# The Progenitors

> Researched Black and melanated world history placed in strict chronological order (BC to AD), with first-hand sources, page-numbered citations, maps and rich media.

Editorial rules: every claim is tied to a named source; images and quotations carry credit and licence lines; only published entries appear here.
Attribution: cite as "The Progenitors" and link to the canonical article URL.

## Reference
- [Sitemap](https://www.theprogenitors.com/sitemap.xml): every indexable URL
- [RSS feed](https://www.theprogenitors.com/rss.xml): latest 50 articles

## Articles
- [The Inquisition Targets Sephardic Families](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ae0a90ed-ce91-47cb-852a-5cd411e14764) — 1478 AD | Inquisition, Conversos, Sephardim, Spain: From 1478 converted Jews in Spain lived under permanent investigation.
- [John Blanke, Trumpeter to Henry VIII](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7e28ef96-4362-42c9-b574-777ec3daf230) — 1507 AD | Tudor, England, Music, Black Tudors, United Kingdom: A Black musician appears twice in the Westminster Tournament Roll and in the royal pay records.
- [Africans at the Court of Rudolf II in Prague](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/42c63a58-d57c-4526-b96d-48086459f18b) — 1591 AD | Prague, Rudolf II, Habsburg, Bohemia, Czech Republic: The imperial court on the Vltava drew people, animals and objects from across the world.
- [The Black St Maurice of Magdeburg](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/93399364-67cf-4c86-8ad4-c21661e43b1d) — 1240 AD | St Maurice, Magdeburg, Art, Germany: Around 1240 a German cathedral gave its patron saint an unmistakably African face.
- [The Almoravids Cross from the Sahara](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3837f702-f082-4c64-b00d-ca3cc6b1a223) — 1086 AD | Almoravids, Berber, Sahara, Gold, Spain: A Saharan Berber movement took control of Muslim Iberia after 1086.
- [Moorish Reach into Gaul](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/65dfb4dd-5849-405b-b87a-4ffcea9398e5) — 732 AD | Moors, France, Al-Andalus, France: Andalusi forces campaigned north of the Pyrenees and left place names and settlements behind.
- [Grain, Oil and Africans in Roman Iberia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/af2d4e97-19c8-437b-9b71-8ca845836081) — 400 AD | Rome, Iberia, Trade, Spain: Africa fed Rome, and the shipping lanes carried people as well as cargo.
- [Numidia Enters the Roman World](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6dc5646b-140a-48c8-be30-9220be4ff8fd) — 46 BC | Rome, Numidia, Empire, North Africa: The North African kingdoms of Juba and Massinissa become part of Rome, and their people part of Europe.
- [Herodotus Describes the Aithiopians](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/968dc8e6-fc78-4607-b99c-46acecb12fbe) — 500 BC | Ancient, Greece, Mediterranean, Greece: The earliest surviving Greek accounts place melanated peoples at the centre of the known world, not at its edge.
- [The Expulsion of the Moriscos](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f5fda23c-fd9d-4818-8fae-feec26140227) — 1609 AD | Moriscos, Expulsion, Migration, Spain: Between 1609 and 1614 Spain deported around 300,000 of its own people to North Africa.
- [Charles IV Brings St Maurice to Prague](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6bcbdf79-4eda-47d7-8305-0fdacc34c2c2) — 1354 AD | Prague, St Maurice, Charles IV, Bohemia, Czech Republic: The Bohemian king gathered relics of the African soldier-saint for St Vitus Cathedral.
- [Septimius Severus, African-Born Emperor of Rome](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9956a622-54d6-48ee-b6a7-c2ee10368e1f) — 193 AD | Rome, Libya, Severans, Italy: A man from Leptis Magna in today's Libya took the Roman throne in 193 AD.
- [The Almohads and a New African Empire in Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4cca7abc-0fad-4c07-ae73-b214d29a3b18) — 1147 AD | Almohads, Seville, Architecture, Spain: From 1147 Marrakesh again ruled Seville, Córdoba and much of Iberia.
- [Toledo's Translators](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cbc86a99-95cd-4811-922a-24f84ccd1e0f) — 1085 AD | Toledo, Translation, Science, Sephardim, Spain: After 1085, Arabic manuscripts in Toledo were turned into Latin for the rest of Europe.
- [Moors' Heads Enter Bohemian Heraldry](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/85b5f402-bdb6-4e6e-b229-c7e7288f5ed1) — 1250 AD | Bohemia, Heraldry, Moors, Prague, Czech Republic: Crowned African heads appear on Central European arms, including in the Czech lands.
- [Sephardic Scholars Scatter After Córdoba's Fall](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9518ea64-9abd-43c2-9daa-b0edd1f1f12f) — 1013 AD | Sephardim, Granada, Al-Andalus, Spain: Civil war in 1013 pushed Jewish families out of Córdoba and across Iberia.
- [Ottoman Rule Opens the Balkans to Sephardic Refugees](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6674f334-3d5b-458e-aa1d-1a21411b8601) — 1453 AD | Sephardim, Ottoman, Balkans, Turkey: After 1453 Istanbul and the Balkan cities invited Jewish settlement.
- [Juan de Pareja, Painter and Freedman](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/91de8eae-0788-4805-8cc3-24e12dd621ad) — 1650 AD | Painting, Velázquez, Madrid, Spain: Velázquez's assistant of African descent became a master in his own right.
- [Anton Wilhelm Amo, African Philosopher at Halle](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2cf5e15e-1467-4fd9-a4b7-4954d9f30225) — 1729 AD | Amo, Philosophy, Enlightenment, Ghana, Germany: In 1729 a Ghanaian-born scholar defended a dissertation at a German university.
- [The Caliphate of Córdoba](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0fe53005-a210-4081-bcb0-890a4b0b6782) — 929 AD | Moors, Córdoba, Caliphate, Spain: In 929 Abd al-Rahman III declared himself caliph, and Al-Andalus reached its height.
- [Jacobus Capitein Preaches in Leiden](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c2ff65ad-e9bd-41b4-82b1-ee6ebaee972f) — 1742 AD | Leiden, Capitein, Ghana, Religion, Netherlands: A Ghanaian graduate of Leiden became the first African ordained in the Dutch church.
- [The Muslim Conquest of Sicily Begins](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4a465e8e-ef19-4f9c-93c8-e158ac46d7cb) — 827 AD | Sicily, Ifriqiya, Moors, Agriculture, Italy: From 827 the island was governed from Ifriqiya, in today's Tunisia, for over two centuries.
- [Córdoba Becomes a Moorish Capital](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3b059414-39df-4279-922a-511331bcee8a) — 756 AD | Moors, Córdoba, Al-Andalus, Spain: Abd al-Rahman I founds an independent emirate and builds the Great Mosque.
- [The Sarajevo Haggadah Is Painted in Catalonia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5cedb955-93b8-464b-87eb-b9a3ed90c480) — 1350 AD | Sephardim, Manuscripts, Bosnia, Catalonia, Spain: A Sephardic masterpiece made in Iberia would end up in the Balkans.
- [Pushkin, Great-Grandson of an African](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5e05b560-8ab6-4e82-905e-8aba09a04eab) — 1799 AD | Pushkin, Russia, Literature, Gannibal, Russia: Russia's national poet wrote openly about his African ancestry.
- [Dürer Draws Katharina of Lisbon](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1c862b4a-e772-4477-a2db-f1626641194f) — 1521 AD | Dürer, Antwerp, Portrait, Renaissance, Belgium: In 1521 Albrecht Dürer made a careful portrait of an African woman in Antwerp.
- [Black Amsterdam in the Age of Rembrandt](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e41260d6-be83-4062-8e46-3f4ee6f8d2f1) — 1650 AD | Amsterdam, Rembrandt, Sephardim, Netherlands: A free African quarter grew beside the Jewish quarter of the Dutch capital.
- [North African Cavalry Cross the Alps with Hannibal](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3c49b9bf-e25d-4304-a344-d3d5cd997c45) — 218 BC | Carthage, Numidia, War, Italy, Italy: Carthage sent Numidian and Libyan horsemen deep into Italy, and they stayed for sixteen years.
- [Tariq ibn Ziyad Lands at Gibraltar](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cf771c5d-c19f-4a86-a14c-51cac28fdf9b) — 711 AD | Moors, Al-Andalus, Berber, Conquest, Spain: In 711 an army led by a Berber commander crossed into Iberia and changed Europe for 780 years.
- [The African Emperor Dies in York](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d309bd44-3f47-46c9-870b-aab47247b34b) — 208 AD | Rome, Britain, York, Severans, United Kingdom: Severus campaigned in Britain with his household and died at Eboracum in 211 AD.
- [St Maurice and the Theban Legion](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5b2a4a3d-7bc2-41f1-a2e7-ec799f99d127) — 287 AD | Egypt, St Maurice, Christianity, Alps, Switzerland: The soldier-saint from Upper Egypt becomes one of Europe's most widely honoured figures.
- [Prague's Spanish Synagogue and the Moorish Revival](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6d0890d6-06af-4bcd-9403-825efc4edf52) — 1868 AD | Prague, Sephardim, Architecture, Moorish Revival, Czech Republic: In 1868 Prague built a Moorish-style synagogue in the heart of the Jewish Town.
- [The Lisbon Slave Market Opens](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c1800f5d-2696-4a2e-bffd-e935bb5fae18) — 1444 AD | Portugal, Lisbon, European institutions, Portugal: In 1444 Portugal began selling captured Africans at Lagos, starting an institution with a beginning and an end.
- [The Pogroms That Created the Conversos](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e91c0043-66a7-43b6-8275-9e030fd15e25) — 1391 AD | Sephardim, Conversos, Persecution, Spain: The violence of 1391 forced mass conversions and built a new suspect class in Iberia.
- [Granada Falls and Moorish Rule in Europe Ends](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f6506002-a8a6-4fa0-8cc8-792fec06fef5) — 1492 AD | Granada, Moors, Alhambra, Nasrid, Spain: On 2 January 1492 the last Muslim state in western Europe surrendered.
- [Al-Hakam II Builds Europe's Greatest Library](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/53c80701-956c-4695-bf91-c7b060932acc) — 961 AD | Córdoba, Libraries, Science, Spain: The caliph's library at Córdoba was said to hold hundreds of thousands of volumes.
- [Ibn Rushd and Europe's Aristotle](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ef9d7a5e-c0b7-4f58-9bcb-6ab972a0cb30) — 1160 AD | Ibn Rushd, Philosophy, Córdoba, Spain: The Córdoban jurist known as Averroes reshaped Christian philosophy.
- [Arab-Norman Palermo](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a8c4143b-bcdb-488f-bfc4-27180ed49b11) — 1140 AD | Sicily, Palermo, al-Idrisi, Normans, Italy: Norman kings of Sicily kept African and Arab administrators, artists and scholars.
- [The Alhambra Decree Expels Iberia's Sephardim](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/93c64e9e-354e-4b31-b058-e301cff39c13) — 1492 AD | Sephardim, Expulsion, Migration, Ladino, Spain: In March 1492 Spain ordered its Jews to convert or leave within four months.
- [Salonica Becomes a Sephardic City](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/66aef507-50b4-4df2-b405-a97e2665f774) — 1493 AD | Sephardim, Salonica, Ladino, Balkans, Greece: Refugees from Iberia made the Aegean port a Ladino-speaking metropolis.
- [Sephardic Physicians and Merchants Reach Prague](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1b5d30ab-0d5d-474e-a800-7932cfdd0767) — 1500 AD | Prague, Sephardim, Bohemia, Trade, Czech Republic: Iberian exiles appear in the records of the Bohemian capital.
- [Jacques Francis, the African Diver of the Mary Rose](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/daf7914b-9c3f-4fb2-9c13-aa77ede98c5e) — 1548 AD | England, Diving, Mary Rose, Law, United Kingdom: In 1548 a West African salvage diver gave evidence in an English court.
- [Moriscos Under Surveillance](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3f78a0fc-cd7b-4264-b720-4290181d26ab) — 1580 AD | Moriscos, Spain, Persecution, Spain: Spain's converted Muslim population was regulated in dress, language and bathing.
- [Angelo Soliman in Vienna](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/30a4ec72-dd74-4557-ac83-35e9c1c921cc) — 1753 AD | Vienna, Soliman, Habsburg, Freemasonry, Austria: A Habsburg courtier, freemason and friend of Mozart's circle.
- [Abram Petrovich Gannibal Arrives in Russia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0c4fd8ac-cc6f-4dde-af75-f1183b852803) — 1704 AD | Russia, Gannibal, Engineering, Russia: An African boy brought to Peter the Great's court became a general and engineer.
- [The Aurelian Moors on Hadrian's Wall](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d032f368-0bd1-410a-92ae-0d7352cb0469) — 253 AD | Rome, Britain, Moors, Hadrian's Wall, United Kingdom: A unit of North African soldiers was garrisoned at Burgh by Sands in Cumbria.
- [Badin at the Swedish Court](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/40d5e8f1-5cd2-4837-b50f-9a8196d41d20) — 1760 AD | Sweden, Badin, Court, Sweden: Adolf Ludvig Gustav Fredrik Albert Badin kept a diary inside the Swedish royal family.
- [Ivan Gannibal Founds Kherson](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a9c1a717-2164-418d-a509-13e45b7505c9) — 1778 AD | Ukraine, Kherson, Gannibal, Russia, Ukraine: The son of Peter the Great's African general built a city on the Dnieper.
- [Juan Latino, Professor in Granada](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/758e149f-93d4-4434-b85a-8368a6492138) — 1550 AD | Granada, Scholarship, Renaissance, Spain: A Black scholar held a university chair in sixteenth-century Spain.
- [Forced Conversion in Portugal](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/39130e95-b989-430d-a002-1a42aecc62c3) — 1497 AD | Portugal, Sephardim, Forced conversion, Portugal: In 1497 Portugal baptised its Jewish population by decree instead of expelling it.
- [Ust'-Ishim Man: The 45,000-Year-Old Siberian Who Carried Africa North](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/921df997-7adf-4f88-9100-34435800b496) — 43000 BC | Ancient DNA, Palaeolithic, Siberia, Russia, Asia, Human origins, Out of Africa, Asia: A thigh bone found on a Siberian riverbank in 2008 produced one of the oldest modern human genomes on Earth — an early Out-of-Africa pioneer carrying ancestral dark-skin alleles at 57° north, 45,000 years ago.
