• Africa 1500 BC

In the valley of the Nile, Egypt’s New Kingdom is one of the leading powers in the Middle East.

To the south, in a broad swathe of territory stretching from the present-day Sudan into West Africa and down into East Africa, semi-nomadic populations of cattle herders occupy the land. Probably by around this date, however, an extremely important development has taken place. Somewhere within this huge territory the domestication of sorghum and millet has occured. These cereals, much more difficult to domesticate than the western Asian wheat and barley, are suitable for tropical rainfall areas and will become the staple crops throughout most of Africa. As yet, populations of hunter-gatherers live in the rest of the continent.

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