Expert: Ernest Tufft - 4/29/2009

Question
what are the names of civilizations  in Africa and how many are there?

Answer
Dill,

I've not the time to write about all of Africa, the oldest continent in terms of culture, and one that is also very large--about 5x the size of the USA.  I recommend using an on-line encyclopedia, such as wikipedia.com.  But, I'll provide some regional help to break things down to size.

First, North Africa is indeed a melting pot of cultures and includes some of the earliest recorded civilizations.  Egypt and Carthage are two early examples.  Later examples of cultural note include Muslim empires that swept into Spain from Morrocco and built the Alhambra, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire that controlled North African for about 500 years into the current era.  There were also several lesser known civilizations that reached far into the Libyan Desert during ancient times, bordering the Roman empire to the north.

During medieval times, several empires in West Africa emerged and were notable for their wealth and learning.  The Ghana empire (circa 750 to 1200AD) was based upon a wealth of gold trade.  The Mali empire (1200-1500 AD) was also built upon a control of trade routes.  When King Mansa Musa made a his pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1300s, news of his extreme wealth of gold and the size of his entourage spread even into Europe.  During the Songhay Empire, which really was an expansion of the Mali empire before it. Timbuktu became a famous center of Islamic learning and salt trade.  Note that these were not simply Arab empires because they developed there own written alphabets and systems of learning and were ruled by black kings.  The fame of Timbuktu spread into Europe such that many explorers of the period wished to discover this far away city, and several died trying.

There are also famed centers of learning Zanzibar in East Africa (in Kenya)  that have origins in Arab trade within the Indian Ocean.  It's possible that Chinese merchant ships visited Africa during medieval times.  During the middle ages, Europe had little to offer the Chinese, Indians, or Africans in terms of trade while these places became thought of as far away places of great wealth by the English, French, and Germans.

Much less is known about the empires of Southern Africa. but there are stone ruins in a few places, and by the late 1500's the expansion of the Bantu tribes into South Africa was well known to European explorers.  In general, Africa was a difficult continent for European colonial powers to conquer.  The continent is mostly a plateau with very few natural harbors, and malaria makes transport by animal difficult.

Hope this helps...