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350 Meroë, capital of Kush kingdom, is destroyed by Ethiopian forces.

c. 451 Ethiopian kingdom of Axum reaches its height.

c. 540–570 Spread of Christianity in Nubia and Ethiopia.

c. 600 Kingdom of Ghana founded.

c. 625 Beginning of Islamic expansion into Africa.

641 Arabs invade Egypt.

c. 700 Kingdom of Ghana grows more powerful and controls trans-Saharan trade routes.

c. 800 Emergence of trading towns on East African coast; trade grows with Arabs and Persians.

c. 850 The construction of the citadel of Great Zimbabwe, in southern Africa, is begun.

c. 1000 Spread of Islam into sub-Saharan Africa, driven by overland trade.

c. 1076 King of Ghana converts to Islam.

c. 1100 Empire in Zimbabwe rises to power in southern Africa, centered in the massive stone-built city of Great Zimbabwe.

c. 1140 Igbo culture flourishes on Niger River.

1150 Yoruba culture flourishes in West Africa, based in capital city of Ilfe.

c. 1240 Rise of empires of Mali in West Africa and Benin.

1350 Mali becomes an Islamic state.

1415 Portuguese capture Ceuta (Morocco), which marks the beginning of Portugal’s overseas empire and involvement in Africa.

1431 Chinese admiral Zheng He travels to East Africa.

1441 First shipment of African slaves sent to Portugal.

1485 Portuguese explorer Bartholomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope.

Four Portuguese Catholic missionaries arrive in Congo.

1498 Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope en route to India.

1502 First African slaves are taken to the New World by the Spanish.

S

till in the dark about the Dark Continent? Say “Africa,” and the immediate association might be “jungle” or “safari.” Or cartoonish images of missionaries in large stew pots. Or a man in a pith helmet, asking, “Dr. Livingston, I presume?” If you grew up in a certain era, your views of Africa were probably shaped by Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller surrounded by dutiful natives in loincloths saying things like “bwana.” Or old issues of National Geographic once eagerly perused for pictures of African women with bare breasts. A younger group might identify with the lovable Lion King immortalized in the idyllic animated Disney movie and Broadway musical.

Let’s face it. The generally woeful state of American knowledge about the rest of the world is at its nadir when sub-Saharan Africa* is the subject. And the media doesn’t help matters. In recent years, Africa has only shown up on the American radar when some catastrophe strikes—an embassy bombing or a Black Hawk down. In the late 1960s, it took a civil war and starving Biafran refugees to make us aware of Nigeria. A rock-and-roll “feel-good” moment like “We Are the World” in 1985 briefly raised consciousness about the troubles confronting Africa. And, of course, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, we were very much aware of the peaceful revolution he launched, which removed South Africa’s apartheid government.

But the typical and widespread American attitude toward Africa—even during the recent horrific episodes of butchery and genocide—is more like “out of sight, out of mind.”

This is historically misguided, because Africa is the place where humanity was born, as well as the fountainhead of a vast and rich tradition of myth, magic, and music. The second largest and second most-populous continent after Asia, Africa is where most evidence of the earliest human ancestors has been found, leaving little doubt that we are all “out of Africa.”* From the many discoveries of bones, stones, and fossils at sites in eastern Africa, there is wide agreement that the earliest human beings lived more than 2 million years ago in eastern Africa, in an area spanning modern Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Evidence of emerging “modern” humans from the past 100,000 years, including improved stone tools, artwork on rocks, signs of body decoration, and burials, also appear first at various sites in Africa.

But a clear picture of what