Africa Is The Second Largest Continent - amazonia.fiocruz.br

Africa Is The Second Largest Continent - opinion

African culture is vastly misunderstood in western societies. For centuries, European-centric thinking has justified colonialism and imperialism as a "civilizing mission" meant to save the African "savages" who live in "sh--holes" often characterized by terms like "exotic," "primitive" or "pagan," which is a misconception. This thinking is rooted in the age of European Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. This movement provided an intellectual backdrop for European theories about human differences. He wrote extensively about Africans and slavery. Black History Month: Celebrate by looking back on Kentucky history makers. The continent of Africa was torn apart with the arrival of Europeans and the slave trade. It affected whole populations and political systems. Africa Is The Second Largest Continent.

Africa Is The Second Largest Continent Video

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Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continentafter Asia in both cases. At about Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; [7] [8] the median age in was The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea 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 countrieseight territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Algeria is Africa's largest country by area, and Nigeria is its largest by population. African nations cooperate through the establishment of the African Unionwhich is headquartered in Addis Ababa.

Africa straddles the Equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. Africa is home to much biodiversity; 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 also is heavily affected by a wide range of environmental issuesincluding desertification, deforestation, water scarcityand other issues. These entrenched environmental concerns are expected to worsen as climate change impacts Africa. Africa, particularly Eastern Africais widely accepted as the place of origin of humans and the Hominidae clade great apesmeaning that Africa has a long and complex history. The Africa Is The Second Largest Continent hominids and their ancestors have been dated to around 7 million years ago, including Sahelanthropus tchadensisAustralopithecus africanusA. Following a subsequent long and complex history of civilizations, migration and trade, Africa hosts a large diversity of ethnicitiescultures and Africa Is The Second Largest Continent.

The last years have witnessed an increasing European influence on the continent. Starting in the 16th century, this was driven by trade, including the Trans-Atlantic slave tradewhich created large African diaspora populations in the Americas. In the late 19th centuryEuropean countries colonized almost all of Africaextracting resources from the continent and exploiting local communities; most present states in Africa emerged from a process of decolonisation in the 20th century. Afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of then-known northern Africa to the west of the Nile river, and in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean Ancient Libya.

Under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province it then named Africa Proconsularisfollowing its defeat of the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War in BC, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The later Muslim region of Ifriqiyafollowing its conquest of the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire's Exarchatus AfricaeAfrica Is The Second Largest Continent preserved a form of the name.

According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while click was used to refer to Anatolia and lands to the east. A definite line was Thw between the two continents by the geographer Ptolemy 85— ADindicating Alexandria along the Prime Meridian and making the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of "Africa" expanded with their knowledge.

Gift to world civilizations

Africa is considered by most paleoanthropologists to be the oldest inhabited territory on Earthwith the human species originating from the continent. Fossil remains of several species of early apelike humans thought to have evolved into modern man, such as Australopithecus afarensis radiometrically dated to approximately 3.

After the evolution of Homo sapiens approximatelytoyears BP in Africa, [20] [21] [22] [23] the continent was mainly Largwst by groups of hunter-gatherers. Other migrations of modern humans within the African continent have been dated to that time, with evidence of early human settlement found in Southern AfricaSoutheast AfricaNorth Africaand the Sahara.

Birthplace of humanity

The size of the Sahara has historically been extremely variable, with its area rapidly fluctuating and at times disappearing depending Iw global climatic conditions. Around BC, due to Africa Is The Second Largest Continent tilt in the earth's orbit, the Sahara experienced a period of rapid desertification. A major climatic recession occurred, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in Central and Eastern Africa. Since this time, dry conditions have prevailed in Eastern Africa and, increasingly during the last years, in Ethiopia. The domestication of cattle in Africa preceded agriculture and seems to have existed alongside hunter-gatherer cultures. It is speculated that by BC, cattle were domesticated in North Africa.

Between the 10,—9, BC, pottery was independently invented in the region of Mali in the savannah of West Africa. Later, gourdswatermelonscastor beansand cotton were also collected and domesticated.]