Africa has the world's oldest record of human technological achievement: the world's oldest stone tools have been discovered in eastern Africa, and later evidence for tool production by our hominin ancestors has been discovered in West, Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa.

However, despite notable African developments in mathematics, metallurgy, architecture, and other fields, the history of science and technology in Africa has received relatively little attention in comparison to other regions of the world.

Northern Africa, as well as the Nile Valley

The Library of Alexandria was established in Egypt in 295 BC. It was regarded as the world's largest library during the classical period.

Al-Azhar University, founded as a madrasa, is the world's foremost center of Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning. After Cairo University, it is Egypt's second-oldest degree-granting university, with an establishment date of 1961 when non-religious subjects were added to its curriculum.

West Africa and the Sahel region

During Mali's "golden age" from the 12th to the 16th centuries, three philosophical schools existed: the University of Sankore, Sidi Yahya University, and Djinguereber University.

By the end of Mansa Musa's reign in Mali, the Sankoré University had been converted into a fully staffed university with the largest book collections in Africa since the Library of Alexandria. Sankoré University could house 25,000 students and had one of the world's largest libraries, with between 400,000 and 700,000 manuscripts.

Timbuktu was a major center for book copying, religious groups, science, and the arts.

Scholars and students from all over the world came to study at its university. It drew more international students than New York University.

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Astronomy

In Africa, there are three types of calendars: lunar, solar, and stellar. The majority of African calendars are a mash-up of the three. African calendars include the Akan calendar, Egyptian calendar, Berber calendar, Ethiopian calendar, Igbo calendar, Yoruba calendar, Shona calendar, Somali calendar, Swahili calendar, Xhosa calendar, Borana calendar, and Luba calendar, and Ankole calendar.

Northern Africa, as well as the Nile Valley

One of the world's oldest known archeoastronomical devices is a stone circle in the Nabta Playa basin. The device, which was built around 4800 BCE by the ancient Nubians, may have roughly marked the summer solstice.

Since Flinders Petrie took the first modern measurements of the Egyptian pyramids' precise cardinal orientations, various astronomical methods have been proposed as to how these orientations were originally established.

The positions of two stars in the Plough / Big Dipper, known to Egyptians as the thigh, may have been observed by ancient Egyptians.

A vertical alignment between these two stars, checked with a plumb bob, is thought to have been used to determine where North lay. The deviations from true North calculated using this model correspond to the accepted dates of the pyramids' construction.

The Egyptians were the first to create a 365-day, 12-month calendar. It was a stellar calendar created by observing the stars.

The astrolabic quadrant was invented in Egypt during the 12th century.

West Africa and the Sahel region

The following observations about Timbuktu astronomical science during the 12th–16th centuries can be made based on the translation of 14 Timbuktu manuscripts:

They used the Julian Calendar.

In general, they had a heliocentric view of the Solar System.

Complex mathematical calculations were used to create diagrams of planets and orbits.

Scientists created an algorithm that correctly oriented Timbuktu to Mecca.

They documented astronomical events such as a meteor shower in August 1583.

Mali also had a number of astronomers at the time, including the emperor and scientist Askia Mohammad I.

Africa's east coast

Megalithic "pillar sites," known as "namoratunga," date back as far as 5,000 years and can be found in Kenya's Lake Turkana region.

Despite being somewhat controversial today, initial interpretations suggested that they were used by Cushitic speaking people as an alignment with star systems tuned to a 354-day lunar calendar.

Africa's southernmost continent

Today, South Africa has a thriving astronomy community. It is home to the Southern African Large Telescope, the southern hemisphere's largest optical telescope.

South Africa is currently constructing the Karoo Array Telescope as a precursor to the $20 billion Square Kilometer Array project. South Africa, along with Australia, is a finalist to host the SKA.

Mathematics

Southern and Central Africa

The Lebombo bone, discovered in the mountains between Swaziland and South Africa, is thought to be the oldest known mathematical artifact.

It was created 35,000 years ago and consists of 29 distinct notches cut into a baboon's fibula.

The Ishango bone is a bone tool from the Democratic Republic of the Congo that dates from the Upper Paleolithic period, roughly 18,000 to 20,000 BCE.

It's also a baboon's fibula, with a sharp piece of quartz attached to one end, possibly for engraving or writing.

It was initially thought to be a tally stick because of the series of tally marks carved in three columns running the length of the tool, but some scientists believe the groupings of notches indicate a mathematical understanding that goes beyond counting.