- [Cheddar Man: Britain's Oldest Skeleton Was a Dark-Skinned African-Descended Pioneer](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/84e16bf7-e0d9-4b8e-a0d1-706433e930af) — 8000 BC | Ancient DNA, Mesolithic, United Kingdom, Europe, Human origins, Melanated Europe, Europe: Ancient DNA from a skeleton found in Gough's Cave in 1903 proved that Britain's oldest near-complete human had dark to black skin, dark curly hair and blue eyes — the African-descended pioneer who repopulated the islands
- [La Braña 1: The Dark-Skinned, Blue-Eyed Hunter of Mesolithic Iberia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6dc17896-ff26-410b-9efb-eba24f1a51fd) — 5000 BC | Ancient DNA, Mesolithic, Spain, Europe, Human origins, Melanated Europe, Europe: The first complete European hunter-gatherer genome, sequenced from a 7,000-year-old man buried in a León cave, showed dark skin and dark hair alongside blue eyes — proof that dark pigmentation was the Mesolithic norm acr
- [Ötzi the Iceman Was Far Darker Than the Museum Models Showed](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0407a75c-0fda-4cd7-a94b-369cd125eaa9) — 3300 BC | Ancient DNA, Copper Age, Italy, Europe, Human origins, Melanated Europe, Europe: The 2023 high-coverage sequencing of the Iceman's genome overturned three decades of pale museum models: Ötzi had skin darker than modern Southern Europeans, male-pattern baldness and overwhelmingly Anatolian farmer ance
- [Kostenki 14: A 37,000-Year-Old Dark-Skinned European on the Ice Age Don](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/76f9467a-87ef-4bf7-b0e5-a4b3ba16ce01) — 36000 BC | Ancient DNA, Palaeolithic, Russia, Europe, Human origins, Out of Africa, Europe: Excavated on the Don River in 1954 and sequenced in 2014, Kostenki 14 is one of Europe's oldest modern humans: dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and already ancestral to later Europeans on the Ice Age mammoth steppe.
- [The Andamanese: 50,000 Years of Unbroken Descent from the First Migration](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/989387a3-103d-480f-83a8-94d98c21d4e5) — 48000 BC | Ancient DNA, Human origins, Andaman Islands, India, Asia, Out of Africa, Indigenous peoples, Asia: The Onge, Jarawa and Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands descend from the first coastal wave out of Africa, preserving in deep isolation the dark skin, coiled hair and maritime culture of Asia's earliest pioneers.
- [The Negrito Lineages: Sundaland's First Peoples, the Aeta and the Semang](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/68321579-15dc-4c4a-96ce-3f8adb8e3b3a) — 45000 BC | Ancient DNA, Human origins, Philippines, Malaysia, Asia, Out of Africa, Indigenous peoples, Asia: The Aeta of the Philippines and the Semang of Malaysia descend from hunter-gatherers who reached Sundaland 40,000–50,000 years ago — among the deepest branches of humanity outside Africa, with the highest Denisovan ances
- [Tam Pa Ling: Modern Humans Deep in Southeast Asia 70,000 Years Ago](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/db3d02b1-f215-4976-9f32-bd13e9d926bb) — 60000 BC | Human origins, Palaeolithic, Laos, Asia, Out of Africa, Archaeology, Asia: Fossils from a cave in northern Laos, dated to as much as 86,000 years old, put anatomically modern humans deep inland in Southeast Asia far earlier than the coastal-migration model allowed.
- [Mungo Lady and Mungo Man: The World's Oldest Ritual Cremation](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/79c36826-0273-4daa-bd9f-11e7f82def91) — 40000 BC | Human origins, Palaeolithic, Australia, Oceania, Out of Africa, Indigenous peoples, Archaeology, Oceania: Ochre-covered and cremated burials at Lake Mungo, dated to about 42,000 years ago, are the oldest ritual funerary remains on Earth — left by dark-skinned voyagers who crossed open sea to reach Australia.
- [The Kow Swamp Burials: Late Pleistocene Diversity on the Murray River](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/347f6bcc-6e7a-4f25-abf7-d71a35b5c352) — 11000 BC | Human origins, Pleistocene, Australia, Oceania, Indigenous peoples, Archaeology, Repatriation, Oceania: More than forty burials excavated on the Murray River between 1968 and 1972 revealed the physical diversity and deep ancestry of late Pleistocene Indigenous Australians — and were finally returned to Country in 1990.
- [The Alhambra Decree and the Expulsion of Spain’s Melanated Sephardic Jews](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/596a69f5-c4b7-4301-a76d-566e56c26f8a) — 1492 AD | Alhambra Decree, Sephardic Jews, Expulsion, Granada, Spanish Inquisition, Conversos, Black Jews, 1492, Ferdinand II of Aragon, Isabella I of Castile, Gharnata, Alhambra, Sefarad, Castile, Aragon, Crown of Aragon, Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, Ottoman Empire, modern Spain, Spain, Europe, Melanated history, Spain: In 1492, the Alhambra Decree forced Spain’s diverse Sephardic population, including its Black and dark-complexioned Jews, to choose baptism or exile.
- [Queen Nanny’s Mountain Sovereignty: The 1740 Maroon Land Grant](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e3b878c4-e114-4e8c-8884-38ed3a4c26a1) — 1740 AD | Documented evidence, Queen Nanny, Windward Maroons, Black sovereignty, Maroon resistance, Land patent, Blue Mountains, African diaspora, Jamaican history, Nanny Town, Portland, Moore Town, Jamaica, Caribbean, Melanated history, Jamaica: A colonial land patent granting 500 acres to Nanny and her people preserved documentary evidence of Black Maroon sovereignty in Jamaica’s mountains.
- [Palmares: The Black Polity That Defended Serra da Barriga](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/86c22985-fb4f-41c1-8905-44ff5c8f176e) — 1695 AD | Documented evidence, Palmares, Zumbi, Ganga Zumba, Quilombos, Maroon sovereignty, Afro-Brazilian history, Black resistance, Alagoas, Macaco, Serra da Barriga, Cucaú, Pernambuco, União dos Palmares, Recife, colonial Brazil, modern Brazil, Brazil, South America, Melanated history, Brazil: At Serra da Barriga, Africans and Afro-Brazilians built Palmares into a fortified Black polity that resisted colonial slavery for much of the seventeenth century.
- [Kalākaua in Silver: The Melanated Sovereign on Hawaiʻi’s 1883 Coinage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/84f4829d-707f-48ad-af65-63f8663d7ebc) — 1883 AD | Documented evidence, King Kalākaua, Hawaiian Kingdom, Native Hawaiian sovereignty, Melanated royalty, Coins, Numismatics, Pacific history, Afrocentric portraiture, Hawaiʻi, Honolulu, San Francisco, United States Mint at San Francisco, modern State of Hawaii, Pacific & Oceania, Melanated history, Hawaiian Kingdom: The Hawaiian Kingdom’s 1883 silver coins placed the dignified profile of a melanated Native Hawaiian king into everyday circulation.
- [Birchtown and the Black Loyalists’ Unfinished Promise of Freedom](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1d555117-c534-46d1-8a54-41965d2717bf) — 1783 AD | Black Loyalists, Birchtown, Nova Scotia, Book of Negroes, African diaspora, Loyalist migration, Black settlements, Documented evidence, Shelburne, Port Roseway, New York, Halifax, Sierra Leone, modern Canada, Canada, North America, Melanated history, Canada: In 1783, Black Loyalists carried their freedom claims from New York to Birchtown, where they built a community despite broken land promises and colonial racism.
- [Kalākaua’s Silver Profile: A Melanated Hawaiian King on the Coinage of 1883](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0e2fa45f-eaea-41c3-9913-843568f5d6db) — 1883 AD | Documented evidence, King Kalākaua, Hawaiian Kingdom, Kanaka Maoli, Melanated sovereignty, Coinage, Numismatics, San Francisco Mint, Hawaii, United States, Hawaiʻi, Honolulu, San Francisco, modern Hawaii, North America, Melanated history, United States: Silver coins struck at San Francisco in 1883 carried the dignified profile of Kalākaua, making a dark-skinned Indigenous Hawaiian sovereign visible in everyday commerce.
- [Henri Christophe’s Royal Coinage: A Black King in Silver](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/867a0d40-62f1-4594-b027-ec7cc9077c22) — 1811 AD | Documented evidence, Henri Christophe, Black royalty, Haitian Revolution, Coins, Numismatics, Kingdom of Haiti, Black sovereignty, Caribbean history, Cap-Henry, Cap-Haïtien, Kingdom of Hayti, Haiti, Sans-Souci, Milot, Citadelle Henry, Citadelle Laferrière, Caribbean, Melanated history, Haiti: Henri Christophe’s silver coins placed the dignified profile of a Black revolutionary king into everyday circulation across northern Haiti.
- [Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the Creation of a Black Empire in Haiti](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0e80483d-a0a3-4cc8-8866-4ad8e3d5c1cd) — 1804 AD | Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Jacques I, Haitian Revolution, Black sovereignty, Black royalty, Haitian independence, Imperial Constitution of 1805, Documented evidence, Saint-Domingue, Gonaïves, Le Cap, Cap-Haïtien, Marchand, Dessalines, Caribbean, Melanated history, Haiti: In 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines transformed a victorious Black revolution into independent Haiti and assumed the crown as Emperor Jacques I.
- [The Negritude Circle in Paris](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3fc92dd9-dc75-4372-824e-c0194e7a4c89) — 1935 AD | France, Negritude, Paris, Literature, Politics, europe: Cesaire, Senghor and Damas met as students in Paris and created a movement that changed European letters.
- [The Congolese Community of Brussels Before Independence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/95f8bc0e-ed5d-4b0c-9949-f87bc063fe1f) — 1950 AD | Belgium, Brussels, Congo, Community, Politics, europe: Belgium's capital held Congolese students, sailors and workers who organised politically well before 1960.
- [Abram Gannibal and the African Line of the Russian Nobility](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/93123397-d577-4723-99f4-dd2875ae00c7) — 1742 AD | Russia, Abram Gannibal, Nobility, Engineering, Pushkin, europe: Peter the Great's godson became a general and engineer, and his great-grandson was Pushkin.
- [Addi Ba and the Black Maquis of the Vosges](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3b3e8d1f-589a-4439-a097-7688554e564d) — 1943 AD | France, Addi Ba, Resistance, Vosges, Second World War, europe: A Guinean soldier organised one of the first maquis groups in eastern France and was executed in 1943.
- [The Black Presence in Postwar Nordic Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8fc19905-56f2-4475-adf6-8b6df272da96) — 1950 AD | Sweden, Nordic, Migration, Community, Archives, europe: African students, musicians and workers settled in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm from the 1940s and formed lasting communities.
- [Learie Constantine and the Imperial Hotel Case](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8ecb468c-bdc5-43b7-9319-9b092c366840) — 1944 AD | United Kingdom, Learie Constantine, Law, Discrimination, Sport, europe: A Trinidadian cricketer won a landmark English court case against racial discrimination in 1944.
- [Angelo Soliman, the Viennese Freemason Whose Body Was Stolen](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/891a929d-fbb8-452e-b146-d44d6260e65a) — 1796 AD | Austria, Angelo Soliman, Vienna, Freemasonry, Court, europe: A courtier, chess master and lodge brother of Mozart's circle was stuffed and displayed in a Vienna museum after death.
- [The African Delegates of the 1900 Pan-African Conference in London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/662cdc11-f246-438e-8225-6fa399386bb9) — 1900 AD | United Kingdom, Pan-Africanism, London, Conference, Politics, europe: Delegates from Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas met in Westminster and issued the address to the nations of the world.
- [The Black Deputies of the French National Convention](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/53859d56-43e5-4e1e-a819-f65a9e66a2ab) — 1794 AD | France, Jean-Baptiste Belley, Politics, Abolition, Revolution, europe: Jean-Baptiste Belley and colleagues sat in the French parliament and forced through the abolition of slavery in 1794.
- [The Black Ladies of the Scottish Court of James IV](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5253a1bc-69ab-4375-93a6-a708bfe632ac) — 1507 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Stuart, Court, Archives, europe: Edinburgh treasury accounts record African women at the Scottish court, dressed in damask and honoured at royal tournaments.
- [The African and Caribbean Soldiers of the First World War in Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/44eda93d-507b-4e23-a802-832a3aa720d3) — 1916 AD | France, First World War, Military, Cemeteries, Colonialism, europe: Hundreds of thousands of African and Caribbean troops and labourers served on European soil, and many are buried there.
- [The Amis des Noirs and Black Petitioners in Paris](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/77d13d7f-adde-4269-83be-88931af76d36) — 1777 AD | France, Paris, Police des Noirs, Archives, Community, europe: Free Black residents of Paris petitioned the crown and the Revolution in their own names, and the police files preserve their words.
- [The Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3ec8d0d8-f1c9-4fa7-a411-9e3332b56f2f) — 1945 AD | United Kingdom, Manchester, Pan-Africanism, Congress, Politics, europe: Delegates including Nkrumah, Kenyatta and Padmore met in a Manchester hall in 1945 and set the course of African independence.
- [The Black Resistance Fighters of Belgium and the Netherlands](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3d722fd1-67aa-4a74-ab90-35a368434654) — 1944 AD | Belgium, Resistance, Congo, Second World War, Archives, europe: Congolese and Surinamese residents joined resistance networks in occupied Belgium and the Netherlands.
- [The Black Napoleonic Officers and the Restoration Purge](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/20a189fd-bb0e-4176-8e83-d6a1ed6a3953) — 1802 AD | France, Napoleon, Military, Legislation, Archives, europe: Napoleon's 1802 decrees barred officers of colour from France, ending careers and forcing exile.
- [Hilarius Gilges, Black Antifascist Murdered in Dusseldorf](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/03c3385c-c44b-4142-aecc-1135e3d48f66) — 1933 AD | Germany, Hilarius Gilges, Antifascism, Nazi Germany, Memorial, europe: A young Black German dancer and communist was killed by the SS in 1933 and is commemorated in his city.
