southern african countries

Coastal plains abut the Indian Ocean in Mozambique and the Atlantic in Angola and Namibia. Eritrea. The connections between australopithecines and earlier potentially hominin forms remain unclear, while a number of species of australopithecines have been identified. South Africa. Recent data shows that low-income households living in urban areas are having problems getting food. Madagascar. Those societies in which cattle were important were patrilineal, polygynous, and virilocal; men herded, while women were the major agricultural producers. Neighboring countries include Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. Mapungubwe’s skeletal and cultural remains are, however, identical to those found at other Iron Age settlements in the subcontinent, and there is little reason to doubt the African origin and medieval date of both sites. Another argument is for the inclusion of Angola in Central Africa. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Until the 1960s, population explosion and migration were the common explanations; subsequent explanations have stressed adaptation. Linguistic evidence suggests that the languages of the later Khoekhoe (the so-called Khoisan languages) originated in one of the hunter-gatherer languages of northern Botswana. The australopithecines who roamed the highland savanna plains of Southern Africa date from about three million to one million years ago. The River Nile divides the country … The history of Southern Africa cannot be written as a single narrative. The main exports include diamonds, platinum, gold, and uranium. Evidence from Botswana and Namibia suggests that many contemporary hunter-gatherers recently have been dispossessed and that their present way of life, far from being the result of thousands of years of stagnation and isolation, has resulted from their integration into the modern world economy; this hardly provides an adequate model for reconstructions of earlier societies. Nevertheless, the appearance of cave art, careful burials, and ostrich-eggshell beads for adornment suggests more sophisticated behaviour and new patterns of culture. The Zambezi is the longest river in the region, and its catchment includes much of Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In some areas the expansion inevitably led to conflict as the newcomers came up against settled communities; in others the indigenous inhabitants were gradually absorbed, while elsewhere sparsely inhabited, colder, and more arid mountain lands were colonized. Can you figure out which ones they are on this map quiz game? Expectedly, the region has places that are mountainous, coastal regions, and low-lying regions. Coverage of the region’s physical and human geography can be found in the article Africa. The landscape of the region is a bit varied with some areas being forested while others are deserts or simple grasslands. This article covers the history of the region from the prehistoric period to the end of the colonial period in the 20th century. If you are truly ready for this geography quiz, you should be able to get them all right in less than five seconds! Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. In the UN scheme, there are only five countries in the region namely Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland. The landlocked countries of Southern Africa include Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, and Malawi. An emerging area of concern in the region is urban food security. However, the studies that have been done have been able to show that factors that come into play include climate changes (which may affect agricultural productivity), poverty, unemployment, and a few other factors. Zimbabwe. Some ethnic groups are unique to South Africa while others like Basotho crossed the border into the country. The always up-to-date list of countries of Africa in alphabetical order An overview of the landscape of Southern Africa. 121,111,000. The South African Government has also arranged with donor countries to engage directly with NGOs on relevant projects. Navigate parenthood with the help of the Raising Curious Learners podcast. The African continent is typically divided up into five regions namely Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa, Western Africa, and Southern Africa. Engraving of a rhinoceros, an example of San rock painting and engraving in South Africa. Cattle and milking appear somewhat later than small stock and were perhaps acquired from iron-using farmers in western Zimbabwe or northeastern South Africa. By the second half of the 1st millennium ce, farming communities were living in relatively large, semipermanent villages. Coastal mountains and escarpments, flanking the high ground, are found in northern Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and along the Mozambique-Zimbabwe border. Southern Africa: Countries - Map Quiz Game: South Africa is one of only two perforated countries in the world. Area 2,314,764 square miles (5,995,215 square km). Please select which sections you would like to print: Corrections? Botswana 5. At 9th- and 10th-century sites such as Schroda and Bambandyanalo in the Limpopo valley, the ivory and cattle trade seems to have been of major importance, but later sites such as Mapungubwe (a hilltop above Bambandyanalo), Manekweni (in southwestern Mozambique), and Great Zimbabwe, which date from the late 11th to the mid 15th century, owed their prosperity to the export of gold. Urban food security has proven to be a difficult thing to study. Further changes were made after the colonials arrived in Africa. The Black peoples of Southern Africa—the overwhelming majority of the region’s population—can be divided into speakers of two language families, Khoisan and Bantu. Acheulean industry appeared during the Early Stone Age (c. 2,500,000 to 150,000 years ago) and was characterized by the use of simple stone hand axes, choppers, and cleavers. South Africa. