What are the Great African Civilizations?
Africa produced dozens of great civilizations across every corner of the continent, from the Nile Valley to the Atlantic coast to the Southern plateau, spanning more than 5,000 years of recorded history, and this conversation has already introduced three of them: the Kushite Empire, the Aksumite Empire, and the Moorish civilization of al-Andalus.
spio.comThe civilizations below stretch from the earliest farming settlements of the Nile to the iron kingdoms of West Africa to the stone cities of the south.
The Nile Valley: where it all began
Ancient Egypt is arguably the most well-known of Africa's ancient civilizations, beginning around 3400 BCE. Initially there were two separate kingdoms, Upper Egypt in the south and Lower Egypt in the delta, and in 3100 BCE King Menes of Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt and united them. Egypt gave the world monumental architecture, one of the first writing systems, mathematics, medicine and a centralized state that lasted longer than any other in history.
The Kingdom of Kush thrived between approximately 1069 BCE and 350 CE, controlling a vast territory along the Nile River in what is now northern Sudan, and was both a trading partner and a rival to ancient Egypt to the north. As this thread established, the Kushites reversed the relationship entirely and became Egypt's pharaohs, the Black Pharaohs of the 25th dynasty. This Nubian civilization developed its own hieroglyphic writing system, built impressive pyramids, and even conquered Egypt for a period.
The Kandakes: Queens of Kush
In the Kingdom of Kush, in what is now Sudan, Kandake was the title of its queens, who ruled from the capital Meroë. The Greeks and Romans wrote it as Candace, and many took it for a name. It was a title.
The best known Kandake is Amanirenas. From about 25 to 21 BCE she led the armies of Kush against Rome, taking Syene (modern Aswan), Elephantine and Philae. Her soldiers brought back a bronze head of Emperor Augustus and buried it beneath the steps of a temple in Meroë. It is now at the British Museum in London. When peace was made with Augustus on the island of Samos, Kush paid no tribute to Rome.
Later Kandakes, including Amanishakheto and Amanitore, carried on her legacy. The title even appears in the Bible: Acts 8:27 speaks of a royal treasurer who served “Candace, queen of the Ethiopians,” the Greek name for the people of Kush.
Read more: What Is the Kushite Empire? and What Terms Were Agreed in the Peace Treaty Between Amanirenas and Rome?
North Africa: Carthage and the Mediterranean world
Carthage was originally founded as a Phoenician colony in modern-day Tunisia in 814 BCE and soon became a prominent city-state, then a sea empire that stretched from Spain to Sicily, growing into the wealthiest city in the Mediterranean. Carthage built the first great African naval empire and held Rome at bay for generations. Its general Hannibal Barca crossed the Alps with war elephants and nearly broke the Roman Republic. Rome destroyed the city in 146 BCE, salted the earth, and still could not fully erase its memory.
East Africa: Aksum and the Red Sea world
The Kingdom of Aksum dominated the Horn of Africa and parts of the Arabian Peninsula, controlling important trade routes and adopting Christianity in the 4th century CE, making it one of the earliest Christian states in the world. It was Aksum that destroyed Meroe and ended the Kingdom of Kush.
West Africa: the gold and salt empires
During the Middle Ages in northwestern Africa, the region was dominated by three kingdoms that each established their own empires: Ghana, Mali, and Songhai.
When the Ghana Empire controlled the trans-Saharan trade routes, it controlled and taxed the flow of goods such as gold, hides, salt, ivory, fabrics, and enslaved people. It was so rich that Arab Muslim travelers reported even its royal dogs wore gold collars.
The Mali Empire was one of Africa's most prominent and wealthiest empires, spanning a vast territory in West Africa and serving as a center of trade, culture, and learning, with its capital Timbuktu becoming a legendary city of wealth and scholarship. Its emperor Mansa Musa, on his pilgrimage to Mecca, carried so much gold that he crashed the gold markets of Egypt and the Mediterranean for a decade.
The Songhai Empire spanned thousands of miles across much of West Africa and, lasting nearly 800 years, was considered one of the greatest empires in the world from the 15th to the 16th centuries. At its height it housed the University of Sankore in Timbuktu, one of the world's earliest universities, with an enrollment that rivaled medieval Oxford.
