There is much in Africa that history books will never tell you. Most of us learn about ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt at school: but very little about the rest of Africa’s extraordinary past. Powerful kingdoms, amazing inventors and architects, beautiful buildings, trade that linked three continents…This was the vast continent of… Africa. So let’s discover some incredible civilization, some inventions and mysteries that will show you that Africa was one of the most advanced regions on Earth in ancient time.
Kingdom of Kush: Egypt’s Mighty Neighbor
Long before most European states came to be, a powerful empire dominated the Nile River in what is today Sudan. This civilization existed for more than a millennium, from approximately 1070 BCE until about 350 CE. The Kushites didn’t merely exist alongside the Egyptian people — they even conquered them, and for almost a century governed Egypt as its 25th Dynasty.
The Kushite pharaohs were referred to as the “Black Pharaohs,” and they constructed more pyramids than the Egyptians. Egypt, which boasts some 138 pyramids, is not the only one with timidly small but steeper pyramids; Sudan has more than 250. These are the ruins that dot the desert and still stand today, mostly unknown to the world. The nearby city of Meroë and the capital of Kush was a hub of iron working, one of the earliest sites in Africa to have done so on large scale.
Sovereignty was a real thing for those queens of Kush, known as “Kandakes” or “Candaces.” They marched armies into battle, ruled kingdoms and made vital decisions. One exceptional Kandake, Amanirenas, even took the fight to Rome around 24 BCE and compelled the Roman Empire to negotiate a peace. A mighty warrior queen who lost an eye fighting in battle, she never let it stop her from defending the kingdom.
Great Zimbabwe: The Mystery City of the Stone Palace That Stumped The Explorers
The greatest mystery of Africa is arguably one of its greatest achievements: Great Zimbabwe, situated in the southern hills of what is now Zimbabwe. The enormous stone structure was constructed between the 11th and 15th centuries, without mortar. The walls are made from carefully fitted granite blocks, which have locked together so snugly that the walls have remained standing for centuries.
The Great Enclosure, the biggest precolonial structure from southern Sahara to Ethiopia, has walls that are 36 feet high and which run for more than 800 feet. Some 18,000 people lived inside the compound, trading gold, ivory and other goods with merchants as far away as China and India. Chinese pottery, Persian glass beads and Arabian coinage have been discovered there, establishing that Great Zimbabwe was linked to international trade roads.
When European colonizers first encountered these ruins in the 19th century, they could not understand that an African civilization had been capable of creating them. They fabricated tales about how it was the Queen of Sheba or Phoenician traders who were the true builders. This racist ideology sought to write African achievement out of history. Now we know better: The ancestors of the Shona people built this architectural marvel without replicating anything they had seen before.
The First Richest Person In History Hails From Africa
The wealthiest man in history is thought to be Mansa Musa, who ruled the Mali Empire from 1312 to 1337. His wealth, which has been estimated at about $400 billion in today’s currency, derived from Mali’s control of the gold and salt trade routes across West Africa.
In 1324, the Mansa Musa went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and changed how Africans were seen by the world. He journeyed with a convoy of 60,000 — and 12,000 were servants. He had so much gold, some 24,000 pounds of it by some accounts, that he was known for giving it away freely to pretty much everyone he met. In fact his splendor did crash the economy of Egypt by flooding the market with gold and lowering its worth for ten years.
But Mansa Musa was more than just rich. He constructed universities, libraries and mosques across his empire. The University of Sankore in Timbuktu was a university that would become one of the world’s first, with around 25,000 scholars. Students from Europe, Cairo, Baghdad arrived in Timbuktu to study mathematics, astronomy, medicine and the law.
