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Across Africa the powerful new force of nationalism drew upon the advanced militaristic skills that natives learned during the world wars serving in the British, French, and other armies. It led to organizations that were not controlled by or endorsed by either the colonial powers nor the traditional local power structures who were viewed as ...
Africa History Atlas Diachronic map showing pre-colonial cultures of Africa (spanning roughly 500 BCE to 1500 CE) This map is "an artistic interpretation" using multiple and disparate sources. Date: 1 May 2007: Source: Own work: Author: Jeff Israel : Other versions: Derivative works of this file: African-civilizations-map-imperial.png
The terms African civilizations, also classical African civilizations, or African empires are terms that generally refer to the various pre-colonial African kingdoms.The civilizations usually include Egypt, Carthage, Axum, [1] Numidia, and Nubia, [1] but may also be extended to the prehistoric Land of Punt and others: Kingdom of Dagbon, the Empire of Ashanti, Kingdom of Kongo, Empire of Mali ...
The only part of Africa well known in antiquity was the coast of North Africa, described in Greek periplus from the 6th century BC. Hellenistic era geographers defined Ancient Egypt as part of Asia , taking the boundary of Asia and Egypt to lie at the Catabathmus Magnus (the escarpment of Akabah el-Kebir in western Egypt).
There were many kingdoms and empires in all regions of the continent of Africa throughout history. A kingdom is a state with a king or queen as its head. [1] An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant centre and subordinate peripheries".
The main period of decolonisation in Africa began after World War II. Growing independence movements, indigenous political parties and trade unions coupled with pressure from within the imperialist powers and from the United States and the Soviet Union ensured the decolonisation of the majority of the continent by 1980.
The history of Southern Africa has been divided into its prehistory, its ancient history, the major polities flourishing, the colonial period, and the post-colonial period, in which the current nations were formed. Southern Africa is bordered by Central Africa, East Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Sahara Desert. Colonial ...
Human habitation in North Africa has been greatly influenced by the climate of the Sahara (currently the world's largest warm desert), which has undergone enormous variations between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years. [2] This is due to a 41,000-year Axial tilt cycle in which the tilt of the earth changes between 22° and 24. ...