The Benin Empire, a unique settlement in what is now Nigeria, began when the Edo people cleared the West African rainforest, and by the 1400s that settlement had developed into a mighty kingdom. Its bronze castings, the famous Benin Bronzes, are among the most technically accomplished artworks of the medieval world.
The Ghana Empire: Wagadu, Land of Gold
The Ghana Empire, also called Wagadu, was built by the Soninke people in what is now southern Mauritania and western Mali. Its kings controlled the gold that crossed the Sahara, and the empire grew rich taxing the trade that passed through it.
In about 951, the geographer Ibn Hawqal called the king of Ghana “the wealthiest king on the face of the earth,” more than 350 years before Mansa Musa. About 100 years later, the geographer al-Bakri described the court of Tunka Manin, who ruled from about 1062 to 1076 from the capital Koumbi Saleh, and wrote that every gold nugget found in the kingdom belonged to the king.
“The king can put 200,000 men into the field, more than 40,000 of them archers.” (al-Bakri, 1068)
The Mali Empire later took in the lands of Ghana and grew on the gold fields Ghana had controlled first. Read more: King of Ghana Known as the Wealthiest Ruler Ever
Central and Southern Africa
Great Zimbabwe, regarded as the origins of modern-day Zimbabwe, comprised magnificent architecture and featured on UNESCO's world heritage sites. The ancient kingdom was known for its vast natural resources of gold, copper and iron, and arguably became southern Africa's earliest and largest Iron Age city-state, developing as a trade center with participants from as far as Asia, Arabia and Portugal.
The Kingdom of Kongo, founded in the 14th century in what is now northern Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, had a sophisticated bureaucracy, a currency system of shells, and a population estimated at several million. It was one of the largest states in sub-Saharan Africa when the first Portuguese ships arrived.
The through-line
These civilizations developed in response to extraordinarily varied environments: the Nile Valley supported dense agricultural populations and gave rise to Egypt and Kush; the Saharan trade routes connected West African gold kingdoms to North African and Mediterranean markets; the Ethiopian highlands sustained the Aksumite Empire; the fertile interior of West Africa nourished the Mali and Songhai empires; and Great Zimbabwe rose in the mineral-rich plateau of Southern Africa. The continent was never a single story. It was dozens of stories running in parallel, each one shaped by its geography, its trade routes and its people's own genius for organizing power.
Sources on the Kandakes: Amanirenas, Wikipedia, The Nubian Queen Who Defeated the Roman Army, History.com
Follow-ups
Who built Great Zimbabwe and when was it constructed?
Great Zimbabwe was built by the ancestors of the Shona people, an African civilization that raised the largest stone structures in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa without mortar, starting in the 11th century and continuing through to the 15th.
Great Zimbabwe was built by the ancestors of the Shona people, an African civilization that raised the largest stone structures in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa without mortar, starting in the 11th century and continuing through to the 15th.
spio.comThis is the civilization the previous answer on Great African Civilizations pointed toward when it mentioned the stone cities of the south. Here is the full story.
Who built it
Great Zimbabwe was constructed by ancestors of the Shona people between the 11th and 15th centuries. More specifically, scholars believe it was built by members of the early Gokomere culture, ancestors of the modern-day Shona, who had been farming the valley and practicing metalworking in iron and copper since the 4th century. It is locally known as "Dzimba Dzamabwe," meaning the house of stone or stone buildings.
What they built
The city is divided into three main areas: the Hill Complex, the Great Enclosure, and the Valley Ruins. The Hill Complex is thought to have been the spiritual and religious center. It is thought to have been constructed in the 9th century and occupied until the 13th century. The Great Enclosure was built in the 13th century and inhabited until the 15th century, while the Valley Complex was built in the 14th century. The Great Enclosure is the largest single ancient structure in sub-Saharan Africa. The builders incorporated natural granite boulders and rectangular blocks to form walls up to 20 feet thick and 36 feet high, and they did it all without mortar, the stones held in place purely by their own weight and fit.
