Top Results for Africa

The Okavango rises in Angola, crosses Namibia, and carries its waters into Botswana without reaching the ocean. There they spread through the Okavango Delta, an inland wetland in the Kalahari whose flooding changes with the seasons. Channels and floodplains surround islands, creating a varied freshw...

Roughly spanning 1550 to 1070 BCE, Egypt's New Kingdom was a period of extensive political power and major building activity. Pharaohs such as Hatshepsut and Ramesses II belong to this era, during which Egyptian influence reached into the Near East and Nubia. Military campaigns and diplomacy connect...

The Serengeti Plains form part of a broad grassland ecosystem in northern Tanzania that connects with the Maasai Mara in southwestern Kenya. Volcanic soils, particularly in the southern short-grass plains, support nutritious grazing. Rainfall and fresh pasture help drive the Great Migration, in whic...

On the sandstone plateau of Tassili n'Ajjer in southeastern Algeria, more than 15,000 prehistoric drawings and engravings preserve a long record of image making. Dating broadly from about 6000 BCE to the first centuries of the Common Era, the works include human figures and animals, pastoral scenes,...

Where the Okavango River reaches Botswana's Kalahari region, it spreads into an inland alluvial delta rather than continuing to the sea. The Okavango Wetland System contains interconnected marshes and waterways whose extent changes with seasonal flooding. Water moving through this otherwise dry sett...

The desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, belongs to the grasshopper family Acrididae and inhabits arid areas of Africa, Arabia and southwest Asia. Its defining trait is the ability to change between a relatively solitary phase and a gregarious phase in which individuals gather and move together. Cr...

The Amphitheatre of Thysdrus is a Roman amphitheater constructed in the 3rd century AD, located in the modern-day town of El Jem, Tunisia. Capable of seating an estimated 35,000 spectators, it is recognized as one of the largest and best-preserved Roman colosseums in the world. The structure feature...

Known as 'The Smoke That Thunders,' Victoria Falls is one of the world's largest and most spectacular waterfalls. The sheer volume of water plunging over the basalt edge creates a permanent mist and a thunderous roar that can be felt for miles. It offers thrilling activities like white-water rafting...

Usually dated to approximately 2686 to 2181 BC, the Old Kingdom is a period of ancient Egyptian history associated with strong royal authority and pyramid building. Pharaohs directed resources toward monumental funerary projects, including the pyramids at Giza. These structures reflect both engineer...

British social anthropologist Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard examined how social institutions and religious ideas made sense within the communities that practiced them. His field research among the Azande and Nuer in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan provided the foundation for two major works. Witchcraft, Orac...

Across the Tadrart Acacus mountains of southwestern Libya, painted and engraved rock surfaces record successive ways of life in the Sahara. Akakus is another spelling of Acacus, so this name refers to the same rock-art area rather than a separate archaeological site. The imagery includes animals tha...

The mountains of southwestern Libya contain a large concentration of paintings and engravings collectively known as the rock-art sites of Tadrart Acacus. Wild animals appear alongside domesticated cattle and human figures, while hunting scenes and later pastoral and equestrian imagery show different...

Anna K. Behrensmeyer is an American paleontologist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. She pioneered research in taphonomy, the study of how organic remains become fossilized and enter the geological record. Her extensive fieldwork, particularly in Pakist...

On La Digue in the Seychelles, Anse Source d'Argent is distinguished by large granite boulders set against pale sand and shallow turquoise water. A reef shelters the shore, often creating gentler conditions than an exposed ocean beach. The combination of rounded rock formations and small sandy secti...

Twyfelfontein, also called /Ui-//aes, is a rock-art site in northwestern Namibia with a large concentration of prehistoric engravings and some painted motifs. The images include rhinoceroses, elephants, giraffes, ostriches, human figures, and human and animal footprints. UNESCO interprets the site a...

The Zambezi River is a major waterway in southern Africa, flowing over 2,574 kilometers. It’s notable for containing Victoria Falls, one of the world's largest waterfalls, and serves as a significant border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The river’s immense volume supports hydroelectric power generati...

Native to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, Conraua goliath is the world's largest frog species. Large adults can reach about 32 centimeters in body length and weigh more than three kilograms, giving the goliath frog an unusual scale among amphibians. It lives in association with flowing rivers and st...

The Comrades Marathon is a grueling point-to-point marathon held annually between Durban and Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. Established in 1921, it’s one of the world's oldest and largest ultramarathons, covering roughly 90 kilometers. Runners undertake this challenging race, primarily experience...

Located in Kenya's Chyulu Hills, Leviathan Cave is a lava tube system with explored passages extending more than eleven kilometers. It belongs to the volcanic terrain of the hills and is notable among Africa's long lava caves. Such tubes form when the surface of a lava flow cools while molten rock c...

Lake Malawi occupies a long freshwater basin in the East African Rift Valley, bordered by Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. Its cichlid fishes are central to its identity: a large variety of closely related species inhabit different depths and shoreline habitats, and many occur nowhere else. Their di...

Stretching through East Africa's Rift Valley, Lake Tanganyika is a deep freshwater lake shared by Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Zambia. It is the world's longest freshwater lake and the second deepest lake. Its basin formed through rifting, the movement that pulls sections...

Spread across six countries in Central Africa, the Congo Rainforest forms the world's second-largest tropical rainforest region. Much of it lies within the Congo River basin, where extensive forests support western lowland gorillas and forest elephants. Bonobos and okapis are also characteristic inh...

Africa's highest mountain, Kilimanjaro reaches 5,895 m (19,341 ft) at Uhuru Peak in Tanzania. The volcanic massif consists of three cones: Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira. Uhuru Peak stands on Kibo, the dormant cone, while the other two are extinct. Kilimanjaro is commonly described as the world's tallest f...

Following the Atlantic coast through Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, the Namib is a coastal desert with extensive dunes and gravel plains. Dry riverbeds cross its terrain, recording the importance of water even where rainfall is scarce. Often cited as one of the world's oldest deserts, its histor...

Stretching across North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, the Sahara covers approximately 9.2 million square kilometers across eleven countries. It is the world's largest hot desert. Sand dunes form only part of its terrain, with gravel plains and rocky plateaus occupying extensive area...

Often called the Mali Empire, the Kingdom of Mali became a major West African power under Mandinka leadership. Sundiata Keita is associated with its foundation, while Mansa Musa became known for the wealth displayed during his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. Gold production and trans-Saharan commerce h...

E. E. Evans-Pritchard was a prominent British social anthropologist recognized for his extensive ethnographic studies of African societies. During the 1930s, he conducted foundational fieldwork among the Azande and Nuer peoples of southern Sudan, producing classic texts such as "Witchcraft, Oracles...

Richard Borshay Lee is a Canadian anthropologist whose research on hunter-gatherer societies has centered on the Ju/'hoansi of the Kalahari, whose members were often called !Kung in older ethnographic literature. His ethnographic work examined subsistence, labor, social equality, exchange, and relat...

The Isthmus of Carthage is a narrow tract of land in modern-day Tunisia that historically connected the ancient Phoenician city of Carthage to the mainland. This strategic land bridge effectively separated the Gulf of Tunis from a protected artificial harbor, creating a highly defensible maritime st...