If you want to go to Africa, you first need to dispel the myths that the Black Continent has become overgrown with.

And you can start with the fact that no one calls Africa the Black Continent in the modern world, and now you will find out why.

There is no technological progress in Africa

From childhood, everyone is told that Africa is made up of developing countries. However, this does not automatically mean that this continent lives in the Middle Ages. 90 percent of residents have mobile phones, and there are also programmers who develop their applications and create gadgets.
For example, local developers have created a service designed for farmers, with recommendations on how to raise livestock and reports of impending natural disasters.

Africa is a continuous hot desert

Very often, when someone hears the word "Africa", he immediately imagines a hot and barren desert. Despite popular misconception, there is a very large amount of tropical forests, Mount Kilimanjaro and other snow-capped peaks, as well as savannah.
Within this continent, you will find all climatic zones, and at the same time, the average annual temperature, even in the equatorial regions, does not exceed 27 degrees Celsius.

Only black people live in Africa

Many people are used to believing that only those who have dark skin color live in Africa. The truth is that this continent is home to over a billion people who represent diverse cultures and skin colors. This diversity was created by mixing different skin colors of the ancestors of people who lived on this continent, as well as thanks to the huge number of immigrants from Asia and Europe who remained in Africa or took refuge here from political persecution.

Africa is full of wild animals

A huge number of television programs, series, films and cartoons show that Africa is inhabited by wild animals that move freely in natural conditions and are capable of attacking humans.
However, in reality, safaris in most cases take place in winter, when dangerous insects and snakes are in hibernation.
If we talk about wild animals, most of them live in national parks.

Crime in Africa is incredibly high

It is widely believed that tourists traveling to Africa need to be constantly on the alert due to the extremely high crime rate. But it is worth noting that the truth is that tourism is very strong in local countries and they are becoming fashionable and popular destinations among Western travelers. Only South Africa annually visits one and a half million tourists.

Africa has no cultural heritage

When people think of Africa, they usually think of a primitive society that doesn't have a developed culture and doesn't even have a history. However, this continent is quite deservedly considered the cradle of civilization, as there are a large number of ancient buildings and other cultural monuments that are reliably protected. In Kenya, for example, there are more than 200 architectural monuments.

Africa lives below the poverty line

When most people plan a trip to Africa, they prepare for the fact that they will see poverty all around them absolutely everywhere. Of course, there are countries here that live below the poverty line, but they make up a much smaller percentage than people think.
In general, the economic development of the local countries is practically no different from how things are in other developing countries, because the middle class here is in the process of development.

Epidemics of dangerous diseases in Africa are ubiquitous

The media constantly reports outbreaks of dreadful diseases in Africa, and people are used to thinking that this continent has a large number of deadly diseases.
In reality, the sensational Ebola did not cover the entire continent, but was observed only in Sierra Leone and surrounding countries. The second disease that is often talked about when thinking about this continent is malaria, but you should not be afraid of it if you follow simple safety rules.

Africans live in huts

Not all Africans live in huts. This is a very big myth, since the big cities on this continent are practically no different from western-type metropolitan areas.
You will find here residential high-rise buildings, business centers, and skyscrapers. Developed infrastructure and architecture make these cities extremely progressive. Of course, some people, such as the Bushmen, still live in huts, but there are very few of them.

African language spoken in Africa

There is no African language. It is also worth noting that the unique languages ​​of the tribes of this continent are slowly dying out. The population of Africa during the era of colonization absorbed such European languages ​​as French, English, Portuguese and German.
Languages ​​began to spread even faster with the advent of the Internet and television. Hundreds of different languages ​​are spoken here. Africa is a Mecca for linguists, as there are twenty official languages ​​in Namibia alone.

Africa is torn by political conflicts

Hollywood films often show civil wars or political unrest in the countries of this continent. And in fact, for ninety years, the continent has been the site of a lot of local conflicts, and more than ten wars took place here at the same time.
These wars were a legacy of the colonial era, when the borders of countries were set with the interests of the colonizers, no attention was paid to the actual cultural or historical appearance of the country.