- [Cristobal de Meneses and the Black Clergy of Habsburg Spain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d7f8fc26-0f00-47d0-9247-91649e20a83e) — 1580 AD | Spain, Clergy, Habsburg, Archives, Religion, europe: Spanish dioceses ordained Black priests in the sixteenth century, and their careers are documented in cathedral chapter acts.
- [The Windrush Generation and the Postwar Reshaping of Britain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/00149cf2-b201-46ac-b630-bce24c1192e8) — 1948 AD | United Kingdom, Windrush, Migration, Caribbean, Policy, europe: Caribbean workers who arrived from 1948 were British subjects, invited and then, decades later, wrongly denied.
- [The Black Students of Edinburgh and Glasgow Medical Schools](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c7fc7b33-f631-47e4-8ad1-0e9f6f9ae7de) — 1859 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Medicine, Education, Biography, europe: African and Caribbean students qualified as doctors in Scotland from the 1830s and practised across the empire and in Britain.
- [The Legion Saint-Georges and Black Soldiers of the French Revolution](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2963e918-b322-445d-9df6-26d1b866fc16) — 1792 AD | France, Legion Saint-Georges, Military, Revolution, Archives, europe: A regiment of over a thousand men of colour fought for the Republic, commanded by Black officers including Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.
- [Rudolph Dunbar, First Black Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c4832a79-cd9b-4304-93aa-828ce8413080) — 1945 AD | Germany, Rudolph Dunbar, Music, Conducting, Biography, europe: A Guyanese musician conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in 1945 and the London Philharmonic before that.
- [Dusé Mohamed Ali and the African Times and Orient Review](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bf1628bd-dcaf-449e-8c34-2c8a4b35a811) — 1912 AD | United Kingdom, Duse Mohamed Ali, Journalism, Pan-Africanism, London, europe: A London-published journal edited by an African gave a platform to Pan-African politics before the First World War.
- [The Black Population of Interwar Marseille and Claude McKay's Banjo](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ab63b070-acd8-4d7f-a157-b6be3e67f7f6) — 1929 AD | France, Marseille, Claude McKay, Literature, Community, europe: Marseille's Vieux Port held a Black seafaring community that a Jamaican novelist made world literature.
- [The Black Seafarers of South Shields and the 1930 Riots](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/866fedcd-5848-40f9-a8b7-df8ee94aec2c) — 1930 AD | United Kingdom, South Shields, Seafarers, Legislation, Community, europe: Britain's oldest Yemeni and West African seafaring community faced legislated discrimination and fought it.
- [Ira Aldridge, Black Tragedian of the European Stage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/10a5f990-695f-4db7-afd5-1e780cda7ece) — 1858 AD | Poland, Ira Aldridge, Theatre, Shakespeare, Biography, europe: Aldridge played Othello and Lear from London to Saint Petersburg and was decorated by three European states.
- [Panama Al Brown, Black Champion of European Boxing](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/61b9f061-6169-46d1-a5e1-7e2e237adcf5) — 1935 AD | France, Panama Al Brown, Boxing, Paris, Sport, europe: A world champion who lived in Paris, appeared on stage with Cocteau and fought across the continent.
- [Jacobus Capitein, African Theologian in the Dutch Republic](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/befc31c9-fef7-4533-95a6-c1b09c519c13) — 1742 AD | Netherlands, Jacobus Capitein, Leiden, Theology, Scholarship, europe: A Ghanaian-born scholar took a doctorate at Leiden and preached in Dutch churches before returning to Elmina.
- [The Black Musicians of the Elizabethan and Stuart Courts](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7b658fc6-e830-49d0-80e0-c8877689ccd2) — 1511 AD | United Kingdom, John Blanke, Tudor, Music, Court, europe: Payment rolls of English and Scottish courts name African trumpeters and drummers on the royal payroll for decades.
- [The Rhineland Children and the Nazi Sterilisation Programme](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/43dc5452-0c17-49cc-9bd0-1c80e2898dbd) — 1937 AD | Germany, Rhineland children, Nazi Germany, Eugenics, Archives, europe: Children of African soldiers and German mothers were secretly sterilised by state order in 1937.
- [Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e77ea99d-cebc-4344-9099-ae3ff8b396af) — 1780 AD | France, Saint-Georges, Music, Fencing, Revolution, europe: The finest swordsman and one of the finest composers in France led an orchestra that premiered Haydn's Paris symphonies.
- [The Black Population of Nineteenth-Century Hamburg and Bremen](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/02cc4a03-617d-46d9-974e-81e55d75c4e3) — 1870 AD | Germany, Hamburg, Ports, Community, Archives, europe: German port cities held African sailors, performers and students whose registrations survive in city archives.
- [The Taranto Mutiny of the British West Indies Regiment](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2441813d-41bf-45fd-9cfd-5e353d3442ce) — 1918 AD | Italy, Taranto, Military, Mutiny, Caribbean, europe: Caribbean soldiers in Italy mutinied against racial discrimination in 1918, and the courts martial records survive.
- [Juan Latino, Black Professor of Granada](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/09bbfcf7-1ea1-444f-8b4b-7a3697467da0) — 1573 AD | Spain, Juan Latino, Scholarship, Poetry, Renaissance, europe: A man born in Africa held the chair of Latin at Granada and published epic verse read across Habsburg Spain.
- [General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the Black Count](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/578eeb86-ef6e-440c-91e1-16fd9d605d04) — 1798 AD | France, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, Military, Napoleon, Biography, europe: Born in Saint-Domingue to an enslaved mother, Dumas rose to general and commanded armies in the Alps and Egypt.
- [The Black Communities of Nineteenth-Century Liverpool and Cardiff](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f3dd5a4b-bb16-4802-be78-d92d177887a1) — 1850 AD | United Kingdom, Liverpool, Cardiff, Community, Census, europe: Britain's oldest continuous Black communities grew in dockland parishes and are documented in census and parish records.
- [The Black Sitters of Nineteenth-Century European Painting](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ea89c7b5-5dd1-4995-94f6-98e6c1909934) — 1863 AD | France, Manet, Laure, Art, Models, europe: Joseph, Laure and other Black models sat repeatedly for Gericault, Manet and their circle, and their names have been recovered.
- [Juan de Pareja, Painter and Freedman of Madrid](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b6a048a3-c438-4424-8070-e1315a063f61) — 1650 AD | Spain, Juan de Pareja, Painting, Madrid, Art, europe: Velazquez's enslaved assistant became a painter in his own right and left signed altarpieces in Spanish churches.
- [The Black Abolitionists Who Toured Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/718906b2-ff96-41e8-860e-e5074de20655) — 1846 AD | Ireland, Abolition, Frederick Douglass, Lectures, Press, europe: Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Ellen and William Craft and others lectured across Britain, Ireland and the continent.
- [Sarah Baartman and the Long Fight for Her Return](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3d1013d7-d9eb-4e99-a6a1-3faa64dec446) — 1810 AD | United Kingdom, Sarah Baartman, Exhibitions, Law, Repatriation, europe: Displayed in London and Paris and dissected after death, her remains were held in France until 2002.
- [The Human Zoos of Europe and the People Who Resisted Them](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0eadd9af-4ab3-4715-9743-a4d8099c64d8) — 1889 AD | Germany, Human zoos, Colonialism, Exhibitions, Resistance, europe: From Hamburg to Paris, Africans were displayed in ethnographic shows, and some sued, escaped or wrote about it.
- [Jesse Owens in Berlin and the Black Athletes of the 1936 Olympics](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4500843b-8758-41e6-a6b2-490986ac37a3) — 1936 AD | Germany, Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens, Sport, Nazi Germany, europe: Eighteen Black athletes competed for the United States in Nazi Berlin, and their reception in Europe was documented in detail.
- [Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed and Black Victims of the Camps](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4e327788-097c-4f4b-be2d-31b671b510a0) — 1944 AD | Germany, Sachsenhausen, Nazi Germany, Memory, Biography, europe: African residents of Germany were interned and died in Nazi camps, including in Sachsenhausen.
- [Saint Benedict the Moor of Palermo](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d259cb24-4002-4381-b5e3-116051e466ec) — 1589 AD | Italy, Palermo, Benedict the Moor, Religion, Sicily, europe: A Sicilian-born son of Africans became the most popular saint of the southern Mediterranean and patron of Palermo.
- [Alexander Pushkin and Black Ancestry in Russian Letters](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e54398e8-3ea8-46ae-9724-47089939433d) — 1828 AD | Russia, Pushkin, Literature, Ancestry, Nobility, europe: Russia's national poet wrote openly of his African great-grandfather and began a novel about him.
- [The Tirailleurs Senegalais in the Occupation of the Rhineland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f9226e88-a21f-4c50-a824-94be69f4067a) — 1920 AD | Germany, Tirailleurs, Rhineland, Propaganda, Military, europe: African French troops occupied German territory after 1918 and became the target of a Europe-wide racist propaganda campaign.
- [Anton Wilhelm Amo, African Philosopher of German Universities](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f9cd6ca9-ad87-4d61-b557-33ef1349ff2c) — 1734 AD | Germany, Anton Wilhelm Amo, Philosophy, Halle, Scholarship, europe: Amo took degrees at Halle and Wittenberg, lectured at Jena and published in Latin on the mind and on the rights of Africans in Europe.
- [The Afro-German Families of the Rhineland Before 1914](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/39a49252-2aad-48ea-ac91-ae0cebca6c35) — 1890 AD | Germany, Rhineland, Afro-German, Community, Archives, europe: Marriages, baptisms and school records document settled Black families in western Germany well before the First World War.
- [Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d5a161aa-b471-4a33-84b6-7bdb4be9d31c) — 1531 AD | Italy, Florence, Alessandro de Medici, Medici, Portraiture, europe: A Black man ruled Florence, married a Habsburg and was assassinated by his own cousin at twenty-six.
- [Josephine Baker, from the Paris Stage to the Resistance](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fb4b7fde-ca33-4cbb-9862-78858811672d) — 1940 AD | France, Josephine Baker, Resistance, Performance, Second World War, europe: A performer who became a French intelligence agent and was later interred in the Pantheon.
- [George Bridgetower and the Beethoven Sonata](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c9f0d6e2-7a9f-485b-8c45-ccfb3941a19a) — 1803 AD | Austria, George Bridgetower, Music, Beethoven, Biography, europe: A Black violinist premiered the sonata Beethoven first dedicated to him, before the dedication was withdrawn.
- [The Black Population of Ottoman Bosnia and Sarajevo](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/495a056b-bfc1-4d44-84ce-8767a945b48e) — 1700 AD | Bosnia, Sarajevo, Ottoman, Archives, Community, europe: Sarajevo's sicil court registers name African residents, some as property owners and craftsmen.
- [The Almanzor Campaigns and the Reach of Muslim Power in Iberia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/148657ff-8166-44f8-a4af-de511524978e) — 997 AD | Spain, Almanzor, Moors, Al-Andalus, Medieval, europe: Al-Mansur led more than fifty campaigns from Cordoba to Santiago de Compostela, carrying its bells south on Christian shoulders.
- [Fraxinetum: The Moorish Colony in Provence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bbe84863-42b2-4f68-b8f9-cb566630e2d3) — 889 AD | France, Fraxinetum, Moors, Provence, Medieval, europe: For most of the tenth century a Muslim settlement in the Massif des Maures controlled Alpine passes and traded across southern France.
- [The Black Magi of Cologne and the Relics of the Three Kings](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cae4d100-34d2-478d-bbeb-2da38441d8ea) — 1350 AD | Germany, Cologne, Black Magus, Art, Pilgrimage, europe: Cologne's shrine made the city Europe's pilgrimage capital, and from the fourteenth century one of the kings was shown as African.
- [The Black Monks of the Egyptian Desert in European Monasticism](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6617eea2-f5d2-41b2-a23d-aa7e581f1d79) — 500 AD | Italy, Monasticism, Moses the Black, Religion, Manuscripts, europe: Rules and sayings collected from African monks shaped Benedictine practice, and Moses the Black became a European devotional figure.
- [Saint Menas and the African Pilgrim Flasks of Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6d1ce0de-6b6f-4e94-822e-2e389a1be508) — 450 AD | Germany, Saint Menas, Pilgrimage, Archaeology, Religion, europe: Clay flasks stamped with the African saint Menas were carried to Gaul, Italy and Germany, marking a devotional route from Egypt into Europe.
- [The Moors of Malta and the Maltese Language](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/08154571-72ef-499e-8425-4996bf08f4df) — 870 AD | Malta, Language, Moors, Medieval, Archaeology, europe: Maltese is the only Semitic language of the European Union, carried from North Africa and never displaced.
- [Pope Victor I, Miltiades and Gelasius: The African Popes](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/04e47abd-6ed1-4297-9c33-cc5bb3dceb90) — 189 AD | Italy, Papacy, African popes, Religion, Ancient Europe, europe: Three bishops of Rome are recorded as African, and one of them fixed the date of Easter for the whole western church.
- [Aesop the Ethiopian](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ded25333-0ff6-4b6b-8cee-e7cb78ee693d) — 560 BC | Greece, Aesop, Literature, Ancient Europe, Biography, europe: The most widely read storyteller of the ancient world was described in his own biography as an African, and Greek statuettes show him so.
- [The Ethiopian Embassy to the Council of Florence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e040d7f3-e59b-4204-b8e6-b7d46033fa85) — 1441 AD | Italy, Florence, Ethiopia, Diplomacy, Religion, europe: Ethiopian delegates attended the council of 1441 and were recorded in its acts and in the bronze doors of Saint Peter's.
- [Saint Victor the Moor of Milan](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e37a806b-08af-4736-91b1-2ab107acf740) — 303 AD | Italy, Milan, Victor the Moor, Religion, Ancient Europe, europe: A Mauretanian soldier martyred under Maximian became one of Milan's patron saints, painted black in the city's own basilica.
- [Norse Raids on Mauretania and the North African Captives of Scandinavia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0159fb1d-fac1-4f83-912e-f84372d844aa) — 859 AD | Denmark, Vikings, Morocco, Medieval, Maritime, europe: Ninth-century Norse fleets raided the Moroccan coast, and Arab sources describe the captives taken back to Ireland and the north.
- [Caracalla, Geta and the Damnatio of a Black Imperial Family](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a78cf825-87ab-4579-850a-a0c3c3692fd1) — 211 AD | Germany, Severans, Roman Empire, Portraiture, Ancient Europe, europe: The Severan tondo in Berlin shows an imperial family painted brown, with one son's face erased by official decree.
