1) Africa's earliest inhabitants lived as hunter-gatherers in East Africa millions of years ago. 2) Beginning around 8000 BCE, some hunter-gatherers in Africa began domesticating plants and animals and transitioning to farming, allowing them to settle permanently in fertile areas like the Nile River Valley. 3) By 4000 BCE, settled farming villages existed along the Nile and had grown into early civilizations like ancient Egypt, characterized by cities, social hierarchies, and cultural developments like architecture, art, and writing.

1. Lesson 1: Africa’s First People
Bellringer: What is one thing you
learned from the movie?

2. Africa’s First People
• Sahara wasn't always
a desert
– Used to have enough
water to support
farms
– Farmers lived in the
Sahara 4000 years
ago (evidence of cliff
paintings)
• Millions of years ago,
the first people lived
in East Africa

3. Fertile Crescent
• Fertile Crescent or “Cradle of Civilization”
– Crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist
and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia
– Where the first civilizations began
– Mesopotamia
• Many people moved out of the area and brought knowledge
with them

4. African Civilization Grows
• Earliest period African
history is the Stone
Age
– Marked the first use
of stone tools
– Hunter-gatherers
– 8000 BCE – 4000 BCE,
hunter-gatherers
began to farm and
here animals
• Wheat, barley,
sorghum, and millet

5. Settling Down
• Began to domesticate
plants and animals
– To adapt for your own use
• This allowed people to
settle
– Settled in fertile areas to
support farms
– Produced a surplus, more
than needed, so members
of the community could do
other work besides farming

6. Civilization
• Communities grew into
civilizations, societies with
cities, government, and
social classes
• Architecture, writing, and art
• Around 4000 BCE a
civilization rose up around
the Nile; Egypt
– Each summer, the Nile
flooded, leaving a fertile
layer of silt for farming
– 4000 BCE villages rose up
– Transitioned to a civilization

7. Egypt
• Ancient Egypt was ruled by
Pharaohs, god kings
– Buried in pyramids
– Murals, hieroglyphics, paper,
architecture, medicine, and
math
• Nubia: 6000 BCE
– South of Egypt
– Thrived until 300 AD
– Developed iron in Africa

8. Bantu Migrations
• 500 BCE, Bantu people developed iron in West
Africa
– Allowed for better farming, which led a surplus
and an increase in population
– BUT, around the 1st century BCE, the Bantu people
began to migrate out of Western Africa
– Settled in Central and Southern Africa
– Introduced farming, herding, and iron to this
region

9. Cavemen to Civilization
• Hunter-gatherers were nomads; no
permanent settlements
• Domestication allowed for settlements
• Farming led to surplus and varied jobs
• Allowed for more complex forms of society to
rise up, civilizations
• Look at the transition from villages to
civilizations

10. Exit Cards
Where did early hunter-gatherers settle and
why?

11. Transitions
• History is all about the transition from one
time period to another based on changing
ideas
• Illustrate the transition from hunter-gatherers
to civilization