There is a shortage of food in Africa

Many photographs and videos show people starving in Africa, and because of this, you start to think that this problem exists on the whole continent. Hunger in these countries actually exists, but not in all.
Approximately a quarter of the area of ​​fertile land of the whole world is concentrated here. In addition, in tourist places there are no problems with food at all, and in countries such as Egypt or South Africa, you will find McDonald’s on every corner.

Africa hates white people

This myth was born because of the era of colonization and slavery, when Africa, freed from oppression, drove out the Europeans and regained its sovereignty. The division into blacks and whites exists to this day, however, the white color of the skin is very common among the locals, and it does not in itself cause aggression in the black population. If we talk about countries with developed tourism, local residents are already accustomed to visitors of all nationalities and treat them very well.

Africa is ruled by tyrants

The myths that the political regime in African countries is established by military dictatorships, as well as that dictators rule the entire continent, are widespread outside the continent itself. In fact, Africa has a wide variety of political forms of government side by side: Ghana and Senegal, for example, are often cited as examples of developing democracy.

There is no drinking water in Africa

The problem of lack of drinking water in Africa does exist, and it is terrible, but it does not affect the entire continent.
In tourist countries, you can easily buy a bottle of drinking water, as well as all popular drinks. For example, "Coca-Cola" can be found even in the most remote villages.

You can't hitchhike in Africa

Very often, traveling in Europe or America takes place in the format of catching a ride, but it is believed that you will not be able to move in this way while in Africa.
In fact, it is even much easier to catch a ride here than in the developed countries of Europe and America. The most important thing is to immediately discuss the conditions of your trip with the driver so that he does not expect any payment from you.

Africa bypassed by modern youth trends

The difference of Africa from other continents in this sense is also greatly exaggerated. You will never be surprised by social networks here, as the younger generations actively use Facebook to communicate with friends around the world.
Modern aspects of tourism are also developed here: couchsurfing, for example, has not bypassed Africa. In addition, Africans are often even more hospitable than Americans or Europeans, and are more likely to accept you.

According to historians, slavery began to emerge in America at the beginning of the 17th century: then the Dutch ships brought the first - still very few - blacks to the continent, which was destined to develop at an unprecedented pace. Then the slaves arrived primarily in Jamestown - one of the oldest British colonies in North America. The first settlers quickly appreciated the efficiency and cheapness of the labor that was supplied to them from the dark continent. Slaves were mainly employed on plantations with tobacco and rice. Slave relations spread over a large area, almost the entire west coast - from modern Maryland in the north to Georgia in the south.

Slave owners Emanuel and Rebecca from Virginia. Source: altrighthistoryoftheus.com

The slave owner arranges a wedding. Source: altrighthistoryoftheus.com

The plantation owners visit the slaves. Source: www.pinterest.ru

According to experts, in the 18th century alone, up to 18 million blacks were taken to North America, which left the African continent without a huge part of the working population. However, the attitude towards slave owners in the northern states and in the southern states quickly began to differ. In the north, the planters tried to introduce technical innovations, the southerners were in no hurry with this, preferring to increase the volume of the labor force through more and more slaves. Be that as it may, even the war for independence, which the Americans won, did not give black people freedom. The US Constitution recognized the institution of slavery, actually guaranteed the return of slaves to the owner in the event of an escape, and also established a special quota for slaves in terms of taxation: each of them was estimated at "three-fifths of a person."

The overseer oversees the work of slaves in Southern California. Source: www.pinterest.ru

Rebellion of the slaves on the plantation. Source: www.pinterest.ru

Slave owner in Brazil. Source: www.pinterest.ru

By the end of the 18th century, the southern states became increasingly dependent on slave labor: the fact is that tobacco, for example, had already ceased to be so popular, but in Europe there was a so-called “cotton boom” - American cotton literally flooded the market, and in order to in order to increase the pace of production, a lot of new labor was needed.

