Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest continent and second most populous after Asia. At about 30,244,050 km² (11,677,240 mi²) including its adjacent islands, it covers 20.3 percent of the total land area on Earth. With over 800 million human inhabitants in 54 countries, it accounts for about one seventh of the world human population.

Etymology

The name Africa came into Western use through the Romans, who used the name Africa terra — "land of the Afri" (plural, or "Afer" singular) — for the northern part of the continent, as the province of Africa with its capital Carthage, corresponding to modern-day Tunisia.

Related Topics:
Romans - Province of Africa - Carthage - Tunisia

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The origin of Afer may either come from:

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• the Phoenician `afar, dust;
• the Afri, a tribe—possibly Berber—who dwelt in North Africa in the Carthage area;
• the Greek word aphrike, meaning without cold (see also List of traditional Greek place names);
• or the Latin word aprica, meaning sunny.

The historian Leo Africanus (1495-1554) attributed the origin to the Greek word phrike (φρικε, meaning "cold and horror"), combined with the negating prefix a-, so meaning a land free of cold and horror. But the change of sound from ph to f in Greek is datable to about the first century, so this cannot really be the origin of the name.

Related Topics:
Leo Africanus - 1495 - 1554 - First century

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Egypt was considered part of Asia by the ancients, and first assigned to Africa by the geographer Ptolemy (85 - 165 AD), who accepted Alexandria as Prime Meridian and made the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge.

Related Topics:
Egypt - Ptolemy - 85 - 165 - Alexandria - Prime Meridian - Isthmus of Suez - Red Sea - Asia - Europe

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