In Chapter 1, Africa, of The African-American Odyssey (2003), the authors Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, briefly outline the history of the African continent from prehistoric times to the 17th Century, when the slave trade began to rapidly expand. They point out that while records were never kept of where slaves were taken from, the ancestral homeland of most black Americans is West Africa, although Angola and East Africa were also involved in the slave trade (3).
Hine, Hine, and Harrold begin their analysis by studying the geography of the African continent. It is the second largest continent in the world, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea and also has a variety of climatic zones from desert to rainforest, and savannah (3-4). West Africa is made up mostly of savannah and forest, although it borders the Sahara Desert. This portion of the continent was labeled ôBilad es Sudan,ö or ôthe land of black peopleö by Arab adventurers and has been called the Sudan ever since (4).
Africa is also considered to be the birthplace of humanity because fossils of homo habilis (early humans who used stones for tools and shelter) have only been found in Africa. In fact, according to the ôEveö hypothesis, all modern humans are most likely descended from ôbeings who lived in Africa millions of years agoö (5) who then slowly dispersed throughout the world.
One of the earliest civilizations to arise out of Africa was that of ancient Egypt, which grew around the Nile valley beginning approximately 4000 BCE (6). Egypt had a strict hierarchical society and a complex polytheistic religion with the pharaoh at the head of both (7). To the south were the kingdoms of Kush, Meroe, and Axum. Kush had been the region known as Nubia, a colony of Egypt, until the decline of Egypt around 2000 BCE, when it established an independent kingdom known as Kush. Kush later ...