The slave owner returns from the auction. Source: livejournal.com

A column of slaves marches through the streets of Washington. Source: livejournal.com

Buying slaves in Barbados. Source: livejournal.com

By 1804, all the northern states, which initially had a negative attitude towards slavery, abolished this institution in their territory. At the same time, in the south, businessmen could hardly imagine their life without slaves - almost the entire industry there depended on the work of blacks. In 1808, the US Congress banned the bringing of slaves for sale, but by that time there were already so many of them in the country that new ones, by and large, were not required: their number increased by itself, especially since no one limited.

Slave market in Rio de Janeiro. Source: livejournal.com

The arrival of a new batch of slaves on the American continent.

Africa or whatever we call it Black Continent- the second largest continent on the whole earth, if we consider that the first in volume is the Eurasian continent, which occupies a fifth of the entire soil of the planet Earth. Only the man-made Suez Canal separates Africa from gigantic Eurasia. The western coast of Africa is directed towards the seething Atlantic Ocean, while the eastern coast is washed by the waves of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The fertile fields of the Mediterranean coast give way to the Atlas Hills in the northwest of the continent and the hot sands of the Sahara, the most spacious desert in the world. The Nile River, which starts its course from Central Africa and swims towards the north, for many centuries helped to live in the deserts of ancient Egypt.

The fields covered with a small amount of grass and shrubs, located south of the Sahara, are replaced by savannah. In the equatorial region and the large basin of the Zaire River, there are very extensive tropical rainforests. in the east Black Continent deep depressions and breaks in the crust are more characteristic than even and smooth plains. A giant rift stretches from North to South, known as the East African Rift, the densest sections of which are highlighted by chains of deep lakes and bounded by deep faults.

From the Ethiopian highlands to the hills of Kenya, Kilimanjaro and the Rwenzori range, beautiful rolling ranges also extend. South Africa also has areas of savannas and the infertile wastelands of the Kalahari and Namib. The meadow fields on the rising hills of the South, referred to as velds, end at the steep cliffs of the Dragon Hills. To the southwest, the mountain range descends to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of the mainland. At present, only Black Continent you can see large herds of wild animals walking through the fields. In the savannah, you can hear the trumpeting of elephants and the loud roar of lions; in the depths of cool tropical forests, some families of gorillas live - very strong, but kind, by the way, very similar to people, monkeys. There are also very predatory and dangerous crocodiles in African rivers.. Inveterate tourists are highly discouraged from approaching these seemingly harmless creatures. A lot of accidents with the intervention of crocodiles have been recorded.

In addition to the dry shrubs of South Africa, there are also pebble-like plants referred to as stone plants.. In the sands of wastelands, no matter how strange it may sound, but bright pumpkins ripen, tangled in numerous grassy stems. Unfortunately, the wild Black Continent under great danger. Many species of animals were caught or destroyed by insidious hunters, their areas of residence were destroyed. That is why solving the problem of preserving the nature of Africa is not so easy. To achieve this goal, a large amount of financial costs are required. Mankind is obliged to seek and find new ways of living on this, the only planet on which intelligent beings live, while not destroying the nature of planet Earth.

Black Color coordinates RGB HEX #000000 (r, g, b) (0, 0, 0) (c, m, y, k) (0, 0, 0, 100 †) (h, s ... Wikipedia

BLACK oh, oh; black, oh 1. The darkest of all colors, having the color of soot, coal (opposite: white). H. color. Black suit. Black paint. What a dirt. Ch. puppy. With a pitch black beard. Black as coal eyes (very black). Wh… … encyclopedic Dictionary

Black Continent, Negritosia Dictionary of Russian synonyms. Africa n., number of synonyms: 3 mainland (15) ... Synonym dictionary

