African history, and some stuff on Nok Society

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Interesting facts about the continent of Africa's history.
I do not have time to collate a history of Africa. So here are just some facts on African history

Nok Society

S plus N, Nigeria iron, terracotta models, organised Nok society 3000BC-500AD,
They included these figures of people
And were the first iron smithers in Africa, maybe a local idea, or introduced from Carthage,
They also had faces, or masks,
Some claim they represented the dead,
Many claim they have links with the later Yoruban people,
They probably had centralised regimes, as of better trade networks,

The evidence is that the Nok Society, just got iron,
And from this spread, iron spread across Africa,
Helping the Bantu spread across Africa,
And their new food stuffs, or it was associated to those groups,
Or was linked, in with what is a suspected theory,

Added to this I can say that Nok society is said to have been Neolithic, Look at http://www.lonympics.co.uk/
With jewelry made there in their villages,
As people suspect they lived in these,
With people guessing the terracotta were for ancestor worship,
But the figurines, ideas seem to have stayed here, maybe even to now,
Sometimes in much later years in metal forms,
Possibly inspired by whoever had the iron ideas, the local pre-iron culture,
Or traders they traded to here,

The Nok, sculptres look african have unusual hair styles, and jewelry, and are made of terracotta,

Ngorongoro 610 metres deep, and 16km wide,
The largest crater on Earth, the huge crater from above is walled, and looks like a crater.
But inside it are lions, elephants and giraffes living a life, of luxury.
The Masai defeated the Datoga, to annex the area.

So we must split Africa into a couple of zones.
Into North Africa, and the rest of Africa.

In North Africa, there is a history of more Neolithic culture, and such.
Pastoralists usually in non-arable, or relatively so land,
They spread Algeria to Egypt, by 5000BC,
Entire N-Sahara 3000BC,
Modern descendants walk aside them, with sticks,
Longer to reach S,
Much coast Gulf of Guinea, saw crop growing,
Even of watermelons, more, 2000BC,
Clay houses, stone hoes,
Hilly & desert areas,

Mesolithic Bushmen/San, Hunter-Gatherers, survive,
From Congo too the Cape in Southern/S-Africa
But began losing land to Neolithic metal users, in later millennia,
So far S, political advances to equality ignore them,
And no name for themselves 'the Bushmen', other than themselves

2/1,000BC Bantu people, spread across Africa with goats, pottery,
Use iron for conquering, absorb related others, like Congo's 150cm tall pygmies,
New named tribes develop in time, from these migrations,
Creating many cultures, linked in language family,

In current guesses, spread off Cameroon, or Gabon, or the Congo,
Probably used imported Madagasgan Malaysian crops,
Like bananas to expand into rainforest,
The bananas growing off a few metre high trees, that cover a few areas,
Like green bushes,
And they hang off with 10s of these on each tree,
Like off branches stems, in growing green, like they are big thumbs curved long, shaped,
Like they are clasping eachother longly, a couple of dozen cm long,
That then turn yellow when ripe,

And then they can be peeled, off their thin yellow skin,
To reveal a vanilla flavoured light tasting creamier fruit easily gobbled up,
But they take time to ripen,
Or maybe more likely yams, & maybe millet, or taro,
Or maybe the fact they had better technology,
Then on domesticated cattle, spread further, to S African plateaus,

By 400AD, they reach, Lake Malawi, & they outpopulate Twa, Fula, by success,
Slash, burn farmers form communities of 700people,
In Zululand green & brown landscape,
Trade salt, such,
N-Central Africa's Bantu's' cattle spread there after 0BC,
In Swaziland 400AD as Ngwenya,
And such,
1000BC/200AD, E & South Africa saw goat herding as Bantu cultural blends,
Absorb locals,
Some grow crops, Bantu animal farming came 2nd in less arable areas,

Areas full of people saw villages,
Once Hunter-Gatherer societies, assimilated to now nomadic farmers,
Zambia's stone Hunter-Gatherers,
Their cave paintings used as shrines by 600AD or earlier Bantu farmers,

1000AD evidence ponders copper traded so widely from Kansanshi,
Used as currency in N copper mining area,
S, Batoka plateau, more cattle after 1000AD, cotton spun,
Chop down woodland, put seeds amongst burned trees,
Some regions pottery, same as in 2002,
10foot wing span storks, fly, shadow spread vastly against hill sides,

Zimbabwe taken, stones dropped for constructions, by 9thC,
By Bantu migrants absorbing Bushmen except in deserts,
Land 8% arable, made of plateau of high land wide running across centre,
As Savannah & flats dominate much, colonise Congo 1000-1400 replace Pygmy,

Need mind over matter, if lost in desert, seek mango-like water fruits,
Maybe on automatic,
Mirages reflect sky resemble water, quivering on the landscape,
If look bright side, like good I past trouble,
Can sadden if good occur,
Let it be/must do thing,
Tanzania saw Bantu absorb Bushmen & Cush Iraqw, Mbugu,
& Nilotics from the N like who became Kenya's Masai later,

Tookover areas as many tribes, in many valleys,
By 1000AD much of Angola, of brown land light soils,
Covered by thicket, grass greens, of plains,
& surrounded by hills areas, to Kenya Bantu,
Nilo-Saharan, Semitic cultures to N,

After this many nations developed in Africa.

