Please select a historical
period:
25
years ago / 50 years ago
/ 80 years ago / 125
years ago / 150 years ago
250 years ago / 400
years ago / 700 years ago
/ 1,200 years ago
1,500 years ago / 2,000
years ago / 3,000 years ago
/ 4,000 years ago / 5,000
years ago / 10,000
years ago
5,000
Years Ago in South Africa
Evidence
of cultivation or the planting and growing of crops in tropical
Africa dates from 6500 to 4000 years ago. Plants grown for food
include millet, sorghum, peanuts, yams and rice, plus many plants
native to Africa, including tef, fonio, ensete and noog.
This map shows Africa about 5000 years ago showing the birth of
the Sahara desert. The lakes of North Africa have begun to shrink
and two zones of extreme desert have formed, what will eventually
stretch all the way across the continent. At the same time, grasslands
have expanded at the expense of forests. So the growth of the
desert not only forced the cattle raising people of north and
central Africa to move south, the addition of more savannah and
grasslands opened new areas for them to colonize towards southern
Africa. This colonization in turn forced the native San and Khoi
peoples to move south.
Africa about 5000 years ago
back to map
25
years ago / 50 years ago
/ 80 years ago / 125
years ago / 150 years ago
250 years ago / 400
years ago / 700 years ago
/ 1,200 years ago
1,500 years ago / 2,000
years ago / 3,000 years ago
/ 4,000 years ago / 5,000
years ago / 10,000
years ago
