Africa�s Role in World History

A difficult question I can't think of any sub-saharan civilisation that had power outside africa. Madagascar in the 19th century was a quite a power and defeated several European attempts at colonisation. In the Ancient world Numidia and Nubia spring to mind, but are not exactly sub-saharan, both had impact outside of africa though. Then of course there's that old cookie, were the ancient egyptians black? The Barbary coast was quite a power in the rennaissance.

WE already have a thread about this in which all of your questions can be answered pretty much but Ill go again.

First of all Africa is the most important continent in the world, without it there would be no people (although on AE I would nto be suprised is some idiots claimed Turks or Chinese were the first to have evolved from apes).

As for pre-colonial empires of cultural impact:

Proto Ethiopia known as Axum conquered large parts of southern Arabia before Muhammad and had maritime power up and down the coast of Africa and was an ally of Byzantium.  Eventually they were ejected after about a half century by Sassanid Iran from Arabia.  After they withdrew from a martime empire Ethiopia became a landpower and its culture and own brand of Orthodox Christianity was adopted by its southern neighbors who were incorporated.  Ethiopia later re emerged onteh world stage as an ally of Portugal against Ottoman-Somali incursions.  OPf course in the 19th century they beat the Italians very badly too.

The Garamentines were no empire really but lived int he Sahara using an ingenious aqueduct system to stay alive.  Eventually they collapsed and migrated west, the Tuareg are possible their descendants.

And of course dont forget West Africa, the empires of Mali Ghana and Songhay were wealthier than most European kingdoms of their time and their cities were great centers of Islamic learning where Arabs and Berbers would go to learn.  The last of these, the Songhay would collapse to Portugese mercenaries with guns under the command of the Morroccans.

And Great Zimbabwe of the Shona people, an agricultural and trading powerhouse with grand buildings that are on par with Mesoamerican stone architecture, collapsed due to climate change.

Meroitic Sudan (of which I wrote an article on for this site) was one of the biggest iron prodcuers of the early AD's exporting iron to Arabia Egypt,  Ethiopia, and others.  Meroe as a kingdom lasted for a thousand years until the massive deforestation caused by so much iron production caused them to collapse, Meroe in terms of economic output was almsot a proto industrial city state.

As for why these states never made a big outside of Africa, geography is indeed the answer.  The Sahara was a barrier before the camel came in the 600's or so, but more importantly is that Africa is the second largest continent with the shortest coastline (shorter even than Australia) , it is on a raised table that has barely any harbors and almost totally unnavigatable rivers.  Thus martime expansion is nearly impossible.

The grasslands of Africa which in Eurasia served as a great highways of culture and tech, are in Africa too small to matter and too rich to warrant steppe empire like expansion.  Also keep in mind that until recently Africa was a very underpopulated continent, it also has alto of trpoics,not good for technological development.

Berosus, what do you define by civilization? Is it some sort of political continuity, or is it a cultural and linguistic continuity? When does civilization start? It's very hard to put a date on these things.

China arguably has a 4500 year civilization, the way most people see it. Hellenic civilization lasted from around 800 BC to the 5th century AD, without counting the Mycenean and Minoc civilizations, which would push its start all the way to 2500BC. In Mesopotamia, one can argue that there was a cultural continuity starting from as early as 8000 BC,  and finishing all the way around the time of Alexander the Great. Persia can also claim 5000 years of history... What about India? If we accept the Mohenjo-Daro civilization as the earliest Indian state, then India also has a history spanning 4500 years. And last but not least, the Hebrews have an uninterrupted culture spanning more than 3000 years (without a state for most of that time, but culturally they maintained their cohesion).

All civilizations had different dynasties, and various states ruling them. I think that the most important factor that defines a civilization is culture. It is hard to measure in precise years when a culture starts and when it begins.

Now coming back to Africa, there's no doubt nowadays for historians and informed people, that native African civilizations made an original contribution to human civilization. Geography precluded most of them from making a big impact on other continents. Although some civilizations have made a more subtle impact on human history. The Gold states of West Africa - Ghana, Mali, Songhay have produced most of the gold upon which European and Middle-Eastern medieval economy was based. The Swahili city-states of East Africa have also made an important contribution to the economy of the entire Indian Ocean basin.

Komnenos, I recommend readin Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. It is the best explanation I've seen to date about the technological evolution of humans on various continents.

My, that's a loaded question: you can write several books on those questions. You should probably pick up an atlas for the geography. For history, I recommend reading History of Africa, by Kevin Shillington. Alternatively you can watch the African history series by Basil Davidson: it's quite good.

Quickly though, the important things to note are:

1. Africa is a very large continent but its coasts are fairly smooth; hence there are very few maritime cultures.

2. The Sahara desert was a major barrier to technological and cultural imports from Europe and the Middle East, but not impassable.

3. Most civilizations occured in river valleys: thus the Egyptians and the Nubians on the Nile, Ghana, Mali  and Songhay on the Niger, Zimbabwe and Monomotapa on the Zambezi, the Kongo on the Congo.

4. Other civilizations fo note are Axum/Ethiopia in the Ethiopian Highlands, the Swahili city-states on the Indian Ocean coast, the Hausa city states in Nigeria, Benin and Dahomey on the Guine Gulf coast and the Zulu confederacy in South Africa.

5. Africa is the continent with the most languages and with a very wide variety of cultures.

6. Most of Africa went straight from the Stone age to the Iron Age, with the northen half of the continent borrowing the technology from the Middle East and the Central/South developing it independently.

You really need to come up with more specific questions here...