AFRICA- the mainland in the Eastern Hemisphere, the second largest after Eurasia. The territory of the mainland is clearly divided into several regions. The countries of North Africa are washed by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean from the west, by the Mediterranean Sea from the north, and by the Red Sea from the east. Great current political encyclopedia

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The people of Cairo have never seen a ruler like this. Seven and a quarter centuries after the Hijra - in 1347 from the birth of Christ, this African ruler as a pilgrim entered their city on his way to Mecca. His retinue shone with barbaric splendor. Five hundred slaves marched in front, each carrying a ceremonial baton of solid gold weighing twenty-three kilograms. Then their master Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali, the land of the blacks, rode on a fine warhorse. He was followed by curly-haired Negroes from across the desert, guides and camel drivers with covered faces, swarthy Berbers of the Maghreb - "the West" - and a motley crowd of hangers-on. There were servants, slaves and fellow travelers who prepared unknown dishes, followed foreign customs among themselves and spoke in a strange mixture of dialects that defied understanding. But the "highlight of the program" was Mansa Musa's personal purse, intended to cover travel expenses. Owning almost a hundred camels, all loaded with gold, he was just a walking treasury, with almost fifteen tons of raw gold bars.

True to its traditions, Cairo was amazed but not stunned. City merchants joyfully surrounded the caravan. They sold cheap fabrics in flashy colors to gaping wanderers for five times the normal price. Minor Egyptian officials asked for and received huge bribes for promised help in trifling matters. The slave traders were especially good. Foreigners were hungry for slaves and generously paid for pleasure. It was said that the only inhabitants of Cairo who had reason to complain were moneylenders. Mansa Musa's caravan showed such fabulous generosity that small moneylenders simply left the gold market and could not recover for another twelve years after this visit.

The African ruler himself amazed the city no less than a bizarre retinue. His appearance was astonishing. Cairo waited for the pitch-black semi-wild despot from the other side of the desert, where, according to rumors, the sun's rays scorched human skin to the color of black amber. Instead, they found that he had fair skin, according to various descriptions, of a reddish or yellowish tint. He showed no signs of the humiliating primitive savagery that the Cairos associated with the inhabitants of the Black Country. Rather, this exotic ruler had a greater reverence for the Prophet and his teachings than the Egyptians themselves. He was far from admiring Arabian sophistication, and it took considerable effort to persuade him to express his compliments to the sultan of the city. It can, however, be added that the latter was more concerned about the gold of Mansa Musa than violations of diplomatic etiquette, and he even somewhat overdid it in his desire to please the guest. When the unusual caravan went east to Mecca, about the same thing was reported about its further progress, which was distinguished by extraordinary generosity: they talked about the benefits of trading with him, about the royal behavior of Mansa Musa, who supported Islam with almost childish generosity, and also about that along the way he not only spent all fifteen tons of gold, but continued to live on such an exceptional scale that he was forced to borrow money, which he repaid flawlessly.

Mansa Musa. Ruler on the throne

Stories about Mansa Musa flew across the Mediterranean to the ears of European cartographers, who sought to mark the boundaries of the possessions of this brilliant ruler in the blank spaces of their atlases. They painted him in the unknown regions of inner Africa, this black king in an exquisite set of exotic chess pieces, an omnipotent sovereign seated on a golden throne or cushion, holding a scepter in one hand and a nugget of pure gold in the other. An inscription was made in front of him: “This black lord is called Musa Mali, Lord of the Negroes of Guinea. His country is so rich in gold that he is the richest and noblest lord of those lands.

One such atlas was compiled for King Charles V of France, and another was commissioned by Queen Mary of England as a gift to her husband, Philip II of Spain. It had not yet been completed when Mary died and the card went to her anti-Spanish sister Elizabeth. The insulting Spanish coat of arms, previously applied along with the English one, was hastily scraped off, but the image of Mansa Musa survived, although two hundred years had passed since he went on his famous hajj. The golden ruler of the Black Country became an immortal symbol of unknown Africa, and his image was still firmly held in the minds when European explorers turned their eyes south to the mysterious world beyond the Sahara.

