Sadly Africans didn’t preserve history in written/recorded format.
The issue is more complex, friends.
I’m going to leave this link here because I think it explains much better than me the situation of several peoples/kingdoms in the world (although the focus is on Africa) with respect to our knowledge of their history.
But to summarize, the point is that there is enough information about these people/places to satisfy the (few) demands of the game, with the biggest difficulty being the issue of access to this information. However, this is slowly being resolved by both increased study of these people/places and exposure in various types of media about their history (breaking the feedback loop of ignorance).
I say this because I, a total layman, was able to gain reasonable knowledge just by using the web. This list I made a while ago brings together sources on the history of Africa (over time, I expanded it without much organization and I intend to include other areas of the world as well). If you look, you’ll notice that many of the articles and even some books are freely accessible and for those that aren’t, you can see summaries on sites like r/askhistorians and historum.com. (Just these FAQs here and here would be of great use.)
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I understand the comparison, but “Iranian” is how they always called themselves.
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The term “Odia” is also quite old. It’s derived from the Odra Kingdom mentioned in Mahabharat.
Just mentioned for the comparison that one sounds medievalish while the other sounds modern.
I see. Thanks for explaining.
I would be very interested in sources about late antiquity and early medieval African empires and kingdoms, pre Islamic contact possibly.
For example I searched for early Ghanian rulers (300 AD?) And kanem Bornu but couldn’t find anything before 700 AD circa which was not mythological or semi mythical. Do you think it’s possible to uncover that side of history using reliable accounts? If you have specific links that would be awesome.
Yeah indeed and it gets even harder for aoe1.
Not open source:
More an archaeology book. Mentions the Kilwa Chronicles:
Open source:
Methodology and African prehistory
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000042225
Ancient civilizations of Africa:
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000184265
Seventh-Eleventh century in English unabridged:
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000184282
Twelfth-Sixteenth century in English unabridged:
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000184287
UNESCOs general history of Africa is going to get updated in the future considering it doesn’t reflect the newest standard of knowledge. Not sure when the other volumes (IX, X, XI) are going to release.
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Ok thanks, it’s not the most agile reading tbh. Isn’t there something like more didactic like a list of facts, events and rulers? I just need to imagine a campaign, not to take a PhD in African history eheh.
When I have fundamentals I can go deeper eventually.
Thank you anyway.
the quote you post means nothing: it says that most african civs didnt’ have writing until the common era (ie the year 1), but aoe2 timeline only starts in 400ish so this isn’t relevant at all
Mali empire, ethiopian empire, kingdom of kongo just to name a few all have written history
(in comparison: most or europe also didnt have written history until the common era, same is true for america)
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What about wagadou (Kingdom of Ghana)? Can’t find anything before 700 AD even if it should have been around from 300.
i’m not saying that there is loads of written evidence afterwards, but posting a quote about ‘no written records before the common era’ is completely irrelevant at best, at worst it reenforces existing stereotypes
It’s no stereotype brother, its a known fact. Africa does have lesser written history, because they have oral history recording traditions. I am in strong favour of adding more African Civs.
Every culture has its peculiarity. For example Indian Travellers almost never recorded their travelogues of foreign lands even though foreign travellers recorded their experience in Indian Lands.
I read that too but maybe someone has insider info.
Currently reading about makuria, nobatia and alodia kingdoms here:
But still I’m not finding anything I didn’t already know by reading Wikipedia. (By the way Nubians civ when?)
Very nice list for any enthusiast.
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If the African civs get split, I hope gbetos get moved to a Beninese civ or even to the scenario editor. They weren’t Malian and they didn’t exist in the middle ages.
And to top it off, the weapons they use aren’t even from the same region as Mali and Benin
Beninese would be quite a confusing name considering that, yes, they came from the Dahomey Kingdom which was centered around modern day Benin, but in the Middle Ages the Kingdom of Benin was an Edo state in coastal Nigeria and they never used gbeto warriors afaik. Dahomey was a Fon state, so maybe we could have a Fon civ, but to be honest they belong more in AoE3 (including the Gbeto, who were created in the late 17th century).
Dont see any point in splitting mali when there are multiple missing african civilizations that could be added.
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Something needed for Central and South Africa
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I mean, any new West African civ could be seen as a Malian split, as they currently cover the whole region.