Human Context
Now that we have a basic sense of geographic scale, let's consider the population. How does Africa's population compare to other global regions? Check out the table below to see land area compared with population estimates. Do these numbers surprise you at all?
A comparison of the size of the world's major continents and countries and their populations. Source: (table from "Africa: A Biography of a Continent," p. 686 )
Despite all these facts and figures we have learned here about the physical environment, let's not forget the significant development of the human environment. All of the "markers" of human civilization developed out of Africa, including metallurgy, agriculture, written language, and the founding of cities. Let's jump briefly back to 100,000 years ago to explore the growth of population within and outside of the continent. At that time, an estimated 1 million people inhabited the African continent and began migrating elsewhere out of Africa. At 200 AD, approximately 20 million people were living in Africa, with more than half of the population living in North Africa and the Nile Valley. By 1500 AD, 47 million people were living on the African continent, with the out-of-Africa population reaching 300 million.
What
do YOU think?...
This relationship raises some great questions:
Why did the migrant population grow so much faster? Can DNA give us this answer?
What prevented the African population from achieving similar levels of growth?
First, read the article in Geotimes (2005) on Tracing
Human Migration. Then post your thoughts and opinions to the Lesson
01 Discussion Forum in ANGEL (you can find this discussion forum by looking under the Communicate tab in ANGEL).
Let's continue on by examining the biography of Africa. We'll continue tracing the process of development of its environmental, sociocultural, development, and global contexts.
