Inscriptions have played a very important role in deciphering the secrets of the past. Archaeologists have uncovered over 130 inscriptions at an important ancient site in Tunisia. Experts discovered...
Mined, melted and sculptured, adorning royalty and showcasing wealth and prestige, buried or lost in the earth for centuries, only to be excavated and exhibited and once more cast its seductive magic...
To understand the environmental pressures that shaped human evolution, scientists must first piece together the details of the ancient plant and animal communities that our fossil ancestors lived in...
Human beings need complex communication, no matter if it's through speech or music . The invention of drums has become an essential factor in all musical forms of artistic expression. It is through...
Mokèlé-mbèmbé is the name given to a creature believed to inhabit the upper reaches of the Congo River basin, i.e. Congo, Zambia, and Cameroon, as well as in Lake Tele (in the Republic of Congo) and...
Without a doubt, European explorers in 19 th century Africa changed history. Two of the most famous are Dr David Livingstone, and the journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley , who opened central...
The tenacity of amateur archaeologists and historians searching on a remote island off the coast of the Northern Territories in Australia seems to have finally paid off. The team has found a small...
The Ghana Empire was the first of the great West African empires that existed during the Middle Ages. The history of the Ghana Empire is obscure and much of what we know about it is derived from Arab...
Muhammad I Askia (also known as Askia the Great) was one of the most important emperors of the Songhai Empire. Askia came to power in 1493, when he overthrew the last ruler of the Sunni Dynasty,...
The Songhai Empire dominated West Africa between the 15th and 16th centuries. This empire was a successor state of the powerful, centuries-long Mali Empire . The weakening of Mali rule allowed the...
In 1310, Malian explorers led by Mansa (King) Abubakari set sail to discover new lands across the Atlantic. A mysterious statuette was left by these ancient explorers in the Brazilian jungle...
The Barbary Coast of North Africa was named after the Berbers, the nomadic people who inhabited the region west of the Nile Valley in north Africa. Called the Amazigh or Imazighen in antiquity (...
Current evidence suggests that Neanderthals and humans shared a last common ancestor sometime between 765,000 and 550,000 years ago. We speculate that this ancestor was H. heidelbergensis . The story...
Located on the Horn of Africa, the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Axum (also spelled Aksum) played a significant role in international relations around the time of the first millennium. At its height,...
Despite its name, the Apollo 11 cave in Namibia has nothing to do with space exploration. It’s the location of prehistoric art, some of the earliest examples of art in human history, and it has...
By sequencing the ancient genomes of 15 individuals from different parts of Africa, researchers reporting in the journal Cell in September 2017 reconstructed the prehistory of humans on the continent...
Herbalism, divination, and spiritualism often combine in traditional African medicine, perhaps the oldest and most varied therapeutic system in the world. This holistic health care system has many...
Situated on the beautiful east coast of Africa, Tanzania is a fascinating country with a rich culture and no shortage of historic sites on its Indian Ocean coast. Kaole, an abandoned town and...
The Mali Empire (known also as the Manding Empire or Manden Kurufa) was a state that dominated West Africa between the 13th and 17th centuries. At its height of power during the 14th century, the...
Africa is a region with a long and glorious history, with hundreds of distinct cultures and traditions. From the Egyptians to the Zulus each culture has produced some of the greatest warriors and...
The Guanches were the white-skinned and fair-haired aboriginal people of the Canary Islands. With their location so near to North Africa, their origins have long presented a mystery for researchers...
The beginning of the Stone Age in Africa dates back at least 2.5 million years and it was an especially important era, not only in the history of Africans, but for all humanity. There are, however,...
The Cliff of Bandiagara (or Land of the Dogons) in Mali is an outstanding landscape and has earthen architecture that seems to defy the laws of nature and the passing of time. Despite globalization,...
Relatively little is known of Sudan beyond the borders of Africa even though it is a country which has been home to significant civilizations and has many fascinating archaeological sites. One of the...
