sciences and empirical reasoning. Th e Romans have left their
alphabet, their language, and their laws in numerous modern
languages and legal systems. Th e Mesopotamians left metal-
lurgy and the concept of national government. In terms of
achieving a national identity, the Chinese are rivaled by the
Mayans, who even aft er the collapse of their civilization re-
mained in language, religion, and culture one people, to the
present day.
AFRICA
BY MICHAEL J. O’NEAL
In ancient times much of the African continent was sparsely
populated. Th e entire reach of the continent below the Sa-
hara was populated largely by small nomadic hunter-gatherer
tribes until about 200 years before the start of the Common
Era. No one knows why the people of the sub-Saharan region
remained organized in nomadic groups. Th e most likely ex-
planation is that they had suffi cient resources, so they had no
need to turn to a more settled agricultural life. Another is
that geography kept these groups isolated and protected. As
a result of both these factors, the people of the sub-Sahara re-
ma i ned relat ively i m mu ne f rom bot h i nvasion a nd mig rat ion.
Th e result was that the sub-Saharan region was not home to
any noteworthy empires or dynasties until much later.
Th e people of ancient sub-Sahara began to lay the
groundwork for empire and more advanced civilizations
during the last millennium or so of the ancient period. One
of the peculiarities of ancient sub-Sahara is that it essentially
skipped the Bronze Age, which played such an important
role in Europe, the Middle East, and other parts of the world.
Around 1400 b.c.e. the region seems to have passed directly
from the Stone Age into the Iron Age. In East Africa people
began to use furnaces to produce carbon steel at about this
time. By about the sixth century b.c.e. people in such regions
as Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and the Great Lakes area of
East Africa (which includes most prominently Lake Victoria,
the world’s second-largest freshwater lake in surface area, and
Lake Tanganyika, the world’s second-largest lake in volume
of water) were also producing steel. Over the next 500 years
steel technology spread throughout the continent, primarily
as a result of what are called the Bantu migrations.
Bantu refers to a family of languages. Th ese languages,
the largest language family of Africa, are closely related. In
the last century before the start of the Common Era, people
who spoke Bantu began to migrate from north-central Af-
rica, a process that continued throughout the fi rst 1,000 years
of the Common Era. To the south they migrated into the rain
forests of the Congo. To the east they migrated to the East Af-
rican highlands. Th is migration was no trickle. It was a fl ood
of people who imposed their language and culture in the re-
gions where they settled, oft en resulting in hybrid tongues
and hybrid cultures. In time, the earliest immigrants were
themselves pushed farther south and east under the pressure
of new waves of migrants, continuing the process. Eventually
these new people would give rise to the Great Zimbabwe civi-
lization, sometimes called the Mwene Matapa civilization.
Along with iron smelting and steel production, the Bantu mi-
grants also spread knowledge about farming. Under their in-
fl uence, indigenous peoples learned to grow such important
crops as plantain, yams, and bananas.
Th e result was a signifi cant growth of population as peo-
ple turned from hunting and gathering to a more sedentary
village life. In comparison with much of the rest of the an-
cient world, urban life was a late development in sub-Saharan
Africa. Although there are archaeological remains of towns
in Mauretania that date back almost 4,000 years, such for-
mal settlements were an exception. But beginning in around
600 b.c.e. and over the next 800 years, the Sahel, a dry, hot
savanna just south of the Sahara, became the site of numer-
ous urban centers with large populations. Some of these in-
cluded Kumbi, Gao, and Djenné, as well as the later capital of
the kingdom of Ghana, Kumbi Saleh. By the early medieval
period and for the next 1,000 years, these and other urban
centers throughout sub-Saharan Africa became the center of
important kingdoms whose roots extended back into the an-
cient world.
Meanwhile, the empires of the African continent lay to
the north. During the ancient period the most signifi cant of
these empires was, of course, that of the Egyptians, which
lasted for over three millennia and was ruled by dynasties of
kings who built some of the world’s greatest monuments to
civilization. In addition to Egypt, three other empires of note
left their mark on ancient Africa. Th e fi rst was the Carthagin-
ian Empire, which was founded in the ninth century b.c.e.,
reached the height of its power in the third and second cen-
turies b.c.e., and was eventually destroyed by the Romans in
146 b.c.e. Farther south, and much earlier, was the kingdom
of Kush, which reached the height of its power between 1700
and 1500 b.c.e. Th e third was the kingdom of Axum, which
was thriving in the fi rst century c.e.CARTHAGE
Carthage, a name derived from the Phoenician words for
“new city,” was founded in 814 b.c.e. by Phoenician traders
from the city of Tyre in Lebanon. (Other Phoenician settle-
ments were also given the name Carthage, but these were
all smaller towns and outposts.) Over the next centuries it
grew into a large political and economic empire. As one of the
major world powers at the time, it was a rival to the Roman
Empire, which dominated Europe and the eastern Mediter-
ranean. Primarily because of the strength of its navy and its
trading prowess, it reached the height of its power in the third
and second centuries b.c.e.
In texts the term Carthage can refer to both a city and a
civilization. Th e city of Carthage, the capital of the empire,
was in North Africa on the east edge of the Lake of Tunis, in
modern-day Tunisia. Some historians believe that it was the
world’s second-largest city during Hellenistic times, or the
era when the Greek Empire was at its height; only Alexan-388 empires and dynasties: Africa