Wonders of the African World — Season 1, Episode 1: Black Kingdoms of the Nile
Documentary • 54 min • 1 season, 6 episodes
Episode synopsis
The term "Nubia" means many things to many people. In America it has come to be virtually synonymous with blackness and Africa. To ethnographers and linguists, it refers to a specific region straddling southern Egypt and northern Sudan, where black-skinned Nubians have traditionally lived. To archaeologists in the 1990s it is an ever-widening area of the Middle Nile Valley and surrounding deserts that extends approximately from Aswan in Egypt south to modern Khartoum, Sudan, and beyond.
About Wonders of the African World
Africa is a continent of magnificent treasures and cultures — from the breathtaking stone architecture of 1,000-year-old ruins in South Africa to an advanced 16th century international university in Timbuktu. However, for centuries, many of these African wonders have been hidden from the world, lost to the ravages of time, nature and repressive governments. Join Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates, on the journey from Zanzibar to Timbuktu, the Nile River Valley to Great Zimbabwe, the slave coast of Guinea to the medieval monasteries of Ethiopia in search of the lost wonders of the African world.