The bone could have served several purposes, including a tool for multiplication, division, and simple mathematical calculation, a six-month lunar calendar, or it could have been made by a woman keeping track of her menstrual cycle.

Certain mathematical ideas can also be found in Angola's "sona" drawing tradition.

Rebecca Walo Omana became the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first female mathematics professor in 1982.

Northern Africa, as well as the Nile Valley

People in Egypt had fully developed a numeral system by the predynastic Naqada period.

A fictional letter from the New Kingdom suggests the importance of mathematics to an educated Egyptian by proposing a scholarly competition between himself and another scribe regarding everyday calculation tasks such as accounting for land, labor, and grain.

Texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus demonstrate that the ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic mathematical operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—use fractions, and calculate the surface areas of triangles, circles, and even hemispheres.

They understood fundamental algebra and geometry concepts and could solve simple sets of simultaneous equations.

Hieroglyphics in Egypt

For each power of ten up to one million, mathematical notation was decimal and based on hieroglyphic signs. Each of these could be written as many times as needed to add up to the desired number; for example, to write the number eighty or eight hundred, the symbol for ten or one hundred was written eight times.

Ancient Egyptian fractions had to be written as the sum of several fractions because their calculation methods could not handle most fractions with a numerator greater than one.

For example, the fraction two-fifths was resolved into the sum of one-third + one-fifteenth, thanks to standard value tables.

Some common fractions, on the other hand, were written with a special glyph; the modern two-thirds is shown on the right.

The principles underlying the Pythagorean theorem were well understood by ancient Egyptian mathematicians, who knew, for example, that a triangle had a right angle opposite the hypotenuse when its sides were in a 3–4–5 ratio.

They calculated the area of a circle by subtracting one-ninth of its diameter and then squaring the result:

Many Egyptian structures, including the pyramids, appear to reflect the golden ratio, but its use may have been an unintended consequence of the ancient Egyptian practice of combining the use of knotted ropes with an intuitive sense of proportion and harmony.

Nubians had a sophisticated understanding of mathematics and an appreciation for the harmonic ratio, based on engraved plans of Meroitic King Amanikhabali's pyramids.

The engraved plans hint at much more to come about Nubian mathematics.

Metallurgy

The majority of Africa transitioned from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. The Iron Age and Bronze Age happened at the same time. North Africa and the Nile Valley imported iron technology from the Near East and developed along the same lines as the Near East from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

Many Africanists support the independent development of iron use south of the Sahara. It is a contentious issue among archaeologists.

Outside of North Africa, the earliest dating of iron is 2500 BCE at Egaro, west of Termit, making it contemporaneous with iron smelting in the Middle East.

Archaeologists disagree about the Egaro date because of the method used to obtain it. The 1500 BCE Termit date is widely accepted. Iron from the Lejja site in Nigeria has been radiocarbon dated to around 2000 BC.

Iron use, in the form of smelting and forging for tools, appears in West Africa by 1200 BCE, making it one of the first places where the Iron Age begins.

African methods of extracting iron were used in Brazil prior to the 19th century, until more advanced European methods were implemented.

Africa's West

Africans were not only masters of iron, but also of brass and bronze. Ife created lifelike statues in brass, continuing an artistic tradition that began in the 13th century.

During the 16th century, Benin mastered bronze, producing portraiture and reliefs in the metal using the lost wax process.

Benin was also a producer of glass and glass beads.

From the early second millennium AD, several centres of iron production using natural draft furnaces arose in West Africa.

Iron production in Banjeli and Bassar, Togo, for example, reached up to 80,000 cubic meters (which is more than production in places like Meroe), and analyses indicate that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century AD slags from this area were simply bloomery waste products, while preliminary metallographic analyses of objects indicate they were made of low-carbon steels.

The Korsimoro district in Burkina Faso had a capacity of 169,900 cubic meters. Fiko, a sub-region of the Dogon region, produces approximately 300,000 cubic meters of slag.

Brass barrel blunderbusses are said to have been manufactured in some Gold Coast states during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to various accounts, Asante blacksmiths were not only capable of repairing firearms, but also of remaking barrels, locks, and stocks on occasion.

Copper smelting was independently developed between 3000 and 2500 BCE in the Ar Mountains region of Niger. The process's undeveloped nature indicates that it was not of foreign origin. Around 1500 BCE, smelting in the region reached maturity.