Pygmies who roamed the area during the Stone Age are believed to be the original inhabitants of what is now the Congo. See more »

The history of modern Egypt started after the permanent division of the Roman Empire into the Western Roman and Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empires in 395 A.D. See more »

Most of the ethnic groups that live in Ghana today migrated into the region during the 12th to 16th centuries. See more »

Mali was the site of a number of medieval kingdoms—Ghana, Mali, and Songhai—which gained wealth from trans-Saharan trade. See more »

The Portuguese and the Spanish were the first Europeans to know of New Guinea, through sightings and landings early in the 1500's. See more »

The most significant of the ancient Nigerian cultures known to archeologists is that of the Nok people, who flourished from the fourth century B.C. See more »

Information on the eastern Sudanic region is found in ancient Egyptian writings. The Egyptians traded with Nubia, the Sudanic area just to their south, and gained control of it for a while. See more »

Archeological discoveries made in the Laetolil area indicate that humanlike creatures inhabited what is now Tanzania as early as 3,800,000 years ago. See more »

History of Algeria. Cave paintings found in southern Algeria indicate that there were people living there as early as 8000 B.C. See more »

Bantus occupied Angola some 15 centuries before the Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão arrived at the Congo River region in 1482. See more »