Western Nigeria
The Kingdom of Benin
Edo speakers of Benin made the Walls of Benin largest man-made structure in the world
Prior to the colonization of the African continent, historians believe Africa was made up of as many as 10,000 different states and autonomous groups, ranging in size from small family groups of hunter-gatherers to large kingdoms.d

6. In the 1500s-1800s, things changed as European exploration began on the continent
Numerous foreign countries began laying claim to areas of Africa and using people for their own interests
Portugal was first in 1420
Before colonizing started
They were searching for a sea route to India
The spanish, english, french and dutch followed
Vasco De Gama was the first to reach the East African Coast in 1498
British took the Cape of Good Hope in 1795 to use Cape Town as a stop route between Australia/India and Europe (also controleld by Dutch )

7. As Europe struggled with labor shortages, they began to enslave and convert native Africans
Over 10 million would be shipped to the US
They got other Africans to capture the people (incentives included cloth, guns, jewelry, whiskey, etc.)
Africans had used slavery before when conquering people and warring with others
It became so profitable through the use of Europeans, though, that African rulers began launching wars for the prupse of capturing prisoners to sell
Groups that had lived in peace for hundreds of years raided one anotehrs’ villages to capture as many prisoners as they could
Countries in Africa became too dependent on the slave trade to ever back out of it
European powers wouldn’t sell goods to Africa unless the Africans took part in the slave trade
The slave trade would be deemed illegal in 1808 because of humanitarian efforts abroad
As African groups were forced to participate in the European slave trade, Africa became ever more dominated by the foreigners
European powers also brought missionaries to Africa to aid in conversion of the natives

8. By the later 1800s, Europeans began taking over the land of Africa as well, colonizing whatever areas they could lay claim to
Sezied control of African land for their own political and economic purposes

9. As the European nations were undergoing industrialization at home, they turned to Africa for raw materials and new markets
2. Africa was also used as a source of raw materials for European industry
In colonial days…products of African mines and forests were exported
Africa still heavily depends on this exportation
Countries of Europe competed fiercely with one another to take over the richest areas of Africa
Gold, coffee beans, cocoa beans, palm oil
Many African capital cities are along the coastline because they served as ports for shipping materials to Europe

10. The Berlin Conference formally divided up the land
The darkest chapter of the “Scramble for Africa” was written not by a country but by a single man, King Leopold II of Belgium. Though the parliamentary government of Belgium had no interest in foreign expansion, Leopold read the best-selling African travelogues of Henry Stanley and decided he must have a chunk of the “magnificent cake” of Africa to himself. Masterfully manipulating Stanley, Christian missionary organizations, and even the president of the United States, Leopold convinced the world powers to grant him administrative rights over a “Congo Free State” for the express purpose of ending slavery and bringing modern civilization to primitive people. Immune to his own hypocrisy, Leopold proceeded to turn an area the size of western Europe into his personal slave plantation for the hunting of ivory and, later, rubber. He dispatched an army of European mercenaries, who then conscripted local men and boys to terrorize the population of the Congo region into collecting Leopold’s desired goods. As entire villages fled into the forests to escape Leopold’s Force Publique (Public Force), several million Congolese died of shootings, starvation, or torture. Agents of the Force Publique cut off the hands of so many Congolese in an effort to terrorize them into harvesting rubber that the commodity became known as “red rubber.”
The Great Powers turned a blind eye to what Leopold was doing in the Congo. The prospect of one man controlling an area larger than Europe, however, convinced Bismarck that invasions of African lands threatened to derail the balance of power in Europe. In 1884, he called an urgent conference in Berlin to bring order to the competing imperial claims. Not a single African was invited to the meeting. The conference validated Africa’s dismemberment, but it did not stop European rivalries. Italy soon entered the game, annexing parts of Libya and Somalia and, ruinously, attempting to conquer Ethiopia. By 1905, England had nearly gone to war with France over a small place in the Sudan, and France and Germany had played a scary game of brinksmanship over control of Morocco. The lines on the map of Africa that the Berlin conferees drew still define the boundaries of many African countries. In large measure they ignored existing geographical, ethnic, and linguistic frontiers. This arbitrary boundary making has caused conflict among African states and ethnic peoples down to the present.

11. 1884, called by the German government
No Africans were invited to take part int eh conference
Delegates from 14 European countries and one from the US agreed on the rules that would decide how Africa was to be carved up
They also agreed to join forces to put down any resistence by African people
But as colonization intensified, a meeting was called among the colonial powers:
The Berlin Conference
By 1914, Every African country except Liberia and Ethiopia were under European control
Along with Ethiopia, Liberia is one of the two modern countries in Sub-Saharan Africa without roots in the European colonization of Africa. Beginning in 1820, the region was colonized by freed American slaves with the help of the American Colonization Society, a private organization that believed ex-slaves would have greater freedom and equality in Africa. Slaves freed from slave ships were also sent there instead of being repatriated to their countries of origin. In 1847, these colonists founded the Republic of Liberia, establishing a government modeled on that of the United States and naming the capital city Monrovia after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States and a prominent supporter of the colonization. The colonists, known as Americo-Liberians, led the political and economic sectors of the country.
The country began to modernize in the 1940s following investment by the United States during World War II and economic liberalization under President William Tubman. Liberia was a founding member of the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity. A military coup overthrew the Americo-Liberian leadership in 1980, marking the beginning of political and economic instability and two successive civil wars that left approximately 250,000 people dead and devastated the country's economy. A 2003 peace deal led to democratic elections in Today, Liberia is recovering from the lingering effects of the civil war and related economic dislocation, with about 85% of the population living below the international poverty line.

12. All colonies were ruled differently by each foreign country, but some conditions were the same in all:
1.Europeans controlled the governments
2. No long-term economic development
3. No educational development
The British had INDIRECT RULE (where local chiefs served as intermediaries)
The French established a policy of ACCULTURATION (encouraging Africans to adopt and assimilate to French culture, language and cutsoms
The Portuguese practiced ASSIMILATION (similar to French model)
Some natives handled day-to-day affiars in traditional ways, but really had limited power
So many Africans will not have the administrative experience/knowledge to one day take over these governing posts/duties when the countries gain their independence after ww2
Europeans were out for profit on their own, not long-term development
Economic and educational development were not encouraged or permited as a result (been working today on expanding that)
Although schools, ports, roads, and railroads were built during colonial rule and are still used, Africans regarded them as develpments that came at great cost (freedom)

13. Most African countries will gain their independence in the 1960s, but some took until the 1990s or later
Namibia (1990)
Eritrea 1993
South Africa first black president in 1994 (Nelson Mandela)formal colonial era waned in the early 1950s bc WWII had taken its toll on European economies, African soldiers had fought alongside the allies and returned with ideas of freedom, the UN promoted the idea of self-determination, and African scholars who studied in foreign institutions returned home to challenge colonial rule
During the 1950s, colonized African states began to fight for independence from imperial rule with Libya being the first African nation to declare its independence. The independence movements brought great hope and inspired U.S. civil rights leaders like Malcolm X to fight for increased freedoms at home.d
South Africa was one of the first African nations to gain its independence from colonial rule after the imperial period. However, black residents of the state lived under a forced system of segregation called Apartheid (meaning “separateness”) until 1994 when the country held its first democratic elections with universal suffrage. The famous civil rights leader Nelson Mandela was elected as president.d
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in July 2011 as the outcome of a 2005 peace deal that ended Africa's longest-running civil war. An overwhelming majority of South Sudanese voted in a January 2011 referendum to secede and become Africa's first new country since Eritrea split from Ethiopia in 1993