Africa, the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia, is a land of immense diversity, rich history, and vibrant cultures. The name "Africa" itself has an intriguing story, with variations in spelling and usage across different languages and historical periods.
Africa is spelled 'Afrika' in a number of European countries. But is it now totally "kool" to spell things with a k? I guess I'm not "katching" on. Either way, whoever thought of spelling it that way needs a good kick in the "krotch". Does it have anything to do with my akcent?
Spelling Afrika is kompletely korrect, kan't you see? Actually this thread made me remember witch Ultimecia from Final Fantasy VIII... she talked like that and was from the future, so your assumptions might be correct.
I thought that's how it was spelled!
Let's delve into the etymology and historical context of the name "Africa," as well as its diverse cultural and environmental aspects.
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Map of Africa
The Name "Africa": Origins and Evolution
Afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of what was then known as northern Africa, located west of the Nile river, and in its widest sense referring to all lands south of the Mediterranean, also known as Ancient Libya. This name seems to have originally referred to a native Libyan tribe, an ancestor of modern Berbers; see Terence for discussion.
Under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province then named Africa Proconsularis, following the Roman victory over the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War in 146 BC, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a land (e.g., in Celtica from Celtae, as used by Julius Caesar).
According to the Romans, Africa lies to the west of Egypt, while "Asia" was used to refer to Anatolia and lands to the east. A definite line was drawn between the two continents by the geographer Ptolemy (85-165 CE), indicating Alexandria along the Prime Meridian and making the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa.
The 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. Isidore of Seville in his 7th-century Etymologiae XIV.5.2. Massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and the "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace.
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Africa: A Continent of Diversity and History
Africa is highly biodiverse; it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. However, Africa is also heavily affected by a wide range of environmental issues, including desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, and pollution.
These entrenched environmental concerns are expected to worsen as climate change impacts Africa. The history of Africa is long, complex, and varied, and has often been under-appreciated by the global historical community.
In African societies the oral word is revered, and they have generally recorded their history via oral tradition, which has led anthropologists to term them "oral civilisations", contrasted with "literate civilisations" which pride the written word. In African societies, the historical process is largely a communal one, with eyewitness accounts, hearsay, reminiscences, and occasionally visions, dreams, and hallucinations crafted into narrative oral traditions which are performed and transmitted through generations.
In oral traditions time is sometimes mythical and social, and ancestors were considered historical actors. Mind and memory shapes traditions, as events are condensed over time and crystallise into clichés. Oral tradition can be exoteric or esoteric.
Africa is considered by most paleoanthropologists to be the oldest inhabited territory on Earth, with the Human species originating from the continent. During the mid-20th century, anthropologists discovered many fossils and evidence of human occupation perhaps as early as seven million years ago (Before present, BP). Fossil remains of several species of early apelike humans thought to have evolved into modern humans, such as Australopithecus afarensis radiometrically dated to approximately 3.9-3.0 million years BP, Paranthropus boisei (c. 2.3-1.4 million years BP) and Homo ergaster (c.
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The size of the Sahara has historically been extremely variable, with its area rapidly fluctuating and at times disappearing depending on global climatic conditions. At the end of the Ice ages, estimated to have been around 10,500 BC, the Sahara had again become a green fertile valley, and its African populations returned from the interior and coastal highlands in Africa, with rock art paintings depicting a fertile Sahara and large populations discovered in Tassili n'Ajjer dating back perhaps 10 millennia.
However, the warming and drying climate meant that by 5,000 BC, the Sahara region was becoming increasingly dry and hostile. Around 3500 BC, due to a tilt in the Earth's orbit, the Sahara experienced a period of rapid desertification. The population trekked out of the Sahara region towards the Nile Valley below the Second Cataract where they made permanent or semi-permanent settlements.
A major climatic recession occurred, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in Central and Eastern Africa. The domestication of cattle in Africa preceded agriculture and seems to have existed alongside hunter-gatherer cultures. It is speculated that by 6,000 BC, cattle were domesticated in North Africa.
In the Sahara-Nile complex, people domesticated many animals, including the donkey and a small screw-horned goat that was common from Algeria to Nubia. Between 10,000 and 9,000 BC, pottery was independently invented in the region of Mali in the savannah of West Africa. In the steppes and savannahs of the Sahara and Sahel in Northern West Africa, people possibly ancestral to modern Nilo-Saharan and Mandé cultures started to collect wild millet, around 8,000 to 6,000 BC.
Later, gourds, watermelons, castor beans, and cotton were also collected. Sorghum was first domesticated in Eastern Sudan around 4,000 BC, in one of the earliest instances of agriculture in human history. People around modern-day Mauritania started making pottery and built stone settlements (e.g., Tichitt, Oualata).
