• Curious

‘Africa’s Great Civilizations’

Africa’s Great Civilizations will re-write everything you think you know about African history. Historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes viewers on a comprehensive journey of the continent, starting at the beginning of human life and ending with the effects of colonialism on the continent. However, in between those points, Gates drops us in on a myriad of sophisticated cultures that never probably popped up in your AP World History textbook. We meet Amanirenas, the warrior queen of Meroe who defeated Augustus Caesar after Cleopatra had already fallen. We hear tales of Timbuktu and Axum. We learn about all of the scholarship, wealth, and culture that was thriving all over Africa in the same centuries that Europe was stumbling through darkness. In short, we get a beautiful look at a complex continent.