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| c. 500,000 years ago |
| | | Fire is used in China by Peking man, and may have been in use much earlier in Africa | |
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| c. 5000 BC |
| | | The Sahara, damp enough for the hippopotamus, supports neolithic communities until it begins to dry up in about 3000 BC | |
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| c. 2000 BC |
| | | Bantu-speaking tribes begin to spread through Africa, from their original homelands south of the Sahara | |
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| c. 2000 BC |
| | | Africa south of the equatorial forests is largely inhabited by the Khoisan, of whom the San and the Hottentots are the modern survivors | |
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| c. 1630 BC |
| | | The Hyksos, arriving from the middle east, win control of Egypt and rule for a century | |
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| c. 500 BC |
| | | The rulers of Aksum, the first Ethiopian kingdom, claim descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba | |
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| c. 350 |
| | | Frumentius, brought to Ethiopia as a slave, becomes the kingdom's first Christian bishop | |
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| c. 543 |
| | | Christianity reaches the kingdom of Dongola, in present-day Sudan | |
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| c. 670 |
| | | With the entire middle east under their control, the Arabs make Damascus the capital of the Umayyad caliphate | |
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| c. 780 |
| | | Islam reaches Shanga, off the east coast of Africa, with the building of a tiny wooden mosque | |
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