This is how the inhabitants of Africa appeared to Europeans in the Middle Ages.

But the inquisitive Europeans were separated from distant Africa by a frightening obstacle in the form of a great desert. No feature of African geography has contributed so much to the preservation of the halo of mystery around the continent as this. If you look at the continent as a giant skull, looking towards India, then the entire skull of this giant will be occupied by a huge desert, the largest in the world, stretching for thousands of miles from west to east, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, b about Larger in area than the entire mainland of the United States. In the time of Mansa Musa, traces of an accidental caravan covered it, like a thin vein crossing the gray matter of the brain. And only a small drop of knowledge seeped through each of these threads from the tropical south to the temperate northern latitudes ...

If the physical obstacle was not enough, popular rumor was always ready to supplement the geographical fact with frightening details. Since the time of Pliny, the Sahara has been imagined as a vast, howling wasteland filled with sand, fit only for wild beasts and a few strange tribes who, according to Herodotus, could outrun a chariot and spoke a language similar to the squeak of bats. Pundits, whether Arab or Christian, were better informed, but in general the people had no idea of ​​the true diversity of the desert landscape. In fact, vast expanses of the Sahara had no sand cover at all. There were large areas of bare rock, covered only with small stones of unusual shape, which seemed to be created by nature specifically for the purpose of maiming people and animals. The sandy zones were unlike one another. In places the sand lay flat and monotonous, like the ocean on a calm day, and in other places it bulged in huge ridges stretching for hundreds of miles. It could flow in soft waves or gather into dunes - dunes - in the form of a crescent, which began to move slowly when the wind blew on them, as if groping for a way.

James Bruce at the source of the Blue Nile

In the very center of the desert, the ridges of the ancient mountains appeared through the detritus skin, forming bare mountainous blocks, a haven of primitive cave tribes, and here and there groundwater, unexpectedly rising to the surface, formed an amazing blue expanse of an oasis overgrown with reeds.

Only the desert dwellers knew the true nature of the Sahara. They had their own, very precise word for each phenomenon and each of its properties. They survived on that knowledge. Every year desert people appeared on the settled fringes of the Sahara when the summer heat dried up their pastures. Very rarely, city dwellers visited the distant oases, where the nomads kept slaves used in the “black work” - agriculture. But their dislike was mutual and constant. Both Arab and European townspeople treated the Saharan little better than ferocious predators. The tribes of the desert fed on the caravans that passed through this land, viciously bickered with each other and in themselves represented a separate African danger.

Christian cartographers, who had an idea about these strangers, drew on their diagrams next to the throne of Mansa Musa an ominous figure of a Tuareg with a covered face, riding a camel.

Thus, even before the first European explorers ventured into the great desert, Africa was already in disrepute. As time passed, the concept of danger was enriched with new details. White people faced unknown, no less ferocious guardians of African secrets. Having disembarked, having overcome before this treacherous reefs, they met the steep banks of the rivers flowing from the interior of the country: falling down streams, they impressed travelers, but frustrated all their plans. The falls and rapids of the Congo curbed the ardor of adventurers so much that three centuries later, after its huge mouth was discovered at the end of the fifteenth century, no more than two hundred and ten kilometers of its lower course were plotted on European maps. While the American G.M. Stanley did not order a small army of porters to drag the ten-meter barge "Lady Alice", disassembled into five parts, across the land, not a single European ship reached the middle, wide course of the Congo. Unlike the North American rivers, which provided an open path for the daring canoe traveler, most of Africa's waterways were not only impassable, but downright dangerous. Time after time, explorers have been wrecked in the midst of whirlpools and rapids. One of the world's greatest travelers, Scotsman Mungo Park, died in the Bussa Falls when faced with the choice of meeting the angry locals or the rapids of the Niger.

