FFive main climatic zones roughly divide the African continent. Fertile land with unpredictable rainfall borders parts of the Mediterranean in the north and the southwestern coast of the Cape of Good Hope in the south. Inland from these areas are dry steppes with little plant life. These steppes gradually give way to Africa’s great deserts: the Sahara in the north and the Namib (NAH-mihb) and Kalahari in the south. The Sahara’s southern sub-desert fringe is called the Sahel (SA-hihl). The savannas — flat grasslands — extend in a swath across the continent’s widest part — parts of south-central Africa and along the eastern coast. Dense, humid tropical rain forests stretch along coastal West Africa and on both sides of the equator in central Africa. Africa’s climate is mostly tropical, with subtropical climates limited to the northern and southern coasts and the regions of high elevation. Rainfall is seasonal on most of the continent and is very sparse in desert and semidesert areas.

Geography and climate have significantly shaped African economic development. In the eastern African plains, the earliest humans hunted wild animals. The drier steppe regions favored herding. Wetter savanna regions, like the Nile Valley, encouraged grain-based agriculture. Tropical forests favored hunting and gathering and, later, root-based agriculture. Rivers and lakes supported economies based on fishing.

Africa’s peoples are as diverse as the continent’s topography. In North Africa contacts with Asian and European civilizations date back to the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans (see Chapters 5 and 6). Groups living on the coast or along trade routes had the greatest degree of contact with outside groups. The Berbers of North Africa, living along the Mediterranean, intermingled with many different peoples — with Muslim Arabs, who first conquered North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries C.E. (see “Islam’s Spread Beyond Arabia” in Chapter 9); with Spanish Muslims and Jews, many of whom settled in North Africa after their expulsion from Spain in 1492 (see “Spain” in Chapter 15); and with sub-Saharan peoples, with whom they traded across the Sahara Desert. The Swahili peoples along the East African coast developed a maritime civilization and had rich commercial contacts with southern Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, China, and the Malay Archipelago.

South of the Sahara, short-statured peoples, sometimes inaccurately referred to as Pygmies, inhabited the equatorial rain forests. South of those forests, in the continent’s southern third, lived the Khoisan (KOI-sahn), people who were primarily hunters but also had domesticated livestock.

Ancient Egypt, at the crossroads of three continents, was a melting pot of different cultures and peoples. Many diverse peoples contributed to the great achievements of Egyptian culture. Many scholars believe that Africans originating in the sub-Sahara resided in ancient Egypt, primarily in Upper Egypt (south of what is now Cairo), but that other ethnic groups constituted the majority of the population.