20 Things You May Not Know About Africa But Really Should

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African People Were Making Steel for More than 1,500 Years

Evidence was discovered in 1978 that suggests East Africans had already mastered making steel. University of Florida professor of anthropology Peter Schmidt and Brown University professor of engineering Donald H. Avery found that Africans had produced carbon steel in preheated forced draft furnaces as long as 2,000 years ago. The method was “technologically more sophisticated than any developed in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century.”

 


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Africans Were the First to Organize Fishing Expeditions

It is believed that African people were the first to organize fishing expeditions at least 90,000 years ago. A variety of harpoon points have been discovered in Katanda, Congo, which academics believe points to the existence of an early fishing-based culture.

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