In those days, when the animals were not yet intimidated by guns and bullets, the animal world of Africa was no less dangerous for the discoverer traveling along the river. Self-confident Victorian marksman, Sir Samuel Baker, who loved nothing more than discovery and the excitement of hunting for big prey, almost went to the jaws of crocodiles thanks to angry hippos that surfaced right under his canoe. Those who traveled by land were no less afraid of meeting aggressive African animals. David Livingston's career almost ended prematurely after he was severely maimed by a lion, and all his life he was terribly afraid of snakes. In a letter home, he wrote of how he had stepped on a snake in his dark hut, felt the coils coiled around his ankle, and rushed out, drenched in sweat and trembling with terror. He also reported that he was more fortunate than one of his companions: he died when "a rhinoceros unexpectedly attacked him and ripped through his stomach."

Mungo Park after traveling to the interior of West Africa

There was no place in Africa for the sickly or frail. The heat and fumes in the thickets caused the wooden stocks to split and the wheel rims to crack. The wagon traveler was forced to drive wedges between the wooden wheels and their iron rims, which expanded and rattled in the terrible heat. In the thick, fumes-filled jungle, a person easily fell victim to a fever. With only a rough knowledge of tropical medicine, he was weakened by dysentery, ill by malaria, and finally killed by one of the innumerable African diseases for which he had neither a cure nor an acquired immunity. Nautical ballads composed by sailors who visited the West African coast, known for its unhealthy climate, bitterly spoke of "the Bay of Benin, where nine entered, but only one returned." Despite the fact that wild African animals staged much more spectacular executions, in the end, it was diseases that most often threatened the traveler's life. With rare exceptions, the African discoverers either returned home with seriously impaired health, or, even worse, died in the places they discovered ... But why then did these African explorers risk their lives on a dangerous continent? There are over a dozen answers to this question. The travelers' motives were as varied as their personalities. Someone went for glory. Others, like Baker, put on an air of arrogance that, however, did not hide their professionalism. Some came to Africa by accident, fell in love with it and stayed there forever. Most cherished their passionate affection for a long time, reading books in the safe study room or library, and then, like René Caille, the great French traveler who reached Timbuktu, went to Africa in order to see with their own eyes what they were already in love with - in the case Kaye after reading Robinson Crusoe. There were missionaries like Livingston, enthusiastic scientists like the German Heinrich Barth, who crossed the sands of the Sahara to get detailed information in the field of anthropology and linguistics. Soldiers became explorers because they were told to, losers went to Africa to leave behind a homeland they didn't like or understand. The strange thing is not how different these people were, but how long it took them to explore Africa. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the scholarly communities of Europe were extremely dissatisfied with the fact that they were more aware of the icy expanses of Arctic Canada than of the lands that lay a hundred and sixty kilometers from the slave forts on the Gold Coast. About the Amazon, whose mouth was discovered in 1500, sufficiently detailed information was obtained 3 centuries before the white man reached the southernmost source of the Nile, whose delta has been famous since ancient times. For people who prided themselves on their positivist approach to geography, such ignorance was tantamount to intellectual disgrace.

Warriors of the Sultan of Bornu, West Africa

David Livingston

It is quite reasonable that, having decided to deal with the African problem, scientists first of all discovered that the geographers of Ancient Greece and Rome wrote about this continent. Thus, a thousand years after Herodotus had carried out his research using second-hand information, Major James Rennell, one of the foremost Africanists of his time, who personally directed the exploration of Indian territories that Herodotus had never heard of, relied more on information of the Greek historian than what the British, who visited Africa, reported.