How it became a great power
The city grew from a community of farmers and cattle herders to a major economic center, deriving power and wealth from its proximity to resources of gold and the trading routes along the Indian Ocean. Great Zimbabwe dominated trade routes despite not directly controlling village-based mining and smelting, and engaged in the Indian Ocean trade via Swahili city-states such as Sofala. Among the ruins, archaeologists discovered local and imported pottery including Chinese celadon wares, glass beads from India, and Persian faience, indicating that Great Zimbabwe was part of an Indian Ocean trading network even though the complex itself is 300 miles from that ocean.
The kingdom taxed other rulers throughout the region and was composed of over 150 tributaries headquartered in their own minor zimbabwes (stone structures). At its peak, Great Zimbabwe's power peaked from 1300 to 1450 CE, with gold mining from the inland regions connecting into the trade networks of the Indian Ocean via Kilwa and Sofala. Estimates of Great Zimbabwe's peak population around this time range from 10,000 to 20,000.
Why it was abandoned
Great Zimbabwe declined in power in the early 15th century. The nearby tributaries of the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers no longer produced gold flakes and nuggets, which had fueled the economy. By the 1450s the environment was completely exhausted and could no longer support a population of thousands of people, each with their own fields and livestock.
The lie that tried to erase it
This is the part that belongs in this thread. When European explorers arrived in the area in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they took artifacts from the ruins and put forward claims that the city wasn't built by Africans at all, claiming it was built by the Phoenicians or other groups from Asia or Europe. Explorer Karl Mauch claimed that he had found cedar from Lebanon at Great Zimbabwe and that "the ruins were built by the Queen of Sheba." Archaeologist Peter Garlake argued that Great Zimbabwe was constructed by the ancestors of the current inhabitants, the Shona people, as opposed to being constructed by a non-African or outsider civilization. This research was opposed by the Rhodesian government, including the prime minister, Ian Smith, and Garlake was forced to leave the country.
These racist narratives have been thoroughly debunked by archaeology, oral history, and carbon dating, all confirming that Great Zimbabwe was built by the Shona people between the 11th and 15th centuries CE. The civilization was never lost to the people who lived there. It was only "lost" to people who refused to believe Africans could have built it.
Where do the Shona people live today?
The Shona make up at least 70% of Zimbabwe's population, with the Ndebele forming the largest minority at 20%.
The Shona make up at least 70% of Zimbabwe's population, with the Ndebele forming the largest minority at 20%.
spio.comZimbabwe: the heartland
Mashonaland, where most of the Shona live, is a collective term for the eastern two-thirds of the country. The core of Shona country is the high plateau of Zimbabwe, with an elevation of 1,200 meters or more, a temperate climate.
The subgroups and where they settle
The Shona are not one uniform bloc. There are a number of linguistic subgroups: the Zezuru, who inhabit the central plateau of Zimbabwe; the Karanga, to the south; the Korekore, to the north and dropping into the Zambezi Valley; the Manyika, to the east; the Tavara, in the Zambezi Valley in Mozambique and the extreme northeast of Zimbabwe; the Ndau, in the southeast of Zimbabwe and stretching down to the coast in Mozambique; and the Kalanga, in the southwest of Zimbabwe and overflowing into Botswana.
Beyond Zimbabwe's borders
Mozambique holds about 2.3 million Shona, and South Africa between 1 and 2 million. Zambia has a smaller community of around 30,000, and around 200,000 Shona live in the United Kingdom.
Their language
They speak the Shona language, called chiShona. The Penn Language Center estimates chiShona is spoken by about 75% of the population of Zimbabwe, making it one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages on the continent.
The civilization that built Great Zimbabwe between the 11th and 15th centuries did not vanish. Its descendants are tens of millions of people still rooted in the same southern African plateau, carrying forward a culture, a language, and a name that stretches back over a thousand years.
Yes. Jebel Sahaba, a monument in Sudan, dates back to 13,400 years, that's 8,700 years before Egypt's first pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Djoser (about 2700 BCE). Sudan's own pyramids, built by the kings of Kush, came later, starting around 890 BCE.
Read that one firstThe full story of African civilization is being told on CEEK.
Join a community posting daily on the history, science and founders that the standard curriculum skipped.
Join me on CEEK
Comments
Comments are public. Links are removed.