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. For all the contestants in contemporary Southern Africa there has been a conscious struggle to control the past in order to legitimate the present and lay claim to the future. Springbok in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, Southern Africa. Their evolution into the species Homo habilis and then into the species Homo erectus—which displayed the larger brain, upright posture, teeth, and hands resembling those of modern humans and from whom Homo sapiens almost certainly evolved—is still fiercely debated. In the second half of the 15th century Great Zimbabwe came to an abrupt end. Consequently, people eating these foods end up with problems such as malnutrition, obesity, and hypertension. Algeria. Even before the 1st millennium ce, pottery similar to that of the eastern stream was being made in the upper Zambezi valley, and pottery of a slightly more recent date has been found in parts of northern Angola. Who is telling what history for which Africa is a question that needs constantly to be addressed. The labour and reproductive power of women was transferred from father to husband through the circulation of cattle in the form of bridewealth. Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Archaeologists argue about how easily groups made the transition from a way of life based on hunting and gathering to one centred on herding or agriculture, but an increasing number of excavations suggest that these boundaries were often permeable. Similar pottery has been found stretching from northeastern Tanzania and coastal Kenya through southern Zimbabwe into eastern South Africa, Mozambique, and Swaziland. South Africa Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) However, the following 5 countries, which are in East Africa, according to the UN definition, are included in the Southern quiz … In Southern Africa, history is not a set of neutrally observed and agreed-upon facts: present concerns colour interpretations of even the remote past. Looking at the natural resources of the area, the region is endowed with the most expansive resources of platinum in the world. These changes were, however, neither simultaneous nor evenly spread. Along with pastoralism and pottery came other signs of change: domestic dogs, changes in stone tool kits, altered settlement patterns, larger ostrich-eggshell beads, and the appearance of marine shells in the interior, which suggests the existence of long-distance trade. Labour was allocated by gender, with men responsible for hunting game, women for snaring small animals, collecting plant foods, and undertaking domestic chores. For discussion of the physical and human geography of individual countries in the region and of their postcolonial history, see Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Most of Southern Africa’s early agricultural communities shared a common culture, which spread across the region remarkably quickly from the 2nd century ce. “Western-stream” Bantu speakers were initially more familiar with fishing, oil palms, and the cultivation of vegetables than with cereals or cattle. Homo erectus appears to have roamed the open savanna lands of eastern and Southern Africa, collecting fruits and berries—and perhaps roots—and either scavenging or hunting. For compatibility, we use the ISO 3166 list of countries augmented by a few region names which are sometimes returned by MaxMind.. Sources []. Patrilineal and polygynous cattle-keeping farmers thus had immense advantages over communities that lacked these new forms of wealth and social organization. Some divisions are based on the general direction of the four cardinal points, based on physiographic features, and a few other criteria. Four main types of vegetation are found: savanna woodlands (known as miombo forest) in the north, a series of dry woodlands to the south of these, arid and semiarid grassland, scrubland, and bushland in the Namib and Kalahari deserts and their environs, and Mediterranean vegetation along the southern coast. French Equatorial Africa. Similar problems it faces in economic development include poverty, poor leadership, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and corruption. Although they do not typify the later Iron Age as a whole, the conspicuous consumption at these sites and the bias in oral sources toward centralized states means they have attracted perhaps a disproportionate share of scholarly attention. Overall, 180,000 people with HIV died of TB-related deaths in 2018. Located in south part of Africa, Southern Africa is composed of 5 countries. This situation is laughable compared to countries that do not have favorable climatic conditions such as Namibia. African elephant in the Okavango grasslands, Botswana. The landlocked countries of Southern Africa include A recent study that was done in eleven cities in the region showed that only 17% of the households were deemed to be secure in matters relating to food security. It was, nevertheless, of considerable size by the beginning of the 16th century; the capital alone contained several thousand people. Cattle, gold, and copper came in trade or tribute from settlements hundreds of miles away. 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