Geography played a critical role in the development of early human civilization in Africa. Climate conditions such as temperatures and rainfall dictated agricultural growing seasons, and soil fertility governed what crops—if any—could be grown in a particular area, as well as the availability of fodder for…

In particular, the availability of water dictated the likelihood of fixed settlement. A wide range of peoples populated Africa’s diverse geography, from the desert-dwelling San to the Baka people of the rainforest.

cataract — a place in a river where the otherwise placid flow is upset by a waterfall, a shallow portion, or the presence of boulders. Bantu migrations — the millennia-long expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples southward from West and Central Africa, spreading a common cultural foundation that included language, farming, and…. Berbers — the name used by Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans to describe the native peoples of the Maghreb; today, this population generally self-identifies as Amazigh, or Imazighen. Nubia — the name Egyptians gave to the expansive area south of the first cataract and extending into sub-Saharan Africa; it included the Kingdom of Kush.