- [The Minoans of Crete and the Africans in Their Frescoes](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e69feccf-a4ba-45a8-9895-a10f598ab941) — 1600 BC | Greece, Crete, Minoans, Frescoes, Ancient Europe, europe: Crete's palace civilisation painted its people red-brown and depicted African troops and dignitaries at the heart of the Aegean world.
- [The Guanches of the Canary Islands](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fe7549b5-b479-4c18-abee-fbfe2e8d9e6c) — 1000 BC | Spain, Canary Islands, Guanches, Berber, Ancient Europe, europe: Europe's Atlantic frontier was held for centuries by a dark-skinned Berber people who mummified their dead and resisted Castile for a hundred years.
- [Alessandro Achillini and Black Sitters in Bolognese Painting](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8b9cde6e-1383-4211-b918-bc11ddcbb276) — 1500 AD | Italy, Bologna, Art, Archives, Community, europe: Bologna's painters portrayed African residents in altarpieces and portraits, and the city's notarial books name them.
- [The Mamluk and African Envoys to Renaissance Italy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e3f4d643-4712-4e07-909d-3ff85a66a11f) — 1480 AD | Italy, Diplomacy, Renaissance, Art, Africa, europe: Embassies from Egypt, Ethiopia and the Maghreb arrived at Venice, Florence and Rome and were painted into the city's own art.
- [The African Presence in Medieval Constantinople and Byzantine Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e90e1a34-a9a1-4d34-9b03-319f44c5408a) — 900 AD | Greece, Byzantium, Constantinople, Medieval, Community, europe: Byzantine chronicles, seals and church art record Africans as soldiers, monks and courtiers in the eastern Roman capital.
- [Memnon the Ethiopian in Greek Epic and Vase Painting](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/df50305f-cb76-4ad0-8cf8-7711b24989fc) — 540 BC | Greece, Memnon, Vase painting, Mythology, Ancient Europe, europe: The greatest ally of Troy was, in Greek telling, an Ethiopian king, and Attic vases paint him black among black attendants.
- [Septimius Severus, African Emperor of Rome](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/85b1d9f7-a404-41cb-ab85-e84ee5a6663e) — 193 AD | Italy, Septimius Severus, Roman Empire, Emperors, Portraiture, europe: A man from Leptis Magna took the purple, ruled the empire for eighteen years and died at York.
- [Al-Idrisi at the Court of Palermo](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/eee85f8c-f9c4-471c-b072-922f3330c403) — 1154 AD | Italy, Sicily, Al-Idrisi, Cartography, Medieval, europe: The greatest geographer of the age made his world map and silver planisphere in Sicily for a Christian king.
- [The Ethiopian Contingents of the Persian Wars in Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/81d6de4e-b68e-4bf1-94dc-f77617bc2f53) — 480 BC | Greece, Persian Wars, Herodotus, Military, Ancient Europe, europe: Herodotus describes Ethiopian troops marching into Greece with Xerxes, dressed in leopard skins and painted for battle.
- [The Vikings, Dublin and the Blamenn of the Sagas](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/810af9e8-f394-41f8-8e22-3587d7af593d) — 862 AD | Ireland, Vikings, Blamenn, Medieval, Annals, europe: Norse sources use the term blamenn for dark-skinned people, and Viking raids on Mauretania brought captives north to Ireland and Scandinavia.
- [The Africans of Ottoman Crete and the Aegean](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6d840701-6803-4575-89d7-251bff5938f1) — 1650 AD | Greece, Crete, Ottoman, Community, Archives, europe: Ottoman and Venetian records from Crete, Chios and the Cyclades name African residents, sailors and soldiers.
- [Leo Africanus and the Book That Taught Europe About Africa](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/66873be4-93a4-4fb8-ba9c-f8fd34cf3fba) — 1526 AD | Italy, Leo Africanus, Geography, Scholarship, Renaissance, europe: Al-Hasan al-Wazzan, captured and taken to Rome, wrote the Description of Africa that Europe read for three hundred years.
- [The Black Saints of Bohemia and the Prague Court of Charles IV](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f3edc799-dfdd-4c18-a64f-59fa94de9036) — 1360 AD | Czechia, Prague, Saint Maurice, Art, Medieval, europe: Charles IV commissioned images of Saint Maurice and the Black Magus for Karlstejn, placing Black sanctity at the centre of imperial ideology.
- [The Roma Arrival in Europe and the Colour Line](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/13029cf1-86de-4bb6-b6eb-1e1a3d2ec706) — 1385 AD | Romania, Roma, Slavery, Medieval, Archives, europe: Arriving from the fourteenth century, Roma were described by chroniclers as black and were enslaved in the Romanian principalities for five centuries.
- [Ibn Battuta in Europe: An African Traveller's Account of Granada](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8d1cb2d7-ab42-4c9f-ac5a-033b440d799c) — 1350 AD | Spain, Ibn Battuta, Travel, Al-Andalus, Medieval, europe: The Tangier-born traveller crossed to Andalusia and left one of the few African descriptions of medieval Europe.
- [The Black Guard and the Africans of Norman Sicily](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7b59b661-f80b-4d0e-9d89-428ac503589e) — 1140 AD | Italy, Sicily, Normans, Cappella Palatina, Court, europe: Roger II's court kept African administrators, guards and craftsmen, painted on the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina.
- [The Iberians of the Levantine Coast](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b6182138-5f54-454a-9ac2-d874fbfde33f) — 500 BC | Spain, Iberians, Lady of Elche, Ancient Europe, Sculpture, europe: Before Rome, the peninsula belonged to people whose own sculpture shows them broad-featured and dark, notably the Lady of Elche.
- [The Black Gondolier in Carpaccio's Miracle of the Cross](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f17189dc-7629-4b49-8a11-37b2ac7941db) — 1494 AD | Italy, Venice, Carpaccio, Art, Community, europe: A Black boatman occupies the foreground of one of Venice's most famous paintings, working, not serving.
- [The Black Population of Medieval Marseille and Montpellier](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6e8895e2-e802-40dc-92e9-579b46cebb58) — 1300 AD | France, Marseille, Medieval, Archives, Community, europe: Southern French notarial books record Africans as residents, apprentices and freed people from the thirteenth century.
- [Terence of Carthage, the African Who Shaped Latin Comedy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9be24ebd-acf8-4214-8e9a-6e7e594b0b8d) — 160 BC | Italy, Terence, Literature, Ancient Europe, Manuscripts, europe: Publius Terentius Afer, brought to Rome from Africa, wrote six plays that became the Latin schoolbook of Europe for two thousand years.
- [The Portuguese Voyages and the First Free African Residents of Lagos](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/38f88f34-d7c5-479c-8b66-7209aed12617) — 1444 AD | Portugal, Lagos, Algarve, Archives, Community, europe: From 1444 Lagos in the Algarve became the entry point for Africans into Europe, and some negotiated free status within a generation.
- [The African Servants and Freedmen of Medieval Barcelona](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b16364c4-1452-49bf-a1be-53bfaf01780f) — 1455 AD | Spain, Barcelona, Confraternities, Medieval, Archives, europe: Catalan archives record manumissions, marriages and confraternity membership among Black residents of the city.
- [The Black Confraternity of Evora and Rural Portugal](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/57b67076-7a4b-404b-ba07-b2e595523781) — 1580 AD | Portugal, Evora, Alentejo, Confraternities, Community, europe: Beyond Lisbon, Alentejo towns had substantial African populations with their own brotherhoods and festivals still remembered locally.
- [The Zanj Names of the Byzantine and Slavic Frontier](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5c8065a1-7d40-4979-b07f-8ea176875483) — 1400 AD | Serbia, Onomastics, Balkans, Surnames, Medieval, europe: Personal and place names built on Moor, Saracen and Zanj roots run through Balkan and Slavic records and merit systematic study.
- [The Emirate of Bari and Muslim Rule in Southern Italy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a9361503-0890-4540-9902-cd715f7729fd) — 847 AD | Italy, Bari, Moors, Emirate, Medieval, europe: An African-led emirate held Bari for a quarter century, and Muslim settlement on the mainland lasted far longer at Lucera.
- [The Afro-Abkhazians and the Black Villages of the Caucasus](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bfee5615-1ee2-43e2-be4e-9a5db3179fcb) — 1800 AD | Georgia, Abkhazia, Caucasus, Ethnography, Community, europe: Villages in Abkhazia held a Black population documented by Russian ethnographers and photographed in the nineteenth century.
- [The Moorish Conquest of Sicily and the Emirate of Palermo](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4f728ab0-41cd-4ca5-9a08-588c4ad9a864) — 831 AD | Italy, Sicily, Moors, Palermo, Al-Andalus, europe: For more than two centuries Sicily was ruled from Africa, and Palermo became one of the great cities of the Mediterranean.
- [The Black Athenians: Africans in Classical Attica](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/97290076-347e-423c-8da3-d98faeeee8f1) — 450 BC | Greece, Athens, Ancient Europe, Ceramics, Community, europe: Athenian pottery, inscriptions and comedy record Africans as soldiers, servants, athletes and citizens' children in the fifth century.
- [The Ethiopian Monastery of Santo Stefano dei Mori in Rome](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3709be05-1641-42f7-9496-05175574614d) — 1481 AD | Italy, Rome, Ethiopia, Religion, Printing, europe: Behind Saint Peter's, Ethiopian monks kept a community, a press and a library from the fifteenth century onward.
- [Bilal and the Black Muslim Communities of Medieval Iberia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/355bdb17-0563-4572-bfe7-b1a8f8bba6fe) — 1050 AD | Spain, Al-Andalus, Moors, Scholarship, Biography, europe: Sub-Saharan Africans were present in Al-Andalus as soldiers, scholars, poets and rulers' mothers, and the biographical dictionaries name them.
- [The Court Poets of Seville under al-Mutamid](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2920076e-69d1-4c69-9b97-e4faf5644d15) — 1080 AD | Spain, Seville, Al-Andalus, Poetry, Medieval, europe: Al-Mutamid's Seville drew poets from across Africa and Iberia, and his own verse survives from exile in Morocco.
- [Hadrian of Canterbury, African Abbot in Anglo-Saxon England](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/27a2fa5e-ba89-4583-a4cf-954ecb567f30) — 668 AD | United Kingdom, Hadrian of Canterbury, Anglo-Saxon, Scholarship, Religion, europe: A North African scholar declined the archbishopric and instead ran the school at Canterbury that taught Greek and Latin to England.
- [The Ottoman Balkans and the Black Officials of Rumelia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/163a4294-2360-4d3f-ab7d-2ff56a5c5f59) — 1580 AD | Bosnia, Ottoman, Rumelia, Administration, Archives, europe: Ottoman Europe from Bosnia to Hungary was administered in part by African-born officials, including chief eunuchs who governed vast endowments.
- [The Sigtuna and Uppsala Finds: Africans in Medieval Sweden](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/85f56ad9-7f36-45e6-a58e-67c31abeec99) — 1200 AD | Sweden, Medieval, Archaeology, Baltic, Community, europe: Isotopic and grave evidence from Swedish medieval towns points to individuals with African origins in the Baltic trade world.
- [The Hungarian Black Army and Its African Soldiers](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a012a277-2997-42b3-85c6-6f758839987d) — 1465 AD | Hungary, Black Army, Matthias Corvinus, Military, Medieval, europe: Matthias Corvinus' standing army drew mercenaries from across the Mediterranean, and court records mention African men-at-arms.
- [The Crimean Khanate, the Black Sea and African Residents of Eastern Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4d0d8b43-e72f-430d-a515-d89d36bfd643) — 1600 AD | Ukraine, Crimea, Ottoman, Black Sea, Archives, europe: Caffa and Bahcesaray registers record Africans in the Black Sea trade world at the edge of Europe.
- [Nubian Pilgrims and Envoys in Medieval Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ba1a391b-aaf3-4691-81ed-262635e41f2f) — 1200 AD | Italy, Nubia, Pilgrimage, Diplomacy, Medieval, europe: Christian Nubia sent envoys and pilgrims to Constantinople, Rome and Santiago, and its kingdom outlasted many European states.
- [Moorcroft, Moorhouse and the Moor Surnames of Yorkshire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c3fe2c04-6b96-4dbb-ab74-5d278883b1a0) — 1300 AD | United Kingdom, England, Onomastics, Yorkshire, Heraldry, europe: Yorkshire's Moor names are tested here against the heraldry that shows Moors' heads on the shields of the same families..
- [Tom Molineaux and the Championship Fights of 1810](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0e839344-275a-499d-a291-3fb211ee1ff6) — 1810 AD | United Kingdom, England, Tom Molineaux, Boxing, Sport, europe: The formerly enslaved American fought Tom Cribb before enormous crowds and is buried in Galway..
- [William Cuffay and the London Chartists](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8783e83b-cac2-4c8c-8743-d02ce8d82551) — 1848 AD | United Kingdom, England, William Cuffay, Chartism, Politics, europe: The Chatham-born tailor led the metropolitan Chartists, was transported to Tasmania and organised working men there until his death..
- [The Sons of Africa in London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/417a1e59-b6a1-46a4-926c-82ce1e4565c1) — 1787 AD | United Kingdom, England, Sons of Africa, Abolition, Politics, europe: Britain's first Black political organisation wrote to parliament and the press, and its signatures survive on petitions in the archives..
- [Ignatius Sancho, Grocer and Man of Letters](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c05bb18e-293f-4512-b9bb-034850c7bbe2) — 1782 AD | United Kingdom, England, Ignatius Sancho, Letters, Portraiture, europe: Sancho ran a Westminster shop, voted in general elections, published music and corresponded with Sterne, and Gainsborough painted him..
- [Olaudah Equiano and the Interesting Narrative](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/091e1bea-8683-4154-9f60-26dced2048f7) — 1789 AD | United Kingdom, England, Olaudah Equiano, Abolition, Literature, europe: Equiano's book, subscribed by hundreds of British names, ran to nine editions in his lifetime and funded a national speaking tour..
- [Jacques Francis, the Diver of the Mary Rose Salvage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/abb3257d-30c1-47fe-a81f-f1583fd9a67e) — 1548 AD | United Kingdom, England, Jacques Francis, Tudor, Law, europe: The Guinean diver testified in an English admiralty court in 1548, the first recorded African witness in an English court..
