Africa's Great Civilizations

In his six-hour series, AFRICA’S GREAT CIVILIZATIONS, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century. This is a breathtaking and personal journey through two hundred thousand years of history, from the origins, on the African continent, of art, writing and civilization itself, through the millennia in which Africa and Africans shaped not only their own rich civilizations, but also the wider world.

The second hour of “Africa’s Great Civilizations” charts the emergence of two powerful forces of global change, Islam and Christianity. Viewers will learn how pervasively “the Cross and the Crescent” reshaped the landscape and people of Africa between the first and 12th centuries A.D. — and for centuries to come. Setting the stage, host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes viewers to the horn of Africa, the meeting place of the Red and Arabian Seas and a trade corridor between Africa, the Middle East and Europe for thousands of years. A book written in Greek in first century A.D., The Periplus of the Eythrean Sea, speaks of the Red Sea’s illustrious port Adulis, the gateway to Aksum.

The third hour in the series marks an era of great commercial and manufacturing growth throughout several regions on the continent. It begins with the revolutionary transformation of North and West Africa. On the shores of the Sahara Desert, farmers, traders, warriors and nomads turned this region into the crossroads of some of history’s most advanced, and wealthiest, civilizations. Intricate networks of long distance trade would link up productive commercial centers established by rulers of empires and kingdoms.

Hour four shines a light on the powerful, cosmopolitan cities that dotted Africa at a time when Europe was in its Middle Ages. From 1000 to 1600, a golden age evolves in the expansion of commerce, wealth and prosperity across Africa, and, along with this, the building of new cities and the founding of new powerful states.

The series’ fifth hour examines the tremendous changes wrought in Africa by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, flowing out of the new era of European exploration in the New World that had begun in 1492 and reached a crucial point in the 16th century. For centuries, Eastern Africa, West Africa and Northern Africa had all been tied deeply into long-distance commercial networks linking across the Eastern Hemisphere. However, the European discovery of the Americas, and the pass age of Portuguese seamen farther and farther south along Africa’s Atlantic coast, reaching the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and then traveling around the Cape and all the way to India in 1497, transformed those relations.

Host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. introduces viewers to the African continent through a series of expansive views and myth-busting revelations. His six-hour exploration of the African past begins at the origins of human existence. Through anthropological and scientific discoveries viewers learn that Africa is the genetic home of all currently living humanity.