The Catalan Atlas, published in 1375, depicts the richest man of his day: Mansa Musa, the emperor of 14th-century Mali. A reproduction of the Atlas is on display at the Block Museum of Art at ...

“Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa,” the first major exhibition to showcase West Africa’s global impact during the medieval period, opens ...

Humble fragments of clay crucibles and coin molds flecked with gold excavated by a joint team of British and Malian archaeologists in 2005 led archaeologist Sam Nixon, in consultation with Thilo ...

Gold from West Africa was the engine that drove the movement of things, people, and ideas across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East in an interconnected medieval world. As the incredible works in ...

Detail from a manuscript made for King Lebna Dengel, circa 1520, Tädbabä Maryam Monastery, Ethiopia. Photograph by Diana Spencer, courtesy of the DEEDS Project In early 2020, just as the scope and ...

(CN) – Recently discovered fossils of ancient people living in eastern and southern Africa have been used to shed light on the migration patterns and genetic backgrounds of modern humans on the ...

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 ...

Good morning, everyone. Let’s kick things off with a couple of pieces on higher education. In City Journal, Warren Treadgold argues conservatives should create an elite private university. I’m not so ...

The book Fading Footprints: In Search of South Africa's First People begins with a death notice from 1913 - a woman called Meitjie Streep, described as "Bushman", dying of "senile decay" in Kenhardt - ...

Most Western narratives reduce Africa to a monolith of wanting and lack. Africa is (just) a (single) country. Africa is corrupt. Africa is backward, savage, dirty, diseased—a shithole. Tales of its ...