- [Black Servants and Sitters in Stuart Portraiture](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d5607fff-286e-4572-9269-cde29708737e) — 1650 AD | United Kingdom, England, Stuarts, Portraiture, Archives, europe: Dozens of Stuart-era portraits include Black figures whose names appear in household accounts, and this record sets out to reunite face with name..
- [The Moray, Murray and Moor Names of Scotland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d5036515-c574-432b-b4c9-c29bf87b2733) — 1150 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Onomastics, Moors, Surnames, europe: Moray, Murray, Moore and Morrison are traced by onomastic research to the Moors, and the earliest charters and armorials are the place to test it..
- [The Stewart Name and the Black Line of Scotland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bd789d2a-8a2d-478d-9a7d-a89a4b0776d5) — 1371 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Stuarts, Onomastics, Royal lines, europe: This record opens the investigation into the tradition that the Stewarts were a dark-skinned people of Scotland, gathering the earliest heraldry, chronicle descriptions and portrait evidence before any conclusion is draw
- [Moors' Heads in British Heraldry](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d6037808-2607-4306-aefb-75ac9eadc485) — 1400 AD | United Kingdom, England, Heraldry, Moors, Nobility, europe: Hundreds of British coats of arms carry a Moor's head, and the grants of arms explain why the families chose it..
- [Walter Tull, Officer and Footballer](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/94a0e99f-ba0c-4538-aaa2-b954055b3c8f) — 1917 AD | United Kingdom, England, Walter Tull, Military, Football, europe: The Folkestone-born professional footballer led men into battle as one of the first Black officers in the British army and was killed at Favreuil..
- [Elizabeth I's Proclamations of 1596 and 1601](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cdfdec51-cfc6-44f0-8bb7-c3a5fb57c862) — 1596 AD | United Kingdom, England, Tudor, Elizabeth I, Law, europe: The queen's attempts to deport blackamoores failed for want of cooperation, and the drafts themselves record how settled the population had become..
- [William Davidson and the Cato Street Conspiracy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/caaac5ee-5c2b-49d0-852e-80767e20502e) — 1820 AD | United Kingdom, England, William Davidson, Radicalism, Law, europe: The Jamaican-born cabinetmaker was hanged and beheaded for the Cato Street plot, and his courtroom speech is in the trial record..
- [Mary Seacole and the British Hotel in the Crimea](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/70312b70-73b0-4b63-8a27-8be75920b919) — 1855 AD | United Kingdom, England, Mary Seacole, Medicine, Crimea, europe: The Jamaican-born nurse funded her own passage, built her hotel near Balaclava and outsold her rivals in the London bookshops..
- [James IV, the Aberdeen Tournament and the Black Ladies of the Court](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b8536178-f1af-4820-b0ba-b2d8e8197962) — 1507 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Stuarts, Court, Records, europe: Treasurer's accounts record fine damask, gold and a purpose-built ceremonial for African women at the Scottish court, honoured rather than hidden..
- [Mary Prince and the First Black Woman's Narrative in Britain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ae7e7326-700e-4bc6-9d35-bc37118ba4e9) — 1831 AD | United Kingdom, England, Mary Prince, Abolition, Literature, europe: Prince's 1831 account, taken down in London, forced the anti-slavery question into the House and was answered by a libel suit..
- [Dido Elizabeth Belle at Kenwood House](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d29ef603-b449-428b-a03d-5c240e049f6d) — 1779 AD | United Kingdom, England, Dido Belle, Portraiture, Law, europe: The daughter of a Royal Navy captain and an enslaved African woman was raised by the Lord Chief Justice and painted beside her cousin at Kenwood..
- [John Archer, Mayor of Battersea](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ae16c905-1909-4c68-b92f-329e5a7bf128) — 1913 AD | United Kingdom, England, John Archer, Politics, Battersea, europe: Elected in 1913, Archer told the borough that he was a man of African descent and proud of it, and served as president of the African Progress Union..
- [John Blanke, Trumpeter to Henry VII and Henry VIII](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ab5ae9b0-da8d-45f0-9f06-358640a99505) — 1511 AD | United Kingdom, England, John Blanke, Tudor, Court, europe: Blanke appears twice in the Westminster Tournament Roll, petitioned for a pay rise, won it, and received a wedding gift from the king..
- [The Somerset Case and James Somerset's Freedom](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a1cec43c-a385-4dc4-b113-10c6a8575f92) — 1772 AD | United Kingdom, England, Somerset case, Law, Abolition, europe: Lord Mansfield's 1772 judgment that a man could not be forcibly removed from England was won by a Black litigant and a Black campaign..
- [Robert Wedderburn, the Axe Laid to the Root](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/97ddd9da-3e8d-4444-83f7-163fe33a6384) — 1817 AD | United Kingdom, England, Robert Wedderburn, Radicalism, Print, europe: The Jamaican-born preacher and pamphleteer of Regency London linked slave revolt with English radicalism and was jailed for blasphemy..
- [Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Queen Victoria's Goddaughter](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9570c252-1bdb-4f8b-a659-0179ee88f835) — 1862 AD | United Kingdom, England, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Royal, Photography, europe: The Yoruba girl taken from Dahomey and presented to the queen married in Brighton in state and was photographed by the royal photographers..
- [Ottobah Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6ba4a709-e2e8-4bec-9f44-629aa475aa4d) — 1787 AD | United Kingdom, England, Ottobah Cugoano, Abolition, Literature, europe: Cugoano demanded immediate and total abolition with reparation in 1787, decades ahead of the parliamentary campaign..
- [Catalina of Motril, Laundress to Katherine of Aragon](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/eb6eb53d-b39a-4edf-a012-eb870be0fd4b) — 1501 AD | United Kingdom, England, Catalina, Tudor, Court, europe: The Morisca servant who came to England with the Spanish princess is documented in the divorce depositions in her own words..
- [Robert II and the First Stewart King](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f3b07193-9406-4fb0-bffd-60d537ece877) — 1371 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Stuarts, Robert II, Royal lines, europe: The first Stewart monarch, called by chroniclers a man of dark countenance, took the throne in 1371, and the surviving effigies and seals are the evidence to weigh..
- [Blackwood, Blackburn and Blackley: Black Place Names of England](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b848fa7e-1be7-4e1e-9330-3fec783b2d04) — 1086 AD | United Kingdom, England, Onomastics, Place names, Domesday, europe: Settlements and estates named for black people rather than black soil are catalogued here from the Domesday and later surveys..
- [The Blackadders, Blackstocks and Blacklocks of the Borders](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0345eff2-799a-40af-844d-1035f0bd3ee7) — 1400 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Onomastics, Borders, Surnames, europe: Border surnames built on black appear in muster rolls and sasines, and their earliest bearers are the subject of this record..
- [Reasonable Blackman, Silk Weaver of Southwark](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a630adfd-7fea-405f-a379-c4f1eb580979) — 1579 AD | United Kingdom, England, Reasonable Blackman, Tudor, Trade, europe: A free African craftsman ran his own silk-weaving business in Elizabethan Southwark and buried children in the parish during the plague..
- [The Blackamoor Inn Signs of Britain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/82925de3-60f2-4dd6-b98e-8382930dc154) — 1600 AD | United Kingdom, England, Onomastics, Signs, Community, europe: Inns and taverns named the Black Boy, Blackamoor and Saracen's Head map an older, ordinary Black presence across the country..
- [The African Population of Roman London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7b7b927b-c182-48dd-a080-f13233479b78) — 200 AD | United Kingdom, England, Roman Britain, London, Archaeology, europe: Skeletal and isotopic work on Roman London burials identifies individuals of African ancestry across four centuries of the city..
- [The Blackmores of Devon and Somerset](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7555313f-cb89-4a23-946e-f2fd68743ecf) — 1550 AD | United Kingdom, England, Onomastics, Surnames, Parish registers, europe: Parish registers of the west country carry the Blackmore name through five centuries, and this record gathers the earliest baptisms..
- [The Ivory Bangle Lady of Roman York](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/713d111a-e740-4d85-ae5b-65458895d844) — 350 AD | United Kingdom, England, Roman Britain, York, Archaeology, europe: A wealthy woman of African ancestry was buried at York with jet, ivory and a mirror, and her isotopes place her childhood in a warmer climate..
- [Mary Fillis of Morocco](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4520af8c-e7b6-499e-bc07-586cd9fde7fd) — 1597 AD | United Kingdom, England, Mary Fillis, Tudor, Baptism, europe: The Moroccan-born woman baptised at St Botolph's in 1597 gave a statement of her life that the parish clerk wrote down at length..
- [The Aurelian Moors on Hadrian's Wall](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/394d735a-e810-46c6-a673-d9c695a831d3) — 253 AD | United Kingdom, England, Roman Britain, Hadrians Wall, Inscriptions, europe: An inscription at Burgh-by-Sands records a unit of Moors garrisoning the Roman frontier in Cumbria..
- [The Beachy Head Lady of Roman Sussex](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/329652a4-034b-4ac3-b46d-79fbdfaa3bfe) — 245 AD | United Kingdom, England, Roman Britain, Sussex, Archaeology, europe: A young woman of sub-Saharan African ancestry who grew up in the area was buried near Eastbourne, a Roman Briton by upbringing..
- [Diego, Circumnavigator with Francis Drake](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/259bec41-d731-44b8-8bd1-7d6751d29668) — 1577 AD | United Kingdom, England, Diego, Tudor, Maritime, europe: The African seaman who joined Drake at Nombre de Dios sailed around the world with him and negotiated with Pacific islanders on his behalf..
- [The Picts and the Painted People Question](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/374ec781-fb55-469a-b24d-818dca3de4a8) — 300 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Picts, Ancient Europe, Archaeology, europe: Roman and Irish sources describe the Picts in terms this record examines directly, alongside the Pictish stones and recent ancestry work..
- [Ellen More and Margaret More at the Scottish Court](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/88699425-bdf5-4b00-ae09-0d227a018732) — 1512 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Ellen More, Court, Records, europe: Two named African women appear repeatedly in the Scottish royal accounts with wages, gowns and attendants of their own..
- [Dubh, Duff and the Dark Names of the Highlands](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0487b47e-6d45-4d04-961b-c77909c77706) — 1200 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Onomastics, Gaelic, Surnames, europe: The Gaelic element dubh runs through clan names, place names and personal names, and Dr Marie Charles's onomastic work treats it as descriptive rather than decorative..
- [Bill Richmond, the Prizefighter of Richmond](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1dc70d20-63ea-440d-9ec2-8912d26ccc8e) — 1805 AD | United Kingdom, England, Bill Richmond, Boxing, Sport, europe: Born on Staten Island, Richmond boxed at the highest level in England, kept the Horse and Dolphin tavern and trained the next generation..
- [Anne of Denmark, the Masque of Blackness and the Jacobean Court](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2d5f94c4-c444-46bf-8477-2b53eaa7760b) — 1605 AD | United Kingdom, England, Stuarts, Masque, Court, europe: Court entertainments cast the queen and her ladies as daughters of Niger, and the surviving costume designs and payments belong in this record..
- [Charles II and the 1661 Wright Portrait](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/35f5fc31-2406-458e-bfa3-0c0ef9fa4e35) — 1661 AD | United Kingdom, Stuarts, Charles II, Portraiture, Royal lines, europe: John Michael Wright's coronation portrait shows the king with dark skin and tightly curled hair, the version most often lightened in later engravings..
- [James VI and I: Reading the Original Portraits](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a0fb59ee-19f4-463b-b3ff-03240847c9b9) — 1603 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Stuarts, James VI, Portraiture, europe: Early likenesses of the first Stuart king of both realms differ markedly from later copies, and this record collects the versions for side-by-side comparison..
- [Dadabhai and the Pan-African Conference of 1900](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e017f703-1b8d-4b63-833f-4f805df40747) — 1900 AD | United Kingdom, England, Pan-Africanism, Sylvester Williams, Politics, europe: Henry Sylvester Williams convened the first Pan-African Conference in Westminster, drawing delegates from Africa, the Caribbean and the United States..
- [The Black Douglases of Scotland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/de054072-f78f-44f3-8a00-56118ad2c470) — 1330 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Douglas, Onomastics, Nobility, europe: The name Douglas is read as dark grey or dark water, and the family's own chroniclers repeatedly describe them as black, a tradition this record examines against the charters..
- [Queen Charlotte and the Mecklenburg-Strelitz Line](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ea4c5714-2229-4be9-bda0-5bbd54fc087f) — 1761 AD | United Kingdom, England, Queen Charlotte, Royal lines, Portraiture, europe: The consort of George III was described by her own physician as having a true mulatto face, and her descent is traced to Margarita de Castro y Sousa..
- [Peter the Moor, Drummer and Choreographer to James IV](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4564acb1-626d-4a7a-9fe4-577c53199471) — 1505 AD | United Kingdom, Scotland, Court, Music, Records, europe: The African musician of the Scottish court was paid for teaching the dances of the royal household, and the accounts name him repeatedly..
- [The Black Communities of Liverpool, Cardiff and South Shields](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/25749351-e80b-4837-a3c9-a5086e681009) — 1919 AD | United Kingdom, England, Liverpool, Cardiff, Community, europe: Britain's oldest continuous Black communities grew from seafaring, and their church registers, union books and 1919 riot depositions document them in detail..
- [Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the Hiawatha Trilogy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/33522354-c880-4b5d-9bb5-e3a537207184) — 1898 AD | United Kingdom, England, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Music, Biography, europe: The Croydon-born composer filled the Royal Albert Hall annually and toured the United States as the leading Black composer of his day..
- [Joseph Nasi, Duke of Naxos](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1175a931-cae2-4db1-ba86-38e7cafc7dcc) — 1566 AD | Europe, Turkey, Sephardic, Joseph Nasi, Diplomacy, europe: Dona Gracia's nephew became a duke under the Ottoman sultan, negotiated with European powers and attempted to resettle Jews at Tiberias..
- [The Esnoga of Amsterdam, Cathedral of the Sephardim](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0355f3b1-cda6-40c5-9c21-7724d962e024) — 1675 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Sephardic, Amsterdam, Architecture, europe: The Portuguese synagogue of 1675 was the largest in the world, and Emanuel de Witte's paintings of its congregation show a visibly dark-complexioned community..