Ancient African Civilizations Timeline
| Civilization | Time Period | Location | Notable Achievements |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient Egypt | 3100 BCE – 30 BCE | Northeast Africa | Pyramids, hieroglyphics, advanced mathematics |
| Kingdom of Kush | 1070 BCE – 350 CE | Modern Sudan | 250+ pyramids, iron industry, warrior queens |
| Kingdom of Axum | 100 CE – 940 CE | Modern Ethiopia/Eritrea | Own written language, massive obelisks, early Christianity |
| Ghana Empire | 300 CE – 1100 CE | West Africa | Gold trade, sophisticated tax system |
| Mali Empire | 1235 CE – 1670 CE | West Africa | Timbuktu universities, richest empire in history |
| Great Zimbabwe | 1100 CE – 1450 CE | Southern Africa | Massive stone architecture, international trade hub |
Axum: The Kingdom That Formed Its Own Alphabet
From about 100 until 940 CE, the realm of representatives from geographical modern Ethiopia and Eritrea had a stranglehold on trade hubs across Africa, Arabia, and India. This dominant empire was ranked among Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of the ancient time.
The Axumites also created their own script, Ge’ez, which continues to be used in Ethiopian Orthodox Church services. They erected enormous stone obelisks, some standing more than 100 feet tall and weighing hundreds of tons. The highest one still standing is 79 feet tall and was carved from a single block of granite.
Axum was among the first kingdoms to embrace Christianity, sometime around the 4th century CE — about when Rome did so. The kingdom struck its own coins bearing crosses, among the first Christian money in the world. Traders came by sea from the Ethiopian city of Axum, where they traded with Egypt for gold and hemp and shipped in ivory, wood, myrrh and slaves. These merchants sailed along the coast of East Africa up to Persia. The most important medium of trade was silk brought from China, though not all traders dealt in this commodity.
Africa’s Ancient Writing Systems We Know So Little About
Contrary to popular belief, many people are unaware that Africa developed multiple writing systems before the European contact. In addition to Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Ge’ez script, early Africans invented many other systems for preserving data.
A script of southeastern Nigeria, Nsibidi was developed more than 5,000 years ago and is considered to be one of the world’s oldest writing systems. This hieroglyphic writing was employed by secret societies and trade networks to express complex concepts. The Vai people of Liberia invented their own syllabary in the 1830s, and the Bamum script of Cameroon includes 80 characters for various syllables.
In West Africa, for example, the Timbuktu manuscripts are a testament to the fact that Africans were recording everything from medical operations to observations regarding the heavens. These hundreds of thousands of manuscripts in Arabic and African languages treated subjects as varied as mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine and law. Several of those documents contain information on surgical techniques, chemical and mathematical formulations that were far ahead of their time.
For more information about ancient African writing systems, visit UNESCO’s Digital Library on African manuscripts.
Rock-Carved Churches: Carving Down Instead of Building Up
11 Churches Carved From Rock In Lalibela, Ethiopia. Built right from the rock in the 12th & 13th centuries in Lalibela, Ethiopia. But these weren’t carved on cliff faces, as were many rock formations — they were carved downward into the ground. Workers began their work at the top and worked down, carving a few feet of ceiling each day; collapsed churches are found deep underground after centuries of rockslides have buried them.
The best known one is the Church of St. George, cut in a cross shape at the plan. It is 40 feet below ground and every inch, from the columns to the archways, was chiseled out of a single piece of volcanic rock. There was no collection of parts: there was no cementing together of rocks; but the whole edifice is a single structure.
The building of these churches took remarkable planning and skill. The workers even had to imagine the completed building before removing any stone, since they couldn’t put it back. One lapse could throw years of work away. Engineers today analyze these churches to learn how ancient Africans constructed such precise structures without the use of modern tools.
The Trans-Saharan Trade: Africa’s Ancient Network
In the West and Middle East, many have heard of the Silk Road linking Asia to Europe, but far fewer know about Trans-Saharan trade routes that catapulted West African kingdoms into extraordinary opulence. These roads crossed the unforgiving Sahara Desert, linking West Africa to North Africa and the Mediterranean world.
Caravans of camels moving tens of thousands of animals trekked for hundreds of miles across the desert, carrying gold, salt, ivory, enslaved people and other goods. Salt was so rare and precious in West Africa that it would sometimes be used as trading tender on a pound-for-pound basis with gold. The Ghana Empire got wealthy by taxing everything that came through their domain—traders would have to pay a tax when they entered, another when they left, and even when they were only traveling through.
