Africa. By H. Moll Geographer.

Title

Africa. By H. Moll Geographer.

Map depicts the continent of Africa and the winds at sea. With the island of Madagaskar and the Canaries islands

ca. 1714

Artist

Moll (1654-1732)

Hermann Moll (1654–1732) was a London-based engraver, cartographer, and publisher known for his detailed maps of Europe and the Americas. He also created maps for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. His major works include the Atlas Geographus (1711–1717) and Atlas Minor (1719), both published in multiple editions. Moll collaborated with explorer William Dampier, whose travel reports provided valuable geographic data for Moll’s maps. Dampier’s popularity and the public’s growing interest in travel literature helped boost Moll’s success, leading other authors like Defoe and Swift to use his illustrations.

Historical Description

According to the "Out-of-Africa theory", Africa is considered the "cradle of mankind", where homo development led to the development of the anatomically modern human Homo sapiens. One of the earliest advanced civilizations in mankind was formed in ancient Egypt. Over the millennia, various "great empires" such as the Empire of Abyssinia emerged on the continent. There were other kingdoms in West Africa, such as the Ashanti and Haussa, but they emerged much later. There were also some important cultures in East and South Africa, as in the area of today's Sudan, then called Nubia or Kush. Nubian pharaohs ruled all of Egypt for a dynasty. For example, the inhabitants of Greater Zimbabwe were important cultures in southern Africa. This stone castle was architecturally a masterpiece at that time and important for trade between the peoples of the south and east. The Swahili were known in East Africa. North Africa was connected to Europe and the Near East by the Mediterranean rather than separated. Carthage, a foundation of the Phoenicians in what is now Tunisia, was around the middle of the 1st millennium BC. The dominant power in the western Mediterranean until it was replaced by Rome in the Punic Wars. This prevailed from 30 BC. BC (conquest of Egypt) over all of North Africa. Even the ancient Egyptians (Queen Hatshepsut) made trips to Punt, probably in what is now Somalia. The kingdom of the Queen of Sheba, which probably had its center in southern Arabia, is said to have spanned parts of the Horn from Africa to the north of Ethiopia.