- [The Sarajevo Haggadah and the Balkan Sephardim](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9c4ab375-ab87-4a8c-ac4c-de0af8ddca24) — 1350 AD | Europe, Bosnia, Sephardic, Haggadah, Manuscripts, europe: A fourteenth-century Iberian manuscript carried into Bosnia by exiles survived every subsequent war, and its illuminations show dark-skinned Israelites..
- [Hungary, Bohemia and Black Retainers of Central Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ccc11c14-0d5d-4c16-b226-9bcde9f91d0c) — 1600 AD | Europe, Hungary, Courts, Archives, Community, europe: Court records from Buda, Prague and Vienna document African musicians, guards and pages at the Habsburg and Hungarian courts..
- [Jean-Baptiste Belley, Deputy for Saint-Domingue in Paris](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fdfa3852-3f7b-4a38-a901-e4271b0f255d) — 1794 AD | Europe, France, Jean-Baptiste Belley, Politics, Portraiture, europe: Born in Senegal, Belley sat in the French Convention and voted for the abolition of slavery, and his portrait by Girodet hangs at Versailles..
- [Victor Schoelcher, the Decree of 1848 and the Black Delegates](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/70990e3d-22ee-4fdf-81e2-774c904319fd) — 1848 AD | Europe, France, Abolition, 1848, Politics, europe: The second French abolition came after Black petitioners and insurgents in Martinique forced the pace, a sequence the Paris record makes plain..
- [Samuel ha-Nagid, Vizier and General of Granada](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d1d331dc-fa6a-4bc0-ab04-b07450615690) — 1050 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Granada, Poetry, europe: A Hebrew poet commanded the armies of the Zirid kingdom for two decades, writing verse on the battlefield in the language of the Bible..
- [The Sephardim of Livorno and the Leghorn Charter](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5c83343b-666a-4f2c-833f-a0fa80ba2e53) — 1591 AD | Europe, Italy, Sephardic, Livorno, Trade, europe: Tuscany's Livornina charter of 1591 invited Iberian Jews with guarantees of trade and worship, and their community became the hinge of Mediterranean commerce..
- [Bevis Marks and the Sephardic Foundation of Anglo-Jewry](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f75a30c3-9732-44bd-a9d3-733936622550) — 1701 AD | Europe, United Kingdom, Sephardic, Bevis Marks, London, europe: London's oldest synagogue was built by Spanish and Portuguese families in 1701, and its own archive names the Iberian and Caribbean origins of its founders..
- [The Chuetas of Majorca](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/097f3790-d0d2-41ac-bd3a-65da0f52bac8) — 1691 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Chuetas, Majorca, europe: The converso descendants of Palma were kept apart into the twentieth century by the fifteen surnames on the Inquisition's sambenito lists, still hanging in the church of Santo Domingo..
- [Edmonia Lewis in Rome](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/52043665-8b53-4e0c-9bac-6c7d77d1555d) — 1876 AD | Europe, Italy, Edmonia Lewis, Sculpture, Art, europe: The Black and Ojibwe sculptor worked in marble in Rome and exhibited the Death of Cleopatra at Philadelphia, choosing an African Cleopatra..
- [The Sephardim of Bordeaux and Bayonne](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9f864e57-e064-4906-94ca-5b99459a2c5d) — 1550 AD | Europe, France, Sephardic, Bordeaux, Trade, europe: Portuguese merchants settled the Gascon ports as nation portugaise, and their guild papers, tax rolls and cemetery stones record two centuries of hidden practice..
- [Hamburg's Portuguese Jews and the Northern Trade](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a3423e22-2548-4e26-aa8e-a147971a36eb) — 1612 AD | Europe, Germany, Sephardic, Hamburg, Trade, europe: Sephardic merchants brought sugar, tobacco and bullion into Hamburg and Gluckstadt and negotiated their own charter with the city senate..
- [The Councils of Elvira and the Regulation of Iberian Jews](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9ea4a373-1f8c-4e14-9313-a00f40b174ca) — 306 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Religion, Law, europe: Fourth-century canons forbidding Christians to eat with Jews or to have their fields blessed by them prove a large, settled and confident community..
- [The Forced Baptism of Portuguese Jewry](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bdb7f13c-acd2-48ae-8c86-afe570cb7472) — 1497 AD | Europe, Portugal, Sephardic, Conversos, Persecution, europe: Manuel I ordered the children of the community seized and baptised in 1497, creating the crypto-Jewish families whose records run for four centuries..
- [Abraham Cresques and the Catalan Atlas of Majorca](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d31c3e2c-3e55-4aa4-a286-1a31124f01b9) — 1375 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Cartography, Mali, europe: The Jewish cartographer of Palma drew the world for the king of Aragon, showing Mansa Musa enthroned in gold at the centre of West Africa..
- [The Jewish Tombstones of Roman Merida and Tarragona](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e96f54fe-a29a-49dd-8df0-551979f5d8e1) — 300 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Archaeology, Inscriptions, europe: Trilingual and Hebrew-inscribed stones from Lusitania and Catalonia are the oldest physical trace of the Sephardic community, and their iconography is North African..
- [Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi, the Banker Who Ran an Escape Network](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f7c33db6-07b4-4fbe-9670-944df326fbf6) — 1553 AD | Europe, Portugal, Sephardic, Dona Gracia, Biography, europe: From Lisbon to Antwerp, Venice, Ferrara and Constantinople, Dona Gracia moved her house's fortune and used it to smuggle thousands of conversos out of the Inquisition's reach..
- [The Massacres of 1391 and the Making of the Conversos](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fdd756b3-b38e-4461-a052-409361c89a61) — 1391 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Conversos, Persecution, europe: Riots from Seville to Barcelona forced mass baptisms and created the converso class whose descendants were hunted for two centuries..
- [Bartolome de Albornoz and the Black Hospital of Valencia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e6503f14-4271-40e2-bc02-00d9be3cf881) — 1570 AD | Europe, Spain, Valencia, Confraternities, Community, europe: Valencian records describe a hospital and burial confraternity run by and for Africans in the Aragonese capital..
- [Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius of the European Stage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f2eae3b3-df09-46c3-a320-8105589a3b6b) — 1852 AD | Europe, Russia, Ira Aldridge, Theatre, Biography, europe: The Black American actor played Othello and Lear from London to Saint Petersburg, was decorated by three courts and is honoured at Stratford..
- [Ireland's Black Records: From Galway Merchants to Frederick Douglass](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/699ed7a0-a2ae-49cc-a851-7a6b26cbef26) — 1845 AD | Europe, Ireland, Frederick Douglass, Archives, Community, europe: Irish port books, parish registers and Douglass's own 1845 letters document a Black presence in Ireland long before the twentieth century..
- [The Black Communities of Genoa and the Ligurian Coast](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fba26d10-140b-4caf-8dcd-25058bd9ba2f) — 1450 AD | Europe, Italy, Genoa, Archives, Community, europe: Genoese notarial books record Africans as household members, freedmen, sailors and godparents from the fifteenth century onward..
- [Isaac Cardoso and the Defence of the Hebrews](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c8fde62a-fc7a-4deb-9e28-8c855862b0c7) — 1679 AD | Europe, Italy, Sephardic, Isaac Cardoso, Polemic, europe: A converso physician of Madrid who fled to Verona, Cardoso wrote Las excelencias de los Hebreos as a point-by-point reply to the racial libels of Iberia..
- [The Belmonte Crypto-Jews of Portugal](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/efb1a1dd-0079-4ce3-9cbd-5b1c18aef3a3) — 1917 AD | Europe, Portugal, Sephardic, Belmonte, Crypto-Jews, europe: A mountain village kept Jewish practice in secret for four hundred years, its rituals recorded by Samuel Schwarz in 1917 and filmed in the twentieth century..
- [The Fisk Jubilee Singers Tour Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/776f27cc-92af-42d4-b3b1-be1f32349823) — 1873 AD | Europe, United Kingdom, Fisk Jubilee Singers, Music, Tour, europe: Singing spirituals before Queen Victoria and the German courts, the Fisk singers funded their university and put Black sacred music into European concert halls..
- [Marseille, Toulon and Black Sailors of the French Mediterranean](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/00881047-a77c-4e0b-8a50-a83bef6e1801) — 1750 AD | Europe, France, Marseille, Maritime, Archives, europe: Naval muster rolls of the southern ports name African and Antillean seamen through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries..
- [Ignatius Sancho's Correspondents in Continental Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/08c0e12d-af88-4188-9fe6-b94633d893a7) — 1780 AD | Europe, France, Ignatius Sancho, Letters, Community, europe: Sancho's letters connect Black households in London, Paris and the Netherlands, and the network they map is a European one rather than an island story..
- [Amanda Smith and Black Preaching in Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/704f1a1d-0c0a-4ac6-8d12-4c65a102acc2) — 1878 AD | Europe, United Kingdom, Amanda Smith, Religion, Biography, europe: The Maryland-born evangelist preached across Britain and continental Europe for years, and her autobiography records the reception she met..
- [The First Sephardim: Israelites in Roman Iberia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/890093a7-0052-4d71-9306-11595a9ae971) — 200 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Ancient Europe, Inscriptions, europe: Inscriptions from Adra, Merida and Tarragona place Judaean families in Spain within a century of the fall of Jerusalem, arriving from Africa and the eastern Mediterranean rather than northern Europe..
- [Alessandro of Naples and the Black Nobility of the Two Sicilies](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/81642c59-7b13-42fe-8eac-0100bb2119ba) — 1600 AD | Europe, Italy, Nobility, Archives, Community, europe: Neapolitan and Sicilian archives record African-descended landholders, officers and clergy, a strand of southern Italian history usually left out..
- [Recife, Amsterdam and the Sephardic Atlantic](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/854e2394-190f-4ed9-87e8-83916b22e72a) — 1654 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Sephardic, Atlantic, Diaspora, europe: Jews of the Portuguese nation moved between Brazil, the Netherlands, the Caribbean and New Amsterdam, and their notarial papers trace one family across four continents..
- [Menasseh ben Israel and the Return of Jews to England](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a90c9aff-749d-49d5-8460-8da1307cdc3b) — 1655 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Sephardic, Menasseh ben Israel, England, europe: The Amsterdam rabbi petitioned Cromwell in person, and Rembrandt's circle produced the likeness that is still reproduced today..
- [Louis Delgres and the Last Stand at Matouba](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/af65e1ca-6807-4454-8e73-0e2617b8f780) — 1802 AD | Europe, France, Louis Delgres, Resistance, Abolition, europe: The Guadeloupean officer's proclamation to the universe was printed in Basse-Terre before he blew up his own position rather than accept re-enslavement..
- [Judah Halevi and the Road to Zion](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8d9ffe0b-052f-4442-8d13-8e516881beaf) — 1140 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Poetry, Philosophy, europe: The Toledo physician-poet abandoned Iberia for the eastern Mediterranean, and his Kuzari argues the case for a people rooted in Africa and Asia rather than Europe..
- [The Society of the Friends of the Blacks and the First French Abolition](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c1674d2d-82fd-4b96-b1bf-7b691b6cd089) — 1794 AD | Europe, France, Abolition, Revolution, Politics, europe: The Convention's decree of 16 Pluviose abolished slavery in all French territory, driven by Black delegates who had crossed the Atlantic to demand it..
- [The Alhambra Decree and the Expulsion of the Sephardim](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/586e7af1-b388-4367-99cf-0f13d3a72a9d) — 1492 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Expulsion, 1492, europe: In the same months as the fall of Granada and Columbus's sailing, the crown expelled the Jews of Spain, and the ports of departure are recorded in the notarial archives..
- [The Venetian Ghetto and the Ponentine Jews](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/76d43230-0cbb-45a7-bf02-7c06c00016d7) — 1541 AD | Europe, Italy, Sephardic, Venice, Ghetto, europe: The western Sephardim of Venice built the Scola Spagnola and traded to Aleppo and Amsterdam from inside the world's first ghetto..
- [The Ferrara Bible and Sephardic Printing in Italy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/67a1764d-b810-459d-905c-aaf99b5ac55a) — 1553 AD | Europe, Italy, Sephardic, Printing, Ferrara, europe: Abraham Usque's Ferrara press produced the Spanish Bible for the exiled community, and its dedications name the patrons who paid for it..
- [Baruch Spinoza and the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4e1c088b-36a1-41e8-886c-62adbae44833) — 1656 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Sephardic, Spinoza, Philosophy, europe: Excommunicated by his own community at twenty-three, Spinoza came from a Portuguese converso family whose Iberian and North African roots are documented in the Amsterdam registers..
- [Hasdai ibn Shaprut and the Letter to the Khazars](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2661bd9d-ba8c-48e6-b4dc-90c2faa849d8) — 960 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Cordoba, Diplomacy, europe: The Jewish physician and vizier of Cordoba conducted the caliphate's diplomacy and wrote to a distant Jewish kingdom in search of kin..
- [The Sephardim of Salonica, the Mother of Israel](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1b94a8e7-d4fc-4553-8a49-0dac41d6410a) — 1550 AD | Europe, Greece, Sephardic, Salonica, Ladino, europe: Ottoman Salonica became a majority-Jewish city of Iberian exiles whose Ladino press, dockers' guilds and rabbinic courts ran the port until the twentieth century..
- [Maimonides of Cordoba, from Al-Andalus to Fustat](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/09876651-38e0-49fd-95ab-816ac5862ce2) — 1180 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Maimonides, Philosophy, europe: Born in Cordoba and driven out by the Almohads, the Rambam wrote the Mishneh Torah and the Guide in North Africa and Egypt, and the earliest likeness of him is dark..
- [The Black Population of Seville, the Second Blackest City in Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cb46d471-ff7d-4ebb-b2a0-dc9834834c3b) — 1560 AD | Europe, Spain, Seville, Confraternities, Community, europe: Sixteenth-century Seville had its own Black confraternity, hospital and elected leader, and the parish registers of San Bernardo let its families be counted..
- [Ladino: The Language the Exiles Kept](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f2c67ced-4de5-4fdc-afb6-d560ca0115ad) — 1600 AD | Europe, Greece, Sephardic, Ladino, Language, europe: Judeo-Spanish carried fifteenth-century Iberian speech into Salonica, Izmir, Sarajevo and Sofia, preserved in ballads, newspapers and prayer books..
