With his focus on pre-colonial Africa, Christopher Ehret provides in this volume a complete overview of African history. He examines African inventions and civilizations from 16,000 BCE to 1800 CE, from the northern tip of Tunisia to the Cape of Good Hope in the south. Organized by topic and era, it reveals the diversity of African history. It explores the wide range of social and cultural as well as technological and economic change in Africa, and it depicts African agricultural, social, political, cultural, technological and economic history in relation to developments in the rest of the world. This book could be fruitfully combined with histories of Africa since 1800 to build up a full and well-rounded understanding of the roles of Africa's people in human history.