I fervently hope that you will emerge with a stronger and deeper knowledge of Africa's history and be encouraged to learn more about the subjects I have covered.

In my research for this book I was privileged to meet some of Africa's best academics. Their passion, rigour and brilliance, even in resource-starved university departments, are remarkable and merit a much wider audience. Every single academic I met was extremely generous with their time, even when the perils of traffic and a packed schedule meant I was sometimes late for appointments. So keen were they to be heard that they were to a man and woman gracious about my tardiness and indeed I often had to tear myself away from them to reach my next destination.

I also relied greatly on the work of a unique project called the General History of Africa, the GHA, which is one of the continent's best-kept secrets: Africa's history, written largely by African scholars. The project was begun in the early 1960s, during the period of rapid decolonisation in Africa. Several of the newly independent African leaders decided that, after decolonising their countries, they also wanted to decolonise their history, so they approached UNESCO (the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to help them implement the project. UNESCO formed a special committee and identified the continent's leading historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and experts in other fields. In total, UNESCO gathered around 350 scholars—mostly African—to undertake this work. They compiled 11 volumes with more to come, starting from the origins of humankind and evolution, and continuing to contemporary eras. They used written records, including those that had been overlooked; as well as archaeology, art, song, poetry, oral storytelling, traditions, dance, craft and archaeobotany. Using the 'GHA' as my inspiration and compass, my sources and references are predominantly African and non-European, in contrast to the many histories of Africa written by Western authors.

I was struck by the words of the late Kenyan palaeoanthropologist Dr Richard Leakey, who was a good friend, and is sadly missed by many, including me. He told me that it was imperative to challenge the prejudices some people hold 'in their thinking about Africa. It will probably take time to break that down; but break it down we must, and we do so—not with fairy tales but with facts.' So this book is my attempt to do just that.

CHAPTER ONE

OUR FAMILY AND OTHER HOMININS

As the young museum attendant diligently unlocked the door I was full of excitement. I was about to meet a superstar—albeit one who had been dead for millions of years. With great reverence and awe I gently stroked her hand with the tip of a finger and felt as though I had made contact with a long-lost relative. This was Lucy, or Dinkenesh, as she is known in Ethiopia—part of the lineage that eventually led to us: Homo sapiens sapiens, Latin for 'wise and thinking man'.

Africa is where it all began for us modern humans. We should be united by our shared beginning in a way that enables us to look beyond race, to a time when such differences did not exist. When one examines the long history of humankind, it becomes apparent that racial differentiation is a relatively recent occurrence; genetics present us with facts that are at odds with the cultural construct of racism. There may be new genetic interpretations in the future, but current thinking indicates that characteristics of the 'white race' emerged between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, well after many genetic divisions in Africa itself. Unfortunately, as the late Kenyan palaeoanthropologist Dr Richard Leakey described, some are still reluctant 'to embrace fully the idea that humans, whether blue-eyed Europeans or pale-skinned Asians, originated in Africa'.

Dr Leakey and his equally illustrious parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, were making ground-breaking fossil discoveries at a time in the twentieth century when there was still ongoing research in the field aimed at disproving the theory that we all came out of Africa and were thus originally black. The discovery of a complete ancient skull in China in 1929, dubbed Peking Man', for example, led the Beijing authorities to fund research by Chinese palaeontologists aimed at showing that Homo sapiens first evolved in Asia, or that Peking Man was an ancestor of modern East Asian people. Such efforts persisted into the twenty-first century.

That we are all part of the original African diaspora is no longer disputed scientifically. New paleontological discoveries are still being made and the vast majority of the pieces in this fragmented and ever-developing jigsaw puzzle are missing, but even if there is still debate about precisely where it happened within the continent, Africa is certainly where the human story began. We are an African animal, an African species who colonised the world, at different times and in different ways. No human being on earth can deny that Africa is their first home.

I fervently hope that you will emerge with a stronger and deeper knowledge of Africa's history and be encouraged to learn more about the subjects I have covered.

In my research for this book I was privileged to meet some of Africa's best academics. Their passion, rigour and brilliance, even in resource-starved university departments, are remarkable and merit a much wider audience. Every single academic I met was extremely generous with their time, even when the perils of traffic and a packed schedule meant I was sometimes late for appointments. So keen were they to be heard that they were to a man and woman gracious about my tardiness and indeed I often had to tear myself away from them to reach my next destination.

I also relied greatly on the work of a unique project called the General History of Africa, the GHA, which is one of the continent's best-kept secrets: Africa's history, written largely by African scholars. The project was begun in the early 1960s, during the period of rapid decolonisation in Africa. Several of the newly independent African leaders decided that, after decolonising their countries, they also wanted to decolonise their history, so they approached UNESCO (the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to help them implement the project. UNESCO formed a special committee and identified the continent's leading historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and experts in other fields. In total, UNESCO gathered around 350 scholars—mostly African—to undertake this work. They compiled 11 volumes with more to come, starting from the origins of humankind and evolution, and continuing to contemporary eras. They used written records, including those that had been overlooked; as well as archaeology, art, song, poetry, oral storytelling, traditions, dance, craft and archaeobotany. Using the 'GHA' as my inspiration and compass, my sources and references are predominantly African and non-European, in contrast to the many histories of Africa written by Western authors.

I was struck by the words of the late Kenyan palaeoanthropologist Dr Richard Leakey, who was a good friend, and is sadly missed by many, including me. He told me that it was imperative to challenge the prejudices some people hold 'in their thinking about Africa. It will probably take time to break that down; but break it down we must, and we do so—not with fairy tales but with facts.' So this book is my attempt to do just that.

CHAPTER ONE

OUR FAMILY AND OTHER HOMININS

As the young museum attendant diligently unlocked the door I was full of excitement. I was about to meet a superstar—albeit one who had been dead for millions of years. With great reverence and awe I gently stroked her hand with the tip of a finger and felt as though I had made contact with a long-lost relative. This was Lucy, or Dinkenesh, as she is known in Ethiopia—part of the lineage that eventually led to us: Homo sapiens sapiens, Latin for 'wise and thinking man'.

Africa is where it all began for us modern humans. We should be united by our shared beginning in a way that enables us to look beyond race, to a time when such differences did not exist. When one examines the long history of humankind, it becomes apparent that racial differentiation is a relatively recent occurrence; genetics present us with facts that are at odds with the cultural construct of racism. There may be new genetic interpretations in the future, but current thinking indicates that characteristics of the 'white race' emerged between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, well after many genetic divisions in Africa itself. Unfortunately, as the late Kenyan palaeoanthropologist Dr Richard Leakey described, some are still reluctant 'to embrace fully the idea that humans, whether blue-eyed Europeans or pale-skinned Asians, originated in Africa'.

Dr Leakey and his equally illustrious parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, were making ground-breaking fossil discoveries at a time in the twentieth century when there was still ongoing research in the field aimed at disproving the theory that we all came out of Africa and were thus originally black. The discovery of a complete ancient skull in China in 1929, dubbed Peking Man', for example, led the Beijing authorities to fund research by Chinese palaeontologists aimed at showing that Homo sapiens first evolved in Asia, or that Peking Man was an ancestor of modern East Asian people. Such efforts persisted into the twenty-first century.

That we are all part of the original African diaspora is no longer disputed scientifically. New paleontological discoveries are still being made and the vast majority of the pieces in this fragmented and ever-developing jigsaw puzzle are missing, but even if there is still debate about precisely where it happened within the continent, Africa is certainly where the human story began. We are an African animal, an African species who colonised the world, at different times and in different ways. No human being on earth can deny that Africa is their first home.