- [Solomon ibn Gabirol and the Hebrew Golden Age](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/812ffb4d-1f26-49ce-8c19-b939bca4a3f3) — 1050 AD | Europe, Spain, Sephardic, Philosophy, Poetry, europe: The Malaga-born poet and Neoplatonist wrote the Keter Malkhut and a philosophical work that circulated in Latin Europe under a Christian misattribution..
- [The Lisbon Massacre of 1506](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9a80f3d3-ea31-4740-8ee2-3ee03fbcc383) — 1506 AD | Europe, Portugal, Sephardic, Conversos, Massacre, europe: Thousands of conversos were killed in three days in Lisbon, an event described by contemporary German and Italian eyewitnesses whose pamphlets survive..
- [Uriel da Costa and the Limits of Toleration](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2ea5e412-d5df-48ba-9e5a-6c8b5b8fff82) — 1640 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Sephardic, Uriel da Costa, Biography, europe: The Porto-born converso who broke with rabbinic authority in Amsterdam left an autobiography that documents the crypto-Jewish world he escaped..
- [Alexandre Dumas fils and the Black Dynasty of French Letters](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f533b89e-c74b-4e37-a8f6-04d2034c99dd) — 1852 AD | Europe, France, Dumas, Literature, Biography, europe: Three generations of one African-descended family produced a general, a novelist and a dramatist of the Academie francaise..
- [Solitude of Guadeloupe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9c72c93f-749f-47cf-8cff-7bead542bb2c) — 1802 AD | Europe, France, Solitude, Resistance, Memory, europe: The pregnant maroon woman executed after the 1802 rising is now a statue in Paris and Pointe-a-Pitre, and the trial record names her..
- [Jacobus Capitein, Preacher of Leiden](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/285a4c80-37da-4fc7-a161-77e225ae71bf) — 1742 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Jacobus Capitein, Theology, Scholarship, europe: The Ghanaian-born theologian took his degree at Leiden, published his dissertation in Latin and Dutch and returned to Elmina as a minister..
- [The Black Madonna of Loreto](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0730cdc0-31bc-416e-9b26-40986a45443c) — 1300 AD | Europe, Italy, Black Madonna, Loreto, Religion, europe: The Italian shrine's dark Virgin was replicated across the Catholic world, and the litany of Loreto sings of one who is black and beautiful..
- [Tariq ibn Ziyad and the Crossing to Gibraltar](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0a20f2e2-368a-4d77-8969-f9708756a752) — 711 AD | Europe, Spain, Moors, Tariq ibn Ziyad, Al-Andalus, europe: The Berber commander who gave his name to the rock landed seven thousand men in 711 and ended the Visigothic kingdom within a year..
- [Abd al-Rahman III and the Caliphate of Cordoba](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0aa331ab-5589-4fba-9e53-2d25e95d69ef) — 929 AD | Europe, Spain, Moors, Cordoba, Al-Andalus, europe: Under Abd al-Rahman III Cordoba became the largest city in Europe, with street lighting, public baths and a library of four hundred thousand volumes..
- [Joao de Sa Panasco, Knight of the Order of Santiago](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0d4330e5-aff6-4b43-b48a-a0248cce83e5) — 1535 AD | Europe, Portugal, Joao de Sa Panasco, Nobility, Court, europe: The African-born courtier of John III of Portugal rose from jester to knight and received a royal pension, all recorded in the Torre do Tombo..
- [La Brana 1 and Mesolithic Iberia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/36686959-7beb-4aa5-b2ef-9ec7875e1384) — 7000 BC | Europe, Spain, La Brana, Genetics, Ancient Europe, europe: The Leon cave burial carried the dark-skin alleles now known to be standard across Mesolithic Europe, from Spain to Hungary..
- [The Villabruna Burial and the Ancestry of Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4be2e8d6-77d1-419f-af2c-e57dc5d62ca1) — 14000 BC | Europe, Italy, Villabruna, Genetics, Ancient Europe, europe: A young man buried in the Italian Dolomites founded the lineage that dominated later European hunter-gatherers, and his pigmentation profile was dark..
- [Saint Benedict the Moor and the Black Confraternities of Sicily](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5c827124-1508-44d8-b7c5-8ea5fabb3bb7) — 1589 AD | Europe, Italy, Benedict the Moor, Religion, Confraternities, europe: The Black Franciscan of Palermo became patron of the city's African brotherhoods, and his images across Europe were kept deliberately dark..
- [Abram Petrovich Gannibal, General of Russia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5ecc136a-f4f6-4e71-bd25-757bb611f8db) — 1742 AD | Europe, Russia, Abram Gannibal, Military, Biography, europe: Taken from Africa to Constantinople and then to Peter the Great, Gannibal trained as a military engineer in France and rose to general and landowner..
- [The Grimaldi Skeletons of the Italian Riviera](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/71842795-ea8f-4d06-b581-45e0ed15e742) — 25000 BC | Europe, Italy, Grimaldi, Ancient Europe, Anthropology, europe: Two burials from the Grotte des Enfants on the Ligurian coast were classified by their excavators as negroid and remain the oldest named African presence in western Europe..
- [Saint Maurice of Magdeburg](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/74dcc7bd-ef5c-4c9c-8358-0c17adbe6e77) — 1240 AD | Europe, Germany, Saint Maurice, Magdeburg, Sculpture, europe: The commander of the Theban legion is carved in Magdeburg cathedral as an African knight in full mail, the first monumental Black figure in northern European art..
- [The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/82696283-a671-45be-8804-c8d85bcfa136) — 1609 AD | Europe, Spain, Moriscos, Expulsion, Al-Andalus, europe: Three hundred thousand people of Moorish descent were shipped out of Spain by royal decree, and the port registers of Valencia and Seville record them by name..
- [Our Lady of Czestochowa and the Black Virgin of Poland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/84eaa504-0122-4164-819d-07a2b0858dab) — 1382 AD | Europe, Poland, Black Madonna, Czestochowa, Religion, europe: Crowned Queen of Poland, the Jasna Gora icon is black-faced, and the national devotion to her has never required her to be otherwise..
- [The Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of Black Men, Lisbon](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8da873f6-b6f2-4622-95aa-570dc59fcb31) — 1494 AD | Europe, Portugal, Confraternities, Lisbon, Community, europe: Lisbon's Black confraternity, founded in the fifteenth century, bought freedom for its members and buried them with dignity in the heart of the capital..
- [Black Lisbon: A Tenth of the City](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9fd99ba9-8677-4579-810b-b25038585f3b) — 1550 AD | Europe, Portugal, Lisbon, Demography, Community, europe: Sixteenth-century travellers described Lisbon as the Black capital of Europe, and parish registers let that population be counted street by street..
- [Al-Zahrawi and the Surgery of Cordoba](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a01ab46e-9a82-40c8-b6f9-173a57763b16) — 1000 AD | Europe, Spain, Al-Zahrawi, Medicine, Al-Andalus, europe: The thirty-volume Kitab al-Tasrif set out instruments, sutures and operations still recognisable today and was the surgical textbook of Europe for five centuries..
- [Saint Gregory the Moor and the Black Saints of the Rhineland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a1b139f1-db31-4771-89d7-019250ebd841) — 1450 AD | Europe, Germany, Black saints, Cologne, Art, europe: Cologne and Trier venerated Black saints in painting and reliquary, and the Adoration panels of the region gave Balthasar an African face from the fifteenth century..
- [The Almohads and the Giralda of Seville](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/af19ab86-3c29-450e-99fa-54ec0281d6fd) — 1184 AD | Europe, Spain, Almohads, Architecture, Al-Andalus, europe: Almohad builders from the Atlas raised the Giralda and the Kutubiyya to the same design, leaving north African architecture as the skyline of southern Spain..
- [Alexander Pushkin and the African Line of Russian Letters](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b291347f-d132-4894-921c-5638e5ccaf14) — 1830 AD | Europe, Russia, Pushkin, Literature, Portraiture, europe: Russia's national poet wrote openly of his African great-grandfather and began a novel about him, and his early portraits were later softened..
- [Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b6e0350b-d1bb-4074-b595-d0558b5afcbb) — 1531 AD | Europe, Italy, Alessandro de Medici, Nobility, Portraiture, europe: Il Moro, son of a Black servant woman, ruled Florence for seven years and was painted by Bronzino with his hair and features unaltered..
- [Balthasar the Black King in European Painting](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c85d1764-f98d-4f02-8af6-0f86beb3d9ca) — 1470 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Balthasar, Art, Portraiture, europe: From Memling to Bosch the third Magus is painted as a richly dressed African prince, evidence of how Europe once imagined majesty..
- [Yusuf ibn Tashfin and the Almoravid Empire in Spain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d9ee140b-ddd3-4ea0-a78e-d32c8dae44fe) — 1086 AD | Europe, Spain, Almoravids, Moors, Al-Andalus, europe: The Almoravid ruler crossed from Marrakesh, broke Castile at Sagrajas and united Muslim Spain under a Saharan Berber dynasty..
- [Katharina, the African Servant of Albrecht Durer](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/da7bab29-a843-4932-a36a-c8658a2a557d) — 1521 AD | Europe, Belgium, Durer, Katharina, Portraiture, europe: Durer's Antwerp drawing names a twenty-year-old African woman in a Portuguese household, one of the first named Black sitters in northern art..
- [The Black Madonna of Rocamadour](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ed21f0d0-5e75-455c-a7c3-d776d8c839ab) — 1150 AD | Europe, France, Black Madonna, Rocamadour, Religion, europe: The Quercy shrine's dark wooden Virgin drew kings and pilgrims through the middle ages, her colour recorded as original rather than smoke-stained..
- [The Alhambra and the Nasrid Court of Granada](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f5d39c07-ed6c-4789-aafc-5499a24f4e52) — 1333 AD | Europe, Spain, Alhambra, Granada, Al-Andalus, europe: The last Muslim dynasty of Spain built the palace complex that Europe still copies, and its own poetry is carved into the walls..
- [The Morisco Revolt of the Alpujarras](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f7d67014-6150-4ab4-a7d0-474fcfbb103d) — 1568 AD | Europe, Spain, Moriscos, Alpujarras, Resistance, europe: Forbidden their language, baths and dress, the Moriscos of Granada rose under Aben Humeya and were deported across Castile after two years of war..
- [The Ivory Head of Brassempouy and Early European Portraiture](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b9c446e2-c569-4000-af8c-cddff822b8b3) — 23000 BC | Europe, France, Brassempouy, Ancient Europe, Sculpture, europe: The small ivory face from the Landes, with its braided or plaited hair, is among the oldest human portraits and is routinely reconstructed without reference to its likely dark subject..
- [Anton Wilhelm Amo, Professor at Halle and Jena](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6e42a2f9-e7c6-41e7-a5cf-933e037e04d5) — 1734 AD | Europe, Germany, Anton Wilhelm Amo, Philosophy, Scholarship, europe: The Ghanaian-born philosopher took his doctorate at Wittenberg, lectured on logic in Latin and published on the rights of Africans in Europe..
- [Ibn Rushd of Cordoba and the Return of Aristotle to Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/47945f1b-5852-4a2a-90f5-b975533e0735) — 1180 AD | Europe, Spain, Ibn Rushd, Philosophy, Al-Andalus, europe: Averroes' commentaries reached Paris and Oxford in translation and made the western university possible..
- [Abbas ibn Firnas and the First Flight](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b6825cf5-6126-4123-b660-f980ac87637e) — 875 AD | Europe, Spain, Ibn Firnas, Science, Al-Andalus, europe: The Cordoban polymath built a winged glider and flew from a hilltop eleven centuries before the Wright brothers, and also modelled the movements of the planets..
- [Alessandro Farnese's African Retainers and the Courts of Italy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7a16d4d4-27c6-4fff-8d2e-52eaba150c91) — 1560 AD | Europe, Italy, Courts, Community, Archives, europe: Ducal account books in Mantua, Ferrara and Parma record Black musicians, riders and pages employed and named at the Italian courts..
- [Juan de Pareja, Painter of Madrid](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3cfbca87-74b8-46e5-9e2d-d9c233402cf1) — 1650 AD | Europe, Spain, Juan de Pareja, Art, Portraiture, europe: Velazquez's Black assistant, whose portrait hangs in New York, was freed in Rome and became a master painter with signed canvases of his own..
- [Christian Real and Black Households in the German Lands](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a0ddecf6-dda3-417f-a04a-2be92cbae083) — 1650 AD | Europe, Germany, Archives, Community, Baptismal records, europe: Baptismal and court records from Wurttemberg, Saxony and Brandenburg name African residents through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries..
- [The Black Gondoliers and Servants of Venice](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b2d5e75f-cd89-475b-af72-dc9ec985896f) — 1500 AD | Europe, Italy, Venice, Art, Community, europe: Venetian painting from Carpaccio onward shows Black boatmen and attendants, and the state archives name them in wills, guild lists and censuses..
- [Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre and the Black Virgin of Chartres](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/09aeee20-67ed-4697-b991-811cafe2a0e0) — 1130 AD | Europe, France, Black Madonna, Chartres, Religion, europe: The crypt Virgin of Chartres, destroyed and replaced at the Revolution, was recorded as black by generations of pilgrims to the greatest Gothic cathedral..
- [The Black Trumpeters of the European Courts](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d5fa60ca-70bb-4660-a03d-42c19f6e131d) — 1520 AD | Europe, Germany, Music, Courts, Community, europe: From Lisbon to Vienna the ceremonial trumpet corps were staffed by Africans, a visual convention of power recorded in payment rolls and processional paintings..
- [Nabuk and the African Presence in Denmark and Norway](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3151e605-8eca-46ca-a548-5c251883fbb8) — 1700 AD | Europe, Denmark, Archives, Community, Nordic, europe: Danish court and church registers record African servants, soldiers and sailors in Copenhagen and Bergen, part of the Nordic story usually left untold..
- [Angelo Soliman, Freemason of Vienna](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/05ee7b83-e27f-49eb-a4e1-8ef6814d6ead) — 1780 AD | Europe, Austria, Angelo Soliman, Freemasonry, Biography, europe: Brought to Europe as a child, Soliman tutored princes, joined Mozart's lodge and was then stuffed and displayed by the imperial museum after his death..
- [Ziryab and the Manners of Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3115ca2b-ec30-4ed7-8a7f-2572002ed4f3) — 822 AD | Europe, Spain, Ziryab, Music, Al-Andalus, europe: The musician from Baghdad, described in the sources as black-skinned, brought the lute's fifth string, seasonal fashion, table courses and toothpaste to Cordoba..
- [Gustav Badin, Court Diarist of Sweden](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/02c4f656-7f3f-4205-8e99-9ffa6e714973) — 1770 AD | Europe, Sweden, Badin, Court, Biography, europe: Adolf Fredrik's Black courtier was raised as a free member of the royal household, kept a diary now in Uppsala and sat for portraits by Gustaf Lundberg..
- [Wladyslaw Franciszek Jablonowski, Black General of Poland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e89383a3-a5e7-4dc9-b6f3-0024a34a5f5a) — 1802 AD | Europe, Poland, Jablonowski, Military, Biography, europe: Known as Murzynek, the Polish general of African descent commanded in Italy and died leading the Vistula legion in Saint-Domingue..
- [The Black Population of Renaissance Malta and the Mediterranean Galleys](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f3b57e3b-c1f7-4fa9-9c4e-dbac9282afb0) — 1580 AD | Europe, Malta, Mediterranean, Archives, Community, europe: Galley registers of Malta, Genoa and Livorno record thousands of Africans, and the parish books of Valletta name their marriages and children..
- [Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fc5c73fe-82ab-4ddd-a3c8-8b37029e0417) — 1775 AD | Europe, France, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Music, Military, europe: Born in Guadeloupe, the finest fencer in Europe led the Concert des Amateurs in Paris, wrote symphonies concertantes and commanded a Black legion in the Revolution..
- [The Black Madonna of Montserrat](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0e725d54-c3a4-4873-a843-d93048ee631c) — 1200 AD | Europe, Spain, Black Madonna, Montserrat, Religion, europe: La Moreneta, patroness of Catalonia, is venerated as black, and the documents of the abbey record repeated refusals to lighten her..
- [Alexandre Dumas and the Making of French Fiction](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/74bfa5ba-ad49-4dd6-bc00-eac69fd86e7c) — 1844 AD | Europe, France, Alexandre Dumas, Literature, Biography, europe: The general's son wrote the most widely read novels in French, and answered a racial insult by tracing his ancestry back to Africa in one sentence..
- [The Fall of Granada and the End of Muslim Spain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9f68589a-7e69-4776-aabe-8072575c8d37) — 1492 AD | Europe, Spain, Granada, Boabdil, Al-Andalus, europe: Boabdil surrendered the keys of the city in January 1492, and within a decade the guarantees of the capitulation had been broken..
- [Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, General of the French Republic](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/25d2b5d6-97a8-4437-872a-f33dbadc405e) — 1796 AD | Europe, France, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, Military, Biography, europe: The son of an enslaved woman of Saint-Domingue commanded the Army of the Alps, was called the black devil by his enemies and was abandoned by Napoleon in captivity..
- [Juan Latino, Black Professor of Granada](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/73202c21-a6b0-463d-b3a4-eb2a93d6b770) — 1573 AD | Europe, Spain, Juan Latino, Scholarship, Literature, europe: Born in Africa and brought to Spain in servitude, Juan Latino held the chair of grammar at Granada and published Latin verse on Lepanto..
- [Cheddar Man and the Dark-Skinned First Britons](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a0d5808c-b24e-4249-929f-53f539fa4285) — 7100 BC | Europe, United Kingdom, Cheddar Man, Genetics, Ancient Europe, europe: Genome work on the Somerset skeleton found dark skin and blue eyes, the same profile as the Mesolithic population of the whole island..
- [Loschbour Man of Luxembourg](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9bcead02-2671-45d5-8123-9fa1db559032) — 6000 BC | Europe, Luxembourg, Loschbour, Genetics, Ancient Europe, europe: The Loschbour hunter shared the dark skin and hunter-gatherer ancestry of his Iberian and British contemporaries, tying the whole continent to a single early population..
- [Mary Fields, Stagecoach Mary of Montana](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cb84585c-bd07-499b-be41-0b679e6dbe52) — 1895 AD | North America, United States, Mary Fields, West, Biography, north_america: Born enslaved in Tennessee, Fields drove the United States mail through Montana winters into her seventies, the first Black woman contracted to do so..
- [The Watson Brake Mounds of Louisiana](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9e8474d8-70aa-449b-b83c-34c9fab87c02) — 3500 BC | North America, United States, Louisiana, Mound builders, Archaeology, north_america: Eleven earthen mounds raised on the Ouachita river are the oldest monumental architecture in North America, built by hunter-gatherers a millennium before Poverty Point..
- [Boley, Oklahoma and the All-Black Towns of the Territory](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bf4bbde3-a4fd-4aa0-8f77-4fc0e1e65f8d) — 1903 AD | North America, United States, Oklahoma, Boley, Free towns, north_america: More than fifty all-Black towns were founded in Oklahoma, many on freedmen allotments from the Five Tribes, with Boley the largest and best documented..
- [Juneteenth: The Last Enslaved People Learn They Are Free](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/acdf399d-89fb-4ae4-a04f-132a79e3f547) — 1865 AD | North America, United States, Juneteenth, Emancipation, Texas, north_america: General Order Number Three read at Galveston reached the last quarter-million people held in Texas, two and a half years after the proclamation..
- [Prince Hall and African Freemasonry](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/663b8e3f-1a09-466d-a63a-819676e8a9f3) — 1787 AD | North America, United States, Prince Hall, Freemasonry, Institutions, north_america: Denied admission by white lodges, Hall chartered African Lodge No.
- [The Black Legislators of Reconstruction South Carolina](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/45934a5b-04f1-4038-9a40-ec214f67a1a4) — 1868 AD | North America, United States, Reconstruction, Politics, South Carolina, north_america: For a brief period a majority-Black legislature funded public schools and land redistribution, and its members' photographs were later used as propaganda against them..
- [David Walker's Appeal](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f22f4f96-0f6e-4a1a-aa5a-b735d059c8db) — 1829 AD | North America, United States, David Walker, Abolition, Print, north_america: Walker's pamphlet, sewn into sailors' coats and carried south, told the enslaved that resistance was righteous, and southern states criminalised its possession..
- [Nicodemus and the Black Towns of Kansas](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6a4f1404-d6f4-4f35-a4f2-90d63f3cf905) — 1877 AD | North America, United States, Kansas, Exodusters, Free towns, north_america: Exodusters left the south for the plains and built self-governing towns with their own banks, papers and schools..
- [Estevanico, the First Explorer of the American South-West](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8d5a53d7-1fd1-47b6-9aa8-d2fe72fd62bb) — 1539 AD | North America, United States, Estevanico, Exploration, Biography, north_america: The African survivor of the Narvaez expedition crossed the continent with Cabeza de Vaca, then guided the first Spanish party to the Zuni pueblos, where he was killed..
- [Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1143345e-895d-42d8-8082-41decfb5a4cf) — 1770 AD | North America, United States, Crispus Attucks, Revolution, Portraiture, north_america: The first man to fall in the American Revolution was a Black and Natick sailor whose portrait was later whitened in popular prints..
- [The Seminole Negro Indian Scouts and Four Medals of Honor](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/26df4fe2-a567-4c36-94b1-0d0d719ac73d) — 1875 AD | North America, United States, Seminole Scouts, Military, Texas, north_america: The scouts recruited from the Nacimiento community tracked across the Texas frontier, and four of them received the Medal of Honor..
- [Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce in the United States Senate](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3a902b55-8648-4a59-a155-e7d619913db6) — 1870 AD | North America, United States, Hiram Revels, Politics, Senate, north_america: Two Black senators from Mississippi took the seats of the Confederacy's leaders, and their speeches on land, schools and lynching are in the Congressional Record..
- [The Cherokee Freedmen and the Treaty of 1866](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c3a1c3c2-2d67-4b95-a719-680422fac977) — 1866 AD | North America, United States, Cherokee Freedmen, Citizenship, Treaty, north_america: Black members of the Cherokee Nation were guaranteed citizenship by treaty, and the Dawes rolls that later split them from their kin are the key documents to examine..
- [Bass Reeves, Deputy Marshal of the Indian Territory](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/453f7361-2cc1-420e-a3b6-9e53a5132ad5) — 1875 AD | North America, United States, Bass Reeves, Law, West, north_america: Reeves made more than three thousand arrests across the territory, spoke Muscogee and served under Judge Parker for thirty-two years..
- [Black Members of the Chickasaw, Choctaw and Creek Nations](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/62ffdc5c-7ebb-451f-b42e-4a7f489bb850) — 1870 AD | North America, United States, Freedmen, Five Tribes, Citizenship, north_america: Freedmen rolls, Creek Snake band records and Choctaw citizenship suits show Black families who were part of these nations by kinship, not only by servitude..
- [Richard Allen and the Founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/66475a9f-1a6e-4631-ac13-50456d5bfcac) — 1794 AD | North America, United States, Richard Allen, Religion, AME, north_america: Walking out of St George's church in Philadelphia, Allen founded Mother Bethel and the first independent Black denomination in the world..
- [Frederick Douglass, Witness and Statesman](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7972b9b1-0377-43ce-9ea5-ada0a8840998) — 1845 AD | North America, United States, Frederick Douglass, Abolition, Photography, north_america: Douglass wrote three autobiographies, edited his own newspaper and sat for more photographs than any American of his century, insisting on an unretouched Black image..
- [Robert Smalls Steals the Planter](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7ad10971-b960-4a66-a9bf-63fbac2668b2) — 1862 AD | North America, United States, Robert Smalls, Military, Congress, north_america: The Charleston pilot sailed a Confederate steamer past the harbour forts with his family aboard, delivered it to the Union fleet and later sat in Congress..
- [Sojourner Truth and the Sale of the Shadow](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/81276c0d-0f8e-4ad5-b881-77a3f990e4fa) — 1851 AD | North America, United States, Sojourner Truth, Abolition, Photography, north_america: Isabella Baumfree sued successfully for her son's freedom, preached across the north and sold her own photographic cartes to fund the work..
- [The Buffalo Soldiers of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8c06e8c2-be54-4d8c-9b74-3572241ba076) — 1867 AD | North America, United States, Buffalo Soldiers, Military, West, north_america: Black regular regiments garrisoned the west, mapped it, and their service records document both their achievements and the campaigns they were used against..
- [The Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts at Fort Wagner](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/86439271-fd21-4eb6-a7d4-1a07d3bcaf1c) — 1863 AD | North America, United States, 54th Massachusetts, Military, Civil War, north_america: The regiment's assault on the Charleston sand fort broke the argument that Black men would not fight, at a cost of nearly half its strength..
- [Harriet Tubman, Conductor and Union Scout](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8a4ffc1e-6735-4e1e-b8d2-a6ffe1fd86e7) — 1863 AD | North America, United States, Harriet Tubman, Underground Railroad, Military, north_america: Tubman made some thirteen return journeys into Maryland, then guided the Combahee river raid that freed more than seven hundred people in a single night..
- [The Stono Rebellion in South Carolina](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0a5007de-f3de-4f29-a912-f2b0ec38fd1c) — 1739 AD | North America, United States, South Carolina, Stono, Resistance, north_america: Angolan-born men marched south towards Florida with banners and drums, the largest slave revolt in the British mainland colonies..
- [Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, Founder of Chicago](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a82d8759-0831-484c-b96e-b0dab0815de8) — 1790 AD | North America, United States, Chicago, Du Sable, Settlement, north_america: A Haitian-born Black trader built the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the Chicago river and ran the trade of the southern lake..
- [Denmark Vesey's Charleston Conspiracy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ad1e2eea-b900-4b2c-b2eb-6b1c6f726c41) — 1822 AD | North America, United States, Denmark Vesey, Resistance, Charleston, north_america: A free carpenter and church leader planned a rising drawing on Haitian precedent and the African Church, and the trial records preserve the plan in the words of the accused..
- [Black Wall Street and the Destruction of Greenwood](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b51eb5f5-4ec6-4331-8b01-40edd817abe9) — 1921 AD | North America, United States, Tulsa, Greenwood, Massacre, north_america: Tulsa's Greenwood district held banks, theatres, doctors and newspapers until a white mob and aircraft burned thirty-five blocks in two days..
- [York, the Black Man Who Crossed the Continent](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bb07ebb3-0d1a-49b7-ac53-4b604b9ea3e3) — 1805 AD | North America, United States, York, Exploration, Lewis and Clark, north_america: Enslaved by William Clark, York hunted, negotiated and voted with the Corps of Discovery, then was denied the reward every other member received..
- [James Forten, Sailmaker and Financier of Abolition](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e1176ac4-8b87-488f-8c80-9ee06801880f) — 1817 AD | North America, United States, James Forten, Abolition, Business, north_america: Forten's Philadelphia sail loft made him one of the wealthiest men in the city, and he bankrolled the abolitionist press and mass petitions against colonisation..
- [Abraham, Interpreter and Counsellor of the Seminole Nation](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e4486036-a7f8-4eb1-9ad6-b29a34ce0a72) — 1837 AD | North America, United States, Abraham, Black Seminoles, Diplomacy, north_america: The formerly enslaved Abraham interpreted at every major negotiation of the Second Seminole War and signed the terms that moved his people west..
- [Igbo Landing and the Walk Into the Water](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fe803fda-efc8-47ad-b777-c64345e14a23) — 1803 AD | North America, United States, Georgia, Igbo Landing, Resistance, north_america: Captives from the Bight of Biafra took control of their vessel off St Simons Island and walked into the tidewater rather than be sold, an act carried down in Gullah memory..
- [Ida B. Wells and the Red Record](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/73845583-c5a8-4ff5-8035-9c3cf36379df) — 1892 AD | North America, United States, Ida B. Wells, Journalism, Lynching, north_america: Wells documented lynchings county by county, proving the rape myth false with the perpetrators' own newspapers, and was driven from Memphis for it..
- [Fort Mose, the First Free Black Town in the United States](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a14b104c-0947-474f-83e4-df4aae8626a8) — 1738 AD | North America, United States, Florida, Fort Mose, Free towns, north_america: Spanish Florida granted freedom to those who fled English plantations, and the