African studies
Africa is considered the ancestral homeland of mankind, the oldest archaeological remains are 7 million years old. People settled from Africa in three ways: through the Strait of Gibraltar, the Isthmus of Suez, and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which rose above sea level during glaciations and active tectonic movements.
In the Neolithic, the first civilizations appeared in the north of the continent — Ancient Egypt, Nubia, Meroe, Ancient Libya. Approximately 3300 years BC. e. the state of the first pharaonic dynasty emerged in the Nile Valley. The main trade routes of that time ran through the Nile Valley, and there was constant communication with other neighboring and more distant peoples. After the catastrophe of the Bronze Age, in the first millennium BC. BC the northern Mediterranean coast of the continent was settled by the Phoenicians. In the area of modern. In Tunisia, the Phoenicians, who came from Tire in the Levant, founded the colony of Carthage, which would eventually conquer the entire western Mediterranean. Phoenician sailors went to the Atlantic Ocean, discovered the Canary Islands (the Kern colony was founded) and the Azores. Under the leadership of Gannon in the 6th century BC. reached the coast of Guinea, where they saw the eruption of the Cameroon volcano and apes. Simultaneously with the Hannon expedition to the south, an expedition was organized to the north to the British islands for tin under the guidance of his brother Himilkon[11]. The first trip around Africa was organized on the initiative of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II in 600 BC. e., on his instructions, Phoenician sailors successfully circumnavigated the continent from east to west in three years, departing from the Red Sea to the south and returning to the Nile delta[12]. During the trip, they found out that in the Southern Hemisphere, the sun in the south is in the north.