Many years ago, Africa was the center of many ancient civilizations, besides the Egyptian civilization there was the empire of Kanem-Borno, the kingdoms of Aksum, Makoria, Ghana, Kush, Punt, Carthage and others, but we have not received much about these kingdoms.

To explore these civilizations, a research team from various disciplines from within and outside Africa, including geneticists, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and linguists, collaborated and found that the DNA of some of the continent's inhabitants bears traces of ancient African empires, and that there is evidence of the mixing of the continent's races, and they published the results of the research in the journal Science Advances on March 29.

By analyzing the genomes of 1333,150 individuals from more than 4 ethnic groups, mostly Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan and South Africa, researchers have found that migration within the continent has been linked to vast empires such as Kanem-Borno, the kingdoms of Axum and Makoria, as well as the spread of the Bantu range that is now spoken by nearly one in <> Africans.

Migration within the continent of Africa was associated with vast empires such as Kanem-Borno, the kingdoms of Aksum and Makuriya (Shutterstock)

Immigration to the Kanem-Borno Empire

The Kanem-Bornu Empire emerged around 700 AD, stretched over two thousand kilometers across North and Central Africa, existed for more than a millennia, and had extensive trading networks linking Northern, Eastern, and Western Africa, leaving genetic traces from across the continent in the DNA of the present-day people of Cameroon.

Nancy Bird, a researcher at the University of California Genetics Institute and first author of the study, said in a press release published on Phys.org (Phys.org), "Nearly 600 years ago, the Kanem-Borno empire was attractive to the people of the continent, and we found evidence that the people of North and East Africa migrated to it, and this probably reflects its widespread geographical impact across Africa, to the extent that people travel a thousand kilometers to reach it."

Migration to the Kingdom of Axum

The study also sheds light on the Kingdom of Aksum, which included northeast Africa and southern Arabia, and was considered one of the four great powers in the world in the third century, along with contemporary empires in China, Persia and Rome, as well as the Kingdom of Maqra, which stretched along the Nile River in Sudan between the fifth and 16th centuries, and signed one of the longest lasting peace treaties in history with Egyptian civilization.

Climate change affected the environment about 3,<> years ago and reduced the amount of forest on the continent (Unsplash)

"We found evidence of population migration from the Arabian Peninsula to Sudan during the reign of the Kingdom of Axum, highlighting its importance as a global center about 1500,<> years ago, and it is worth noting that genetic data showed that these migrations occurred almost entirely after the peace treaty between Al-Maqra and Egypt began to collapse," Nancy said.

Climate change and migration

While previous studies have focused only on the genetic impact of Bantu migration from Cameroon to eastern and southern Africa, this study provides compelling evidence that migrations may also have spread to the west of the continent and may have been linked to climate change.

"Previous studies have shown that climate change affected the environment about 3,<> years ago, reducing the amount of forest on the continent, which corresponds to the timing of some of the ancient migrations we discovered, and means that climate change may have been responsible for the massive displacement of the continent's population at the time," explains Nancy Bird.

The DNA of some of the continent's inhabitants bears traces of the ancient empires of Africa and there is evidence of the mixing of the continent's races (Shutterstock)

Colonialism and the obliteration of history

Study lead author and researcher at the University of California's Institute of Genetics, Garrett Hillenthal, said: "The African continent has an enormous and complex history, deliberately obliterated by colonialism and overlooked by European approaches, and this includes the scope and influence of historical African empires."

African genomes have been and continue to be underrepresented in genetic studies compared to other regions of the world, especially Europe, and this paper showed that there is a great diversity in the genes of Africans that needs other intensive and deep studies.

Study co-author Furka Libby Matthew Fomin, a professor at Boya University in Cameroon, said: "There are still many African ethnic groups, for example in Cameroon, that have not been genetically researched, and their genomes likely contain many other secrets."

"We have the capacity to collect other ethnic samples, and we are looking for collaborators interested in studying them."