So, this year I had a little Africanist phase for some time, and I have decided to make my own amateurish map of main nations of Africa, basing on Wikipedia. There are 90 nations on this interactive map, incuding their rough amateurish estimates of inhabited area, rough amateurish estimates of population (not that there is any coherence in consistency in the total mess that those estimates are in the "serious" Internet), and links to articles devoted to given nations and civilizations. The general goal of mine was to cover all those with a population above 2 million people for whom I could find decent data (as map's description says, few countries have huge obvious holes in this regard - esp Congo, Tanzania, Cameroon, Mozambique). Regarding controversial nature of population estimates, map's description explains what's going on.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1DKaTEdTPkPZBSo2RbzVvoANw6tXtVIMr&usp=sharing
Some time ago I have realized that the discussion over possible African civilizations in Internet's popular history circles always circles around those very few select empires and civilizations in the sea of nothingness. In the meantime, there is plenty of big African nations and descriptions of their culture, history and civilization from areas usually depicted as "blank" in terms of worthwhile civilizations - you just have to go into "anthropology" (articles directly devoted to particular ethnicities") instead to pure "history". Kenya is the most spectacular country in this regard, Tanzania seems to have the same tier of plentiful history, but for whatever reason its people are very badly documented; anyway, both of those countries offer much more civilizations than mere Swahilli coast. Even areas such as Botswana and forested West African coast have peoples that are would be no worse factions in games like this than Native Americans, Maori and Mapuche (in fact all nations on my map are much more numerous nowadays than those three). Not to mention how much actual reading into African ethnicites obliterates the idea of Africa consisting of "tribes", when plenty of those "tribes" have population equal to European nation states.
My personal favourite new Subsaharan civilizations would still be Akan and Yoruba, so not much new in this regard, but making this map has made me really desire some civ from Great African Lakes area, such as Kikuyu or Kalenjin (honestly I think they could be more colourful and spectacular than Swahilli civ proposals which were always built upon one dimension of "all unique stuff is trade and navy"). Also, if we have to always get southern nation, Xhosa or Tswana could be fresh replacement for tired Zulu.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1DKaTEdTPkPZBSo2RbzVvoANw6tXtVIMr&usp=sharing
Spoiler :
Some time ago I have realized that the discussion over possible African civilizations in Internet's popular history circles always circles around those very few select empires and civilizations in the sea of nothingness. In the meantime, there is plenty of big African nations and descriptions of their culture, history and civilization from areas usually depicted as "blank" in terms of worthwhile civilizations - you just have to go into "anthropology" (articles directly devoted to particular ethnicities") instead to pure "history". Kenya is the most spectacular country in this regard, Tanzania seems to have the same tier of plentiful history, but for whatever reason its people are very badly documented; anyway, both of those countries offer much more civilizations than mere Swahilli coast. Even areas such as Botswana and forested West African coast have peoples that are would be no worse factions in games like this than Native Americans, Maori and Mapuche (in fact all nations on my map are much more numerous nowadays than those three). Not to mention how much actual reading into African ethnicites obliterates the idea of Africa consisting of "tribes", when plenty of those "tribes" have population equal to European nation states.
My personal favourite new Subsaharan civilizations would still be Akan and Yoruba, so not much new in this regard, but making this map has made me really desire some civ from Great African Lakes area, such as Kikuyu or Kalenjin (honestly I think they could be more colourful and spectacular than Swahilli civ proposals which were always built upon one dimension of "all unique stuff is trade and navy"). Also, if we have to always get southern nation, Xhosa or Tswana could be fresh replacement for tired Zulu.
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