Category: Africa...

• anthropological expeditions to explore human origins in East Africa
• Africa is by far the most linguistically diverse continent, with approximately 2000 languages by some counts. Some 50 African languages have more than half a million speakers each. Tonality - tones based on pitch levels to indicate semantic or grammatical distinction - is a common feature of indigenous African languages.
• The coastline of Africa is actually shorter than that of Europe because there are fewer inlets and large bays and gulfs.
• The Greeks are said to have called the continent Libya and the Romans to have called it Africa -- perhaps from Latin aprica 'sunny' or the Greek aphrike 'without cold'
• Though Africa is the second largest continent, it contains only 10 percent of the world's population and can be said to be underpopulated.
• Two great advances in technology carried people out of the Stone Age - organized cultivation of food and raising of herds and the production of metal tools and weapons.
• At the beginning of the 19th century, the African interior was terra incognita, but just a hundred years later it was under the domination of European colonial powers.
• the inevitable palm tree, the majestic lion, the primitive weapons, the camel enabling desert travel, giraffes and ostriches
• the resolution of the mystery of the source of the Nile, once thought to lie at the very edge of the world
• In the Libyan desert in 1922 it reached 136 degrees Fahrenheit - not enough to fry an egg on a rock.
• There are 47 independent countries and 53 if you include nearby island countries - more than a quarter of the world's countries. Only 15 of the 47 have access to seas or oceans.
• Timbuktu (or Tombouctou) is on Mali
• Africa has the fastest land animal (cheetah), biggest bird (ostrich), and largest land animal (elephant).
• Great Zimbabwe

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