In KENYA, the Nilotic peoples like Masai arrived.
There were many tribes

There were many tribal movements across Africa.
With many unknown histories,
There are so many I can not be bothered writing them all down.

We will now talk about North Africa,

In North Africa there was Carthage, which was founded by Phoenicians in the era before Christ. This land of Hannibal, was annexed by the Romans,
There was also Egypt, the first cilvisation, with pharaohs, and Pyramids, and to the South Nubia, with iron smelting which conquered Egypt for a while, and to the South of there Axum, which in the 7thC invaded Arabia, and saw almost it taken, for the Christian Empire,
Then the empire there, developed under Islam, which then went on to take all North Africa, and start spreading Islam, across there, outplacing Christianity, except among minorities and the South, Islam spread into West Africa, and areas that were at this time still animist.
Some North African Muslim states broke off, into own ways, like in Morocco, and such, Aklgeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt,
The Ottomans, annexed much of here in the 16thC in annexation.

So anyhow there were loads of tribes in Africa.
The Muslim states expanded into Sudan, and rivalled with Christian Ethiopia, right through past the 16thC.

The state of Ethopioa united and dsiipatedtaed, every so often half Muslim, hald Christian and in that mix, many Animists.
The rest of Africa was essentially Animist.

So anyhow the major tribes in Africa in the 19thC were posistined there as of slave trading.

So anyway in such a brief account as this piece is, and with my lack of knowledge of such a vast subject I am only capable of giving some facts.

I.E the Pygmies, used to cover much of Africa but today are limited to parts of Equatorial rainforest pushed into there by Bantu spread. They traded with Portugueese slavers, and survived in there often oppressed,

Large white colonies left in the colonial era, except in South Africa,

The Bushmen, also used to cover much of Africa but lost much of the land, and were resticted to parts of South Africa and Botswana today.

In the 19thC Zulu wars across South Africa, caused upto 2million deaths.

The Ashante were the major empire in Ghana in the 19thC, fighting the Fanti, and British.

Dahomey was a other major slave empire, and kept female battalions , fighting men in the 18thc and 19thC.

Livingstone took years to cross Africa eventually being found by the American reporters Stanley.

Stanley's discovery inspired the king of Belgium to send in troops, and create a horrific empire, that killed many millions of people.
This inspired coloinialism, across Africa.

Colonialism, brought allot of bad.

Italian colonialism, killed 3million. by helping cause Ethopian late 19th C famines and spereading rinderpest, if they had spread rinderpest with good socialist intentions this would be seen as a crime of socialism, but it was a crime of colonialism, a colonalism, the king forced on Italy by his ambitions, so it killed many,
Brittish cut Zimbabwe's population 10%,
French royal invasions fell Algeria's native population over 1.5Million.
Morrocco's king saw millions die under the, as they were colonial puppets.

Well loads of bad stories,.

As late as the 1950s 50,000 Kenyans died in an independence war,
And in the 1950s, 250,000 to a million Algerians,
And in the 1960s slavery still existed in Angola and tens of thousands died.

Since independence non of Africa's lands has experienced growth like SE-Asia.
But it has all seen it's life expectancies rise.

There were many dictators, aided by ex-colonial regimes, and local puppets.
This aided wars like in Sudan, and Uganda, and Nigeria.

In the 1990s some fell, and some postulated a renaissance.

But in 1994, there was a continual attempt by Tutsi ex aristo minorities to invade, this saw the Hutus extremists use the assasination of the president to calim it was tutsis, and then kill thousands of them in a war oif 800,000 deaths.
This saw the Hutus flee to Congo.
The Congolese dictator, allowed the Hutus to stay.
This angered the Rwanadan Tutsis who had defeated the Hutus and taken over Rwanada.
They then invaded with Congolese rebels, and ousted the dictator.
But the rebels, became rivals with Rwanda, too, and Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi's regimes invaded Congo.
This saw a war of 4 million deaths by 2006.

Meanwhile HIV spread Southern Africa, a disease growing during Apartheid and then at the same rate under ANC rule.
It stalled after a decade of ANC rule, but had lowered the LE, loads.

100s of Websites http://www.lonympics.co.uk/

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The Full Story of the Beja People, who it is felt inspired the Roman idea of the Blemmye people

A site on the El Nino Famines that killed 10s of millions of Indians, and Chinese and others in the 19th Century

A site on the Belgian Congo, and how the king of that land killed 10s of millions of Congolese

Why the French Revolution was good

A History of Rwanda

A History of the fascinating medieval Kingdom of Kongo, a amazing story

The most evil regimes of the 19th Century