African ideas about beauty seemed wild to Europeans

It was believed that the Greeks and Romans must have had extensive knowledge of Africa. Greek merchants had long traded in the southern regions of the Red Sea, and during the time of the empire, the Roman provinces in Africa were much more important and generally closer to the capital than distant regions like Britain. Roman troops marched back and forth across North Africa, and settlers founded over a hundred new cities in the area between the Pillars of Hercules and Carthage. The whole Roman army - the "Third Legion" - was completely recruited in Africa. But, as often happens, the uninvited guests affected only the edge of the country. The Romans ruled only on the coastal strip. The limits of their influence could be reached in a few days' journey south. The names of the Roman cities reflected the border atmosphere: Castra Nova (“New Camp”), Cohors Breucorum (“Cohort of Logs”). Behind their garrisons lay the unexplored mountains of the Atlas and the wild tribes of the desert. For example, the Garamantes supplied Roman circus suppliers with captured animals for a fee, with which the Sahara was so rich at that time. Their prey - lions, leopards, and sometimes local residents - were delivered by ship directly to the slaughterhouses of Rome and its provincial imitators. Take, for example, Trajan, who majestically ordered the destruction of 2246 animals in a fighting game that lasted only one day. Naturally, many of the victims were most likely brought from North Africa. This massacre, which lasted for six centuries, turned the empire into a graveyard of the wildlife of North Africa. By the time of the fall of Rome, the representatives of the fauna, which once so abounded in the Sahara, had already embarked on the path of extinction ...

Acholi warrior from the Upper Nile region

Henry Morton Stanley

In exchange for this bloodshed, Rome learned surprisingly little about Africa. Some energetic commander made a forced march through the desert and, apparently, reached the Sudan, for he reported that there were a lot of rhinos around. Another military patrol moved south along the Nile until they were stopped by an impenetrable mass of floating plants. Such journeys were rare adventurous expeditions, they were not related to comprehensive research and were not completed. Their results are buried under the multi-volume research of official historians.

A similar fate befell the results of a more adventurous venture undertaken by the Romans' predecessors in North Africa, the Carthaginians. About 500 B.C. e. (the exact date is unknown) the mayors of Carthage sent a flotilla of sixty ships to reach the Strait of Gibraltar and then move along the coast. The expedition was commanded by one of the two chief judges of the state, and he carried out the order with great determination, turning back only when they ran out of food supplies. At the extreme southern point they reached, the Carthaginians reported that they sailed past a flaming mountain—possibly a volcanic eruption—and heard the sound of drums coming from the wooded hills along the coast. They also brought with them the skins of three humanoid creatures that they killed during the landing and which their translators called "gorillas". These skins were taken to the temple of Tanit of Carthage as a sacrificial offering, and a thank you inscription was carved on the stone of the Chronos temple. But soon the skins turned to dust, and the Romans, having sacked the city, wiped out the sanctuaries from the face of the earth. Scholars of succeeding generations could only speculate on the inaccurate copy of that inscription, and the story of the gorilla became a wonderful symbol of a huge break in the exploration of Africa. Despite the fact that the word "gorilla" was known even before the birth of Christ, it was only an American missionary in Cameroon in 1847 who managed to determine exactly what kind of animal it was.

The Arabs were the ones who destroyed the classical ideas about Africa. As they devastated the Byzantine remnant of the old Roman Empire in the second half of the seventh century CE, e., their invasion changed that part of Africa that was closer to Europe. Roman aqueducts dried up, fields and cities were deserted. Majestic architectural structures were no longer used, turning into blocks of Arab building material - this happened with sixty Roman columns used to build a new mosque in Kairouan. Rarely has there been such a comprehensive change and such a decline. Antiquated statues and marble were left to crumble, like battered-faced busts and sand-covered vertebrae of overturned pillars, lying in disorderly grandeur at Leptis Magna, a few paces from the Mediterranean, through which Roman galleys once linked Europe to Africa.

But the Arabs also created a creative revolution by being the first to travel across the continent on camels. Capable of traversing three hundred and twenty miles of waterless desert, where a Roman ox-cart would not have traveled a quarter of that distance, the camel was as practical an improvement in the Sahara as a galley sail is at sea. The effect was largely the same. The way through the desert became more reliable, trade developed, new routes opened up, and - perhaps most importantly - the people most versed in the new mode of transport took control of the desert paths. But despite the fact that the Sahara became less of a formidable physical obstacle, a European traveler could cross it only with the consent of suspicious and often fanatical cameleers.

