Ms Devencenzi's slides for the Fall Final Exam review session on Africa

1. AFRICA REVIEW
Cultural Diffusion
& First Hominids
Found
Gold-Salt Trade
Bantu Migration
World History Final
December 18, 2008

2. AFRICA OVERVIEW
Human beings first emerge in East Africa.
Due to the diverse environmental
conditions and cultural interaction, the
people of Africa adapted their skills to the
lands they occupied and created various
cultures. Eventually, powerful empires
soon developed due to extensive trade
networks that were created.

3. Agenda
1. Hominid Development
2. Migration
3. Kingdoms & Societies

4. ❖ Cro-Magnon
(Communication & Art)
❖ Neanderthal
(Religious Rituals)
❖ Homo erectus
(fire)
❖ Homo habilis
(stone tools)
❖ Australopithecine
(Opposable thumbs & Bipedal)

5. Migration:
Why do people move?
❖ Environmental Changes:
Natural disaster, shift in climate,
drought
❖ Economic Pressure:
Increasing population, unemployment
❖ Political & Religious Persecution:
Slave trade, war, genocide
❖ Technological Development:
Tools, agriculture, transportation
networks

6. Significance of African Civilizations
ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
How did people adapt to their environment?

7. North Africa
Almoravids (led by Ibn Yasin,
strict religious brotherhood,
spread Islam through conquest,
overran Ghana, and conquered
parts of Spain where they were
called the Moors.)
Almohads (another group of
Berber Muslim reformers, located
in the Atlas Mountains, conquered
the Almoravids and continued to
conquer Spain, united Maghrib for
the first time.

8. Djenne-Dejenno (oldest known
city south of the Sahara)
West Africa
Nok (1st known civilization)
Ghana (Religious king controlled gold-
Salt trade, Almoravids of the north
disrupted trade and Ghana fell)
Mali (Sundiata found more gold reserves,
delegated power, created Niani=new capital. Mansa
Musa=next leader who was a skilled military leader,
after visit to Mecca he built mosques in Timbuktu and
many people traveled there. Trade declined & weak
leaders=fall.)
Songhai (Gold-Salt trade, Sunni-Ali built
strong army, but lack of sophisticated weaponry
and were taken over by Moroccans=decline)

9. East Africa
Aksum
(now Eritrea and Ethiopia,
migrants from Middle East,
took control of Red Sea, hub
for caravan routes,
influenced trade on
Mediterranean and Indian
Ocean, King Ezana converts
Aksum to Christianity,
Islamic invaders burn chief
seaport, Adulis, and Aksum
falls)

10. South Africa
❖ Great Zimbabwe (built on gold
and salt, suitable land for farming
and cattle raising, trade lined gold
fields with coastal trading city of
Sofala, leaders taxed traders,
Zimbabwe was abandoned)
❖ Mutapa Empire (Mutota left
GZ to search for more gold, forced
people to make payments to him for
gold, conquered what was left of GZ,
forced others to mine, Portuguese
tried to conquer (1500s) and
interfered w/politics, put their own
ruler on throne, beginning of
increasing interference of Europeans
in Africa