Within the past thirty years, the narrative established by sympathetic colonial administrators, pioneer African American scholars, nationalist African historians, and the standard explanations of state formation here and elsewhere have been challenged. Recent archaeological research, com-bined with that of historians, art historians, and anthropologists, necessi-tat

The founders of Axum migrated from southern Arabia as much as 2,100 years ago and later extended their authority over the northern half of what are now Ethiopia and eastern Sudan. Two thousand years ago, they controlled ports on the Red Sea and maintained trade relations with merchants from the eastern end of the Mediterranean who came to buy ivory, gold, and incense from the African interior. Four hundred years later, Axum’s rulers became Christians and expanded to control other lesser-known states that had also arisen in the central and southern highlands of Ethiopia

Most scholars now realize that centralized African states, like such states elsewhere in the world, arose from a variety of causes and most often resulted from internal forces present in various areas of the continent (Grif-fiths 2005). For example, trade routes throughout Africa often impacted the formation of large African states.

Initially founded by the Phoenicians due to its natural protected port and geographical location at the center of what would become a Mediterranean seafaring trade network, Carthage was ultimately destroyed by invading Roman forces as part of the Punic Wars, only to be resuscitated as one of the most important trading centers of the Roman Empire (Melliti 2016). Carthage was not unique. In later centuries, a variety of North African cities that were part of what became known as the Barbary states, which included Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, would vie for regional influence (Blondy 2018).

impor-tant in Africa, is the degree to which people within such systems could mobilize women’s labor and childbearing capacities. The formation of alliances between lineages was facilitated by marriage

Many Africans still rely on extended family organizations and call upon kinship behavior to maintain justice and cultural and territorial integrity, not only in domestic but also in wider spheres. As in the past, some Africans still see any state without at least some symbolic lineage-based authority as inherently tyrannical. The continuing desire to seek and find order in insti-tutions other than the state is very unde

European officials erroneously assumed that their control of an important African authority figure ensured the “pacification” of a given ter-ritory. The Africans, not surprisingly, could simply turn to another member of a kinship linkage and continue their struggle against the outsiders.

Population pressures grew along the Benue as Saharan farmers slowly moved south to escape the gradually drying desert. Pushed by growing populations, the Bantu fishing peoples moved south and east. After reaching the Congo tributaries, they spread up the rivers of Central Africa to the Zambezi and south to the tip of Africa. Bantu-speaking groups intermar-ried with, conquered, or pushed out the Khoisan speakers and other popula-tions they encountered. As they slowly migrated, these Bantu-speaking peo-ples learned to cultivate Asian yams and bananas, which had been introduced to eastern Africa by Malayo-Polynesian sailors who colonized the island of Madagascar about 1,800 years ago

Archaeological evidence indicates that African gatherers and hunters adapted their tools and ways of life to three basic African environments: the tropical rainforests with hardwoods and small game; the more open savannas with a diversity of large game living in grasslands, woods, and gallery forests along the rivers; and riverbank and lakeside ecologies found along major water-cour

A few isolated forest dwellers, even in the twenty-first century, still live in bands of thirty to fifty individuals. Their pursuit of game and harvesting of a variety of insect, stream, and plant foods keep them on the move in a rather fixed cycle as various foods come into season at different locations in their foraging areas.

tled in the areas across the continent that were once very wet. They devel-oped an “aquatic tradition” based on the harvesting of the seeds of abun-dant wild grasses, fishing, and the hunting of crocodiles and hippopotami. Afro-Asiatic speakers occupied much of the Sahara when it was much wet-t

In the past few decades an ever-increasing body of fossil evidence, more recent genetic studies, and even linguistics have greatly improved our understanding of human evolu-tion. Most scholars maintain that the origins of Homo sapiens sapiens are found in Africa. Few scholars now doubt that the great bulk of human evo-lution took place in Africa and that every person alive today is descended from a population of humans anatomically indistinguishable from our African ancestors

The Phoenicians, who created a maritime empire throughout the Mediterranean region, potentially realized a remarkable, Africa-related geo-graphical feat during the fifth century BCE, according to James Delehanty, a geographer with the African Studies Program at the University of Wiscon-sin

Archaeological digs indicate that North Africa, and in particular Egypt, had contact with ancient Greece from as long ago as 2000 BCE. Although there are no surviv-ing writings from this earliest of eras, the carbon dating of cultural artifacts demonstrates that Greece engaged in trade with Egypt and the North African littoral. Several centuries later, the works of Homer, in particular The Iliad and The Odyssey, provide a glimpse of how the ancient Greeks perceived Africa. In these works, there are references to Ethiopians as liv-ing near the edges of the earth and having a privileged relationship with the gods by living near them.

In the early decades, notable turning points included the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 as the first pan-African organization of African countries to be headquartered on African soil (it is now known as the African Union, or AU); the establishment in 1975 of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as one of six major African groupings designed to promote regional economic cooperation and integration;1 and the selec-tion in 1986 of Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian writer and political activist, as the first African to win the Nobel Prize for literature, underscoring the growing recognition of African literature within international literary circles.2

In the 1970s, scholars of Africa realized that American high school textbooks were filled with stereotypes about Sub-Saharan Africa. With the coming of independence for African countries in the 1960s and with the American civil rights movement, the most glaring myths had disappeared, but less obvious myths persisted. In a 1978 study, Africa in Social Studies Textbooks, Astair Zekiros and Marylee Wiley detailed the extent to which our public schools were perpetuating myths and inaccuracies about Africa. They noted that most textbooks were written by “‘armchair’ authors who rely on weak sources for their own information.”4 Thus, no matter what the textbook authors were discussing, they tended to make Africa look like the place they imagined rather than the one that existed.

Africa is, however, very much a part of the American subconscious. Ironically, although we know little about Africa, we carry strong mental images of the continent. Once you begin to notice, you find that Africa appears in the American public space quite frequently. Although it may not figure often in the news, it shows up in advertising, movies, amusement parks, cartoons, and many other corners of our society. And although most Americans do not possess many facts about Africa, we do “know” certain general truths about the continent. We know, for example, that Africans belong to tribes. And we know that Africa is a place of famine, disease, poverty, coups, and large wild animals