And the city of Timbuktu has achieved mythical status as a place where traders came from all corners of Africa, Europe and Asia to trade goods. Timbuktu once had some 100,000 inhabitants and was said by travelers to be even more opulent than several cities in Europe from the same era. Gold, books and ideas all passed through this desert metropolis.
Ancient African Innovations/Inventions
| Innovation | Region | Time Period | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iron smelting | Great Lakes region | 1500 BCE+ | Tools and weapons |
| Mathematical concepts | Egypt/Kush | 3000 BCE+ | Geometry, Engineering & Surgery |
| Medical procedures | Egypt/Timbuktu | 3000 BCE+ | Advanced surgical knowledge including brain surgery |
| Agricultural terracing | Ethiopian highlands | 100 BCE+ | Prevented erosion, terraced farmland |
| Maritime navigation | East African coast | 100 CE+ | Trade routes to India, Indonesia |
| Planned urban development | Great Zimbabwe | 1100 CE+ | Underground drainage system |
The Swahili Coast: From Experiencing Africa
A distinctive civilization have grown up along the eastern part of Africa, where a mixture of black African, Arabian, Persian and Indian culture intermingled. Kilwa and other Swahili city-states like Mombasa and Zanzibar were rich trade centers linking Africa to the Indian Ocean system of trade routes.
The people of Swahili constructed great stone cities with multi-story houses, public buildings, and mosques. They created their own tongue, Kiswahili, that blended Bantu grammar with Arabic words. The language is still spoken by more than one hundred million people, and is the fifth most-spoken language in Africa.
Swahili merchants bartered African goods — including gold, ivory and enslaved humans — for cloth, beads and porcelain from India and China. Archaeologists have unearthed Chinese porcelain from the 9th century in Swahili ruins, evidence that such trade ties existed more than a millennium before Europeans ever showed up.
The architecture of Swahili cities left much impressed. The 14th-century Palace of Husuni Kubwa in Kilwa has more than 100 rooms, including an octagonal swimming pool. The Great Mosque of Kilwa has a vaulted ceiling with intricate carvings in coral stone. These were not huts, these were not villages; they were complex urban centers that could compete with anything the middle ages could produce in Europe.
Ancient African Science and Math
Ancient Africans are responsible for creating great science and mathematics that would drastically alter the trajectory of the entire world. The Egyptians had one of the first 365-day calendars; they divided the day into 24 hours, and their algebra is still utilized today. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus was written around 1650 BCE, but it shows that Egyptians knew fractional numbers, algebra, and some geometry.
In Ishango, modern day Rwanda, there is a 20,000-year-old baboon bone with tally marks that show that ancient Africans understood prime numbers and basic math: this is one of the oldest mathematical objects ever discovered. African astronomers also built these great ideas on studying the stars and the days, making extremely intricate calendars.
The Dogon people of Mali knew more about Sirius systems far from what the Greeks knew: there was even a small star too faint to be seen by the naked human eye. Traditional African science included medically amazing surgeries that shocked Europeans when they later found out about them. African doctors performed cesarean sections, amputated limbs, and drilled a hole in patients’ skulls to relieve migraines. Africans would also use local anesthetics during medical procedures and understood the principle of antiseptics. They would clean wounds using boiled water accompanied by antimicrobials.
The Lost City of Carthage: Africa and the Birth of Empire
Carthage, in present-day Tunisia, was one of the strongest cities of the ancient Mediterranean. The ancient city was regarded to have been founded by Phoenician colonists around 814 BCE, and according to the general belief it became the center of a powerful trading empire that rose to become a mighty rival with Rome for dominion over large parts of Africa.
The Carthaginian general Hannibal continues to be studied in military academies for his strategic brilliance. In 218 BCE, he crossed the Alps with an army of 37 elephants to invade Rome from the north, a plan which Romans considered was not physically possible. He dominated in many battles and almost conquered Rome before losing.
Carthage was very rich, had two round harbors capable of sheltering more than 200 warships and a sophisticated network of city-planning with spectacular architecture. The city library was said to be the second largest after that of Alexandria. When the Romans finally obliterated Carthage in 146 BCE, they were so scared of it that legend has it they salted their fields to ensure nothing would ever grow there again.