In other parts of Africa, the newly arrived European found himself in a humiliating dependence on the Arabs. All along the east coast of the continent, from the Red Sea to Mozambique, Arabs traded and settled for centuries - captains of single-masted dhow coasters. They called this area the country of az-Zinj - from this word came the name of Zanzibar, and when Vasco da Gama, in search of a sea route to India, brought a squadron here, it was not his own sharpness and the Portuguese lot on the bow of the ship that led him along the treacherously deceptive coastal waters, but the owner Arab ship, who knew this part of the sea well. Three centuries later, when Stanley's notorious expedition "rescued" David Livingstone from the inner, "black" part of the continent, they discovered that the Scottish missionary was cared for by wealthy Arab traders who used the Ujiji trading post on Lake Tanganyika as a trading base.

But still, in many ways, the Europeans looked like the slowest in the history of African exploration. When, at the dawn of the fifteenth century, they began their travels west of the Sahara, they hardly knew as much about the continent as the distant Chinese: they even saw a giraffe sent as a gift to the emperor and wonderfully depicted by a Chinese painter in the imperial zoo. Another national draftsman knew enough about Africa to accurately depict the outlines of its eastern coast, where among the palm trees he also sketched the houses of Arab merchants recognizable by their flat roofs. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the era of European exploration in Africa, almost no one had yet gone deep into the continent to return with such a valuable detailed description of countries and peoples. After the Arabs crossed the Sahara, they stopped at its outskirts overgrown with forests. In the east, they preferred to stay closer to the coast. The outside world only touched the border of a dangerous continent. It was in the center of Africa that European explorers made the greatest contribution to geography when they advanced on foot, rowing, riding a stretcher or on horseback, admiring the bizarre landscape. They discovered natural wonders such as the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, the faults of the Great East African Graben (rift) and Lake Chad, on one side of which there was clear water, and on the other, salt crystals sparkled. An incredible diversity of African peoples has also been discovered. Speaking more than eight hundred languages, which discouraged travelers a lot, the local peoples included the inhabitants of the developed states of Niger and the Kalahari Bushmen, who were in the Stone Age, and their religions ranged from simple fetishism to an ancient form of Judaism. Some tribes were distinguished by completely unimaginable customs: the Maasai covered their hair with manure and drank the fresh blood of their cattle; Sudanese warriors, dressed in armor like the refugees of the Gulliver Crusades, the world of Rwanda, where tall Tutsis reached two and a half meters in height and ruled their slaves - one and a half meter Twa.

Europe was destined to marvel at the stories of its travelers about mysterious places and amazing adventures. Pliny's oft-quoted saying, "Africa always brings something new," was never more appropriate than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when every new voyage increased the attraction of this continent. It was impossible to satisfy the enormously increased public interest as traveler after traveler went there to discover something before it was too late. It was the most popular adventure, and even the governments of the states literally went crazy, throwing huge amounts of money into plans for the exploration and development of impregnable and worthless lands. The latter fact contrasted sharply with the situation three centuries earlier, when the exploration of Africa was just beginning and the continent was viewed as an unfortunate obstacle on the sea route to the East.

In those distant days, only the outskirts of Africa were visible, like the solar corona that occurs during an eclipse. Portuguese ships plowed its coastal waters, several coastal strongholds were established, and any skilled cartographer could draw the exact outline of Africa. However, the ingenious mapper was left with an empty center to depict griffins and cameleopards, Negro kings and a wonderful phoenix sitting in a nest made of cinnamon sprigs. Under such circumstances, it should not be surprising that the first large-scale landings in Africa south of the Sahara were inspired by two semi-legendary figures: Prester John, the fabulous priest - the king of Eastern Christians, and Mansa Musa, the ruler of Guinea ...

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