African history is an amazing thing. And here are the six African history facts you should know:
6. The Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa is where nearly half of all the gold ever mined in history was found.
Due to its abundant natural resources, Africa has drawn the attention of both former colonial powers and modern-day countries seeking to increase their GDP through trade agreements.
Africa has been uniquely gifted with goods that other people crave, from rare metals to sugar.
Consider the Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa as an example. The world’s greatest gold discovery sparked a gold rush in 1886 that resulted in the establishment of Johannesburg. Despite being found only 132 years ago, Witwatersrand has produced over half of all gold extracted worldwide.
Here are some more facts after you’ve raised your jaw off the floor. Since 1886, Witwatersrand has produced more than 2 billion ounces of gold, with an estimated 1.161 billion ounces still in the deposit. Mine shafts have been dug 3,900 meters below the surface of the ground in an extraordinarily risky effort to extract the remaining supply. Even if the geologists’ forecasts come true, it is difficult to estimate how long the rest will last, but it will undoubtedly be much shorter than the hundreds of millions of years it took for the gold to be created.
5. Africa is where the world’s oldest art was created.
Of course, you immediately think of the ancient carvings on European cave walls when you consider the oldest art ever created. Wrong. The Blombos Cave in South Africa’s Blomboschfontein Nature Reserve is home to the earliest piece of art ever discovered. There, archaeologists discovered an ochre fragment that was at least 77, 000 years old and was inscribed with an intricate pattern of crossed lines. The rock is “a good sign of a capacity to think in the abstract, to think in terms of the past, present, and the future, and that’s one of the trademarks of modern behavior,” according to the excavation’s director, Christopher Henshilwood.
The fact that the art is 30, 000 years older than the Lebombo Bone’s tally marks implies that Homo sapiens, the species that created the ochre artifact and baboon fibula, had a fundamental understanding of aesthetic experience. Long before the ochre carving, Blombos Cave also appears to have been a center of prehistoric art. Two ochre-processing kits, including bone, charcoal, ochre, grindstones, and hammer stones, were discovered in 2008. The ochre that was created was discovered kept in sea snail shells. The age of these kits was estimated to be 100,000 years ago. The birthplace of art is undoubtedly Blombos Cave.
4. The oldest continuously operating university in the world is the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez.
It comes as no surprise, given Africa’s tradition of creativity and education, that Morocco is home to the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Fatima al-Fihri, a Tunisian lady, established the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez way back in 859 AD. Al-Fihri used her large inheritance in the construction of a massive mosque and a nearby school (madrasa).
The university is still operating today, in large part thanks to the generosity of some extremely affluent people over the years. The mosque, which can accommodate 22, 000 worshippers, is still the largest in Africa.
Because of its reputation for having strong academic standards, the university attracted investment. Sultan Abu Inan Faris built a library in 1349 and used donations from wealthy patrons to assemble a sizable collection of manuscripts.
Leading figures from outside the Islamic world have long been drawn to the institution because of its skill in secular fields including rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, and astronomy. There, in the late 10th century, the future pope Sylvester II studied, and a century later, the Jewish scholar Maimonides, in a setting of religious tolerance and openness that we would do well to emulate today.
3. The Carthaginian General Hannibal crossed the Alps on elephants and dominated Italy for 15 years.
Hannibal, the famous Carthaginian general’s son, demonstrated such excellence as an army officer that, at the age of just 26, he was appointed supreme leader of the whole Carthaginian force. Unfortunately for Rome, Hannibal took extremely seriously the oath he had taken as a young man in Spain, promising to always be hostile to the Republic. He quickly broke a peace agreement with Rome.
Hannibal started the Second Punic War by marching across Gaul with 90,000 troops and, most famously, 37 elephants after capturing areas of Spain that Carthage had agreed to avoid in the truce. Amazingly, the majority of the animals made it into Italy despite numerous ambushes and the chilly weather.
He achieved numerous surprising triumphs there through a series of brilliant military maneuvers, and for the following 15 years, he dominated the majority of the nation. After being betrayed and forced to return to defend Carthage against Roman onslaught, Hannibal resolutely poisoned himself rather than be taken.
2. Around 3100BC, the Ancient Egyptians began writing.
Around 3400 BC, the Ancient Sumerian civilisation in the Middle East developed writing, and a few hundred years later, the Egyptians did the same. It is possible that the Egyptians developed their symbol system independently of Sumeria, but this is impossible to say. Nonetheless, Hieroglyphics are a fascinating topic in and of themselves, as well as a tremendous feat. Hieroglyphics were pictorial representations of words, concepts, and sounds that served a variety of functions. The earliest examples of hieroglyphic writing can be found in important tombs from the end of the fourth millennium BC, carved into pottery and ivory.
Those who could write Hieroglyphics began training at the age of six and enjoyed a very privileged position in society, avoiding taxes and military conscription. Hieroglyphics as a writing system worked very differently than modern scripts: a single picture could mean an entire word or part of another, and some were phonetic, meaning that a picture of an animal could be a homonym. We can only decipher Hieroglyphics with some accuracy because of the Rosetta Stone, an ancient crib-sheet that contains the Ancient Greek for both religious and secular Hieroglyphics.
1. Mansa Musa, Mali’s Emperor, was the wealthiest man in history.
Because of its gold deposits, bounty of salt (once more valuable than gold in Africa), and heavy taxation on West African trade, the great Mali Empire (c. 1235–1670) became extremely wealthy. Mali was ruled by the world’s wealthiest man, Mansa Musa I (c. 1280–c. 1337), at the height of its size and wealth. The aforementioned image serves as proof that Mansa Musa’s wealth was well known in Europe. In 1324, he led a caravan of 60,000 men (including 12,000 personal slaves) to Mecca.
He had 80 camels in his baggage train for this journey, each carrying 300 pounds of gold, which he had his attendants casually distribute to the underprivileged as they passed by. This benevolence had a mixed effect in Cairo, where the price of gold fell and took years to rise again.
Arab historians who saw this amazing procession reported that Mansa Musa even put the African sun to shame. Mansa Musa was a very devout Muslim who was extremely wealthy, but in his zeal to get to Mecca and pay his homage, he made a number of diplomatic mistakes.
