A collection of medieval manuscripts from Timbuktu that academics hail as proof of an African scholarly tradition go on public show on the continent for the first time on Friday. Timbuktu in Mali, ...

Africa has long been known as the cradle of humanity. Fossils, tools and genetics all point there. Yet the deeper story of how the first modern humans lived, moved and mixed has stayed blurry. Too ...

Changing climate conditions have been known to foster human evolution throughout history, especially in Africa, where our story first unfolded. However, new research has flipped the script on a common ...

DNA recovered from skeletons buried in a 7th-century cemetery on the south coast of England has revealed that the buried individuals had west African ancestry, raising further questions about early ...

This week I moderated a conversation about the three great West African empires of the medieval period between 1100-1500 AD: Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, and the trans-Saharan trade routes through which ...

Critiqued by Risham Majeed in Art bulletin (New York) 103 (1) March 2021, pages 140-146; reviewed by Ingrid Greenfield in African arts (Los Angeles) 53 (3) autumn 2020, pages 91-93 (N1.A258). AFA copy ...

The largest-yet analysis of ancient DNA in Africa, which includes the first ancient DNA recovered from members of the medieval Swahili civilization, has now broken the stalemate about the extent to ...

Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work covers anything from archaeology and the environment to technology and culture. Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work ...

Honey was the first sweetener used by humankind—and thanks to a new discovery, we now have proof that ancient people in sub-Saharan African were eating it as early as 3,500 years ago. Archaeologists ...