Why These Stories Matter Today
But studying the achievements of ancient Africa is about more than just correcting inaccuracies in history books. These narratives alter the way we perceive human civilization and progress. It wasn’t a “dark continent,” waiting for others to come and civilize its inhabitants; like the so-called New World, Africa was already in many ways the center of innovative civilization that shaped the world.
The engineering methods at work in Great Zimbabwe, the mathematical innovations of Egypt, the medical learning preserved in Timbuktu manuscripts and the networks of trade and economic cooperation that once linked three continents are all evidence that Africans had been dealing with complex problems long before outsiders showed up with their pendulums, compasses and whatnot.
Learning this history also serves to undermine racist ideas that have done incalculable harm. False notions of Africa’s history have been used for centuries to justify slavery and colonization, repression and discrimination. The knowledge of the true Africa illuminates for us how any type of a human kind has come to participate in our common civilization.
FAQs About Ancient Africa
Which was the strongest empire in ancient Africa?
At different periods, a number of African civilizations were tremendously powerful. When we think of grand ancient societies, it’s usually Ancient Egypt that comes to mind but the Mali Empire under Mansa Musa controlled more wealth than any empire of antiquity. The Kingdom of Kush conquered and ruled Egypt for nearly a century. Each civilization had its strength — military or economic, cultural or strategic.
Why don’t we learn more of ancient Africa in school?
Historical teaching in educational systems around the world has usually been committed to European history. African accomplishments were frequently either overlooked or suppressed by colonial powers, who sought to account for their dominion over African lands. It’s true that more schools are now teaching African history, but it does take time for the curriculum to change. A great deal of Africa’s past was also transmitted orally, not in writing, making it more difficult for historians to access.
Did people travel between Africa and other continents in ancient times?
Yes! The ancient Egyptians conducted commerce with Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Archaeological finds include Chinese pottery in East Africa, Indian beads at Great Zimbabwe, and African gold in Rome. The Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean trade provided access to the world for Africa millennia ago.
What became of these magnificent African civilizations?
Different factors affected different civilizations. Some areas dried up from climate change, altering trade routes. Internal conflicts weakened some kingdoms. The trans-Atlantic slave trade rendered West African societies up by removing millions of people. Many of the institutions, languages and cultural practices that European colonizing efforts destroyed in the 19th century can be traced back to Africa. Despite these odds, the African cultures and communities did survive and persist to this day.
Are there any ancient African sites that remain undiscovered?
Absolutely! New sites are a frequent discovery for archaeologists in Africa. Most of the continent is uninvestigated archaeologically because of lack of funds, rough conditions and political disharmony in some areas. And new technology, including ground-penetrating radar and satellite imaging, is helping scholars locate subterranean structures without excavating them. Experts say we have only scratched the surface of Africa’s archaeological wonders.
Conclusion: Rediscovering Africa in World History
Classical Africa was seat to some of the finest achievements of humankind. From the pyramids of Kush to the universities of Timbuktu, from the stone cities of Zimbabwe to trading networks around the Swahili coast, Africans had material resources and cerebral treasures commensurate with any in the world elsewhere.
They were not backward societies waiting for others to bring them civilization. They were progressive cultures that excogitated writing, did complicated surgeries, built architectural wonders, formed large trade connections, and harbored information that had effect on all the rest of the world!
The hidden marvels of ancient Africa aren’t really all that hidden — they’ve just been deliberately ignored or covered up. The more we discover about continental Africa’s history, the more complete and frank a picture we get of human accomplishment. We understand that innovation, intelligence and creativity have always resided in all of humanity and not in one region or group.
When you next hear someone speak of “civilization,” it is worth remembering the Kushite queens who drove out the Roman Empire, the engineers who fashioned churches from solid rock, the merchants who linked three continents with trade and learning even beyond that — and those fledgling publishers preserving wisdom in the libraries of Timbuktu. Africa once had a glorious past, wonders to be inspired by and whose study should not fade. In finding these lost treasures, we are not only learning about Africa — but about the extraordinary capacity of human beings everywhere.
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