Fishing, using bone-tipped harpoons, became a major activity in the numerous streams and lakes formed from the increased rains. In West Africa, the wet phase ushered in an expanding rainforest and wooded savanna from Senegal to Cameroon. Between 9,000 and 5,000 BC, Niger-Congo speakers domesticated the oil palm and raffia palm.
Black-eyed peas and voandzeia (African groundnuts), were domesticated, followed by okra and kola nuts. Around 4,000 BC, the Saharan climate started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace. This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink significantly and caused increasing desertification.
By the first millennium BC, ironworking had been introduced in Northern Africa. Around that time it also became established in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, either through independent invention there or diffusion from the north and vanished under unknown circumstances around 500 AD, having lasted approximately 2,000 years, and by 500 BC, metalworking began to become commonplace in West Africa.
Ironworking was fully established by roughly 500 BC in many areas of East and West Africa, although other regions did not begin ironworking until the early centuries AD. From 3500 BC, nomes (ruled by nomarchs) coalesced to form the kingdoms of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt in northeast Africa.
The 4th dynasty oversaw the height of the Old Kingdom, and constructed many great pyramids. Under the 6th dynasty power gradually decentralised to the nomarchs, culminating in the disintegration of the kingdom, exacerbated by drought and famine, thus commencing the First Intermediate Period in 2200 BC. This shattered state would last until 2055 BC when the 11th dynasty, based in Thebes, conquered the others to form the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, with the 12th dynasty expanding into Lower Nubia at the expense of Kerma.
In 1700 BC, the Middle Kingdom fractured in two, ushering in the Second Intermediate Period. In 1550 BC, the 18th dynasty expelled the Hyksos, and established the New Kingdom of Egypt. Egypt's collapse liberated the more Egyptianised Kingdom of Kush in Nubia, who manoeuvred into power in Upper Egypt and conquered Lower Egypt in 754 BC to form the Kushite Empire.
The Kushites ruled for a century and oversaw a revival in pyramid building, until they were driven out of Egypt by the Assyrians in 663 BC in reprisal for their expansion towards the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians installed a puppet dynasty that later gained independence and once more unified Egypt, until they were conquered by the Achaemenid Empire in 525 BC.
Egypt regained independence under the 28th dynasty in 404 BC but they were reconquered by the Achaemenids in 343 BC. The Ptolemaics lost their holdings outside of Africa to the Seleucids in the Syrian Wars, expanded into Cyrenaica and subjugated Kush in the 3rd century BC. In the 1st century BC, Ptolemaic Egypt became entangled in a Roman civil war, leading to its conquest by the Romans in 30 BC.
The Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman Empire freed the Levantine city state of Palmyra, which conquered Egypt; their brief rule ended when they were reconquered by the Romans. In the midst of this, Kush regained independence from Egypt, and they would persist as a major regional power until, having been weakened from internal rebellion amid worsening climatic conditions, invasions by Aksum and the Noba caused their disintegration into Makuria, Alodia, and Nobatia in the 5th century AD.
In the Horn of Africa, there was the Land of Punt, a kingdom on the Red Sea, likely located in modern-day Eritrea or northern Somaliland. The Ancient Egyptians initially traded via middle-men with Punt until in 2350 BC when they established direct relations. They would become close trading partners for over a millennium. Towards the end of the ancient period, northern Ethiopia and Eritrea bore the Kingdom of D'mt beginning in 980 BC.
The Kingdom of Aksum grew from a principality into a major power on the trade route between Rome and India through conquering its unfortunately unknown neighbours, gaining a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade in the region. Aksum's rise had them rule over much of the regions from Lake Tana to the valley of the Nile, and they further conquered parts of the ailing Kingdom of Kush, led campaigns against the Noba and Beja peoples, and expanded into South Arabia.
This led the Persian prophet Mani to consider Aksum as one of the four great powers of the 3rd century AD alongside Persia, Rome, and China. In the 4th century AD Aksum's king converted to Christianity and Aksum's population, who had followed syncretic mixes of local beliefs, slowly followed.
The Maghreb and Ifriqiya were mostly cut off from the cradle of civilisation in Egypt by the Libyan desert, exacerbated by Egyptian boats being tailored to the Nile and not coping well in the open Mediterranean Sea. This caused its societies to develop contiguous to those of Southern Europe, until Phoenician settlements came to dominate the most lucrative trading locations in the Gulf of Tunis.
Phoenician settlements subsequently grew into Ancient Carthage after gaining independence from Phoenicia in the 6th century BC, and they would build an extensive empire and a strict mercantile network, all secured by one of the largest and most powerful navies in the ancient Mediterranean. Carthage would meet its demise in the Punic Wars against the expansionary Roman Republic, however momentum in these wars was not linear, with Carthage initially experiencing considerable success in the Second Punic War following Hannibal's infamous crossing of the alps into northern Italy.
Their defeat and subsequent collapse of their empire would produce two further polities in the Maghreb; Numidia, which had assisted the Romans in the Second Punic War, Mauretania, a Mauri tribal kingdom and home of the legendary King Atlas, and various tribes such as Garamantes, Musulamii, a...
Many languages in Africa treat ‘Africa’ as a loan word. Majority of societies until European contact never used it. It isn’t accurate that Europeans ‘polluted’ languages with ‘C’, that sounds like the Latin alphabet was in wide usage already. Sounds and characters are different. Latin alphabet was used by Europeans as a way of transcribing words and place names, missionaries and educators gained ground in the 19th century (colonialism), encouraged western education schools.
In West Africa, some missionaries were African/repatriated ex-slave converts, like Ajayi Crowther in Nigeria. They created dictionaries in the script, and developed orthographies. The orthographies are based on the languages they were for, not so much on phonetic values of Latin characters in English/French. Some African languages use letter ‘C’ for the sound /ch/, and ‘X’ for /sh/. Shape is irrelevant, speakers have defined the graphemes for them.
If an African languages regulatory board wanted to change the phonetic value of ‘A’ to /weeee/, it could do that, sans European input.The Latin script (+ Hebrew, Arabic) is from a long line of diffused writing systems originating in hieroglyphs. Look at the root of ‘C’, originally /g/.Changing words to suit identity is legitimate. Many words I would like changed in Nigeria + colonial ones.
When a word isn’t replacing names, isn’t offensive, It’s pointless. Africans don’t see ‘Africa’ as a corruption. ‘Afrika’ annoys many because it’s patronising, cheesy, and people who use ‘Afrika’ usually don’t know Africa and when challenged call evidence ‘white’.
‘Lingua Afrikana’ is funny. Sounds made up, far from African languages. This sounds like a corruption. Isn’t it weird that people who don’t speak African languages twist words to pepper their English? It makes me lose bodily fluids when I hear them being mispronounced. I’m not even sure what it does to those languages speakers.
Nigeria doesn’t use Swahili. Uganda doesn’t use Hausa. Learn an African language. European nations don’t even like each other. ‘White’ + ‘European’ was a way of disassociating themselves from the world, it’s like a treaty or pact in the 19th century, but they still murdered hundreds of their own, before then they colonised themselves like everyone did.
The Normans invaded England, they refused to speak English, why there’s so much French in English. Anyway. The point is we should acknowledge a bond of being from a continent, but we don’t need to force a swirl in for self preservation. No other continent does.
Saying Hakuna Matata does little, especially when my people never did.Azania is not a South African word, it’s an area of east Africa described as such by the ancient Greeks. There’s a lot of bull that can come out of African people about their identity as well.
African Ethnic Groups and Languages
Africa's population is the youngest among all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Based on 2024 projections, Africa's population will exceed 3.8 billion people by 2100. Africa is the least wealthy inhabited continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania.
Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, corruption, colonialism, the Cold War, and neocolonialism. Africa straddles the equator and the prime meridian. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Arabian Plate and the Gulf of Aqaba to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos.
It contains 54 fully recognised sovereign states, eight cities and islands that are part of non-African states, and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. This count does not include Malta and Sicily, which are geologically part of the African continent. Algeria is Africa's largest country by area, and Nigeria is its largest by population.
African culture is rich and diverse both within and between the continent's regions, encompassing art, cuisine, music and dance, religion, and dress. Africa, particularly Eastern Africa, is widely accepted to be the place of origin of humans and the Hominidae clade, also known as the great apes.
The earliest hominids and their ancestors have been dated to around 7 million years ago, and Homo sapiens (modern human) are believed to have originated in Africa 350,000 to 260,000 years ago. In the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE Ancient Egypt, Kerma, Punt, and the Tichitt Tradition emerged in North, East and West Africa, while from 3000 BCE to 500 CE the Bantu expansion swept from modern-day Cameroon through Central, East, and Southern Africa, displacing or absorbing groups such as the Khoisan and Pygmies.
Some African empires include Wagadu, Mali, Songhai, Sokoto, Ife, Benin, Asante, the Fatimids, Almoravids, Almohads, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Kongo, Mwene Muji, Luba, Lunda, Kitara, Aksum, Ethiopia, Adal, Ajuran, Kilwa, Sakalava, Imerina, Maravi, Mutapa, Rozvi, Mthwakazi, and Zulu. Despite the predominance of states, many societies were heterarchical and stateless.
Slave trades created various diasporas, especially in the Americas. From the late 19th century to early 20th century, driven by the Second Industrial Revolution, most of Africa was rapidly conquered and colonised by European nations, save for Ethiopia and Liberia. European rule had significant impacts on Africa's societies, and colonies were maintained for the purpose of economic exploitation and extraction of natural resources.
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