Africa, medieval era migrations: an overview

Abstract

Abstract An overview article dealing with migrations within a continent over a period of a thousand years must inevitably be sketchy and can at best give some examples. Nowadays about 2,500 languages are spoken by at least as many ethnic, political, or societal groups. The picture is complicated by the fact that languages do not necessarily correspond to ethnic, political, societal, or cultural entities and there is no reason to assume that the situation was different during the period under consideration. Quite the contrary is the case. Linguistic, archaeological, and historical studies have shown that languages and cultures have disappeared in the course of time. Migrations of people(s), but also of ideas, religions, goods, and many more took place permanently somewhere on the continent, and the reconstruction of these different events and processes has only just begun and will never be complete.