Tuesday, September 15, 2009

What's most important on the map of the continent of Africa (continent of Africa)


map_africa
Originally uploaded by vodkamax
West Africa:
a) the source of European trade and slaves, thus the region with the greatest connection to the US and Caribbean.
b) the gold mines of West Africa enabled the rise of powerful cultures during the Middle Ages. Notable groups: the Yoruba, Ghana, Songhai Empire.
c) Slavery has been practiced in Africa, as well as other places, throughout recorded history, says Wikipedia.[35][36] Between the seventh and twentieth centuries, Arab slave trade (also known as slavery in the East) took 18 million slaves from Africa via trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean routes. Between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the Atlantic slave trade took 7–12 million slaves to the New World.[37][38][39]

Africa north of the Sahara, or Mediterranean Africa:
a) colonized by the Persians, Greeks and Romans, the life in Northern Africa is considerably different from Sub-Sharan Africa.

Egypt produced one of the first high cultures of history.
At about 3300 BC, the historical record opens in Northern Africa with the rise of literacy in the Pharaonic civilisation of Ancient Egypt.[21] 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.

East Africa is the home of Swahili culture. Swahili mixes the Arabic traders' influence with those from the later colonizers, the Germans and other Europeans. Swahili is both a language and a culture.

Southern Africa is the wealthiest part of the continent. Deposits of gold and diamonds, rich farmland and additional minerals have made South Africa rich.

East Africa's central nations are considered the most physically beautiful. Nations such as Kenya and Tanzania are the site of the big-game safaris and other tourism.

The Rift Valley of East Africa is considered the home of human kind.
Africa is considered by most paleoanthropologists to be the oldest inhabited territory on Earth, with the human species originating from the continent.[11][12] During the middle of the twentieth 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)

No comments: