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History
Evidence points to a common human ancestry originating in Africa from
the emergence of a humanlike species in eastern Africa some 5 million
years ago. The earliest true human being, Homo sapiens, dates from more
than 200,000 years ago in Africa. The continent was the primary
gene-center for cultivated plants like cotton, sorghum, watermelon,
kola-nuts and coffee. Some of the earliest beginnings of civilization
were in the valleys of the Nile River when ancient Egyptians begin using
burial texts to accompany their dead. Other skills that developed early
in Africa include irrigation, animal husbandry, pottery, metallurgy,
weaving, woodworking, leatherwork, and masonry and the most visible
architecture exemplified by the pyramids and the Great Zimbabwe stone
structures in Southern Africa. African political organization ranged
from the great empires and kingdoms that stretched from Ghana, the Mali
Empire of the Mandinka, Asante in West Africa through Songhai, Kongo,
Benin south to the Monomotapa and Zulu kingdoms. But there were also
some fundamentally independent societies that operated without formal
political structures such as the Khoi and San people in the south and
the so-called pygmies of the tropical rain forests.
In about 1441 European slave trade in Africa started with the first
shipment of African slaves sent directly from Africa to Portugal.
Countries that became involved in the slave trade include Portugal,
Britain, Spain, the United States of America, Holland, France, Sweden,
and Denmark. The numbers are the subject of debate, but at the height of
the slave trade between 1650 and 1900, Europe and North America forcibly
removed an estimated 28 million Africans from central and western Africa
as slaves. Africans, like Queen Nzingha of Angola and King Maremba of
the Congo, fought valiantly, if vainly, against the European slavers and
their African collaborators. This was a human, sociological and
political catastrophe for Africa because not only were people removed,
many lives were lost, many societies were disrupted, economies destroyed
and many political units destroyed.
The devastation of the slave trade and the superiority of European
military capabilities made Africa easy pickings for colonization. In the
late 18th century, European political, economic, and scientific
interests stimulated a search for new markets and a different kind of
invasion of Africa that comprised of direct control and in the case of
Southern Africa settlement and displacement or dispossession of Africans
started. Explorers were followed or preceded by Christian missionaries
and European merchants. Europeans asserted their spheres of interest in
Africa by arbitrarily cutting across traditionally established
boundaries and ethnic groupings and drawing the present day national
boundaries. No Africans were at the table. The conqueror's affirmations
of superiority decimated African cultures to the extent that to date
some African languages are still disappearing in favor of European
languages. Together with slavery, in sheer numbers, depth and brutality,
colonization is a testimony to the worst elements of human behavior and
at the same time the strongest elements of survival. Substantial
elements of African culture and art forms survived despite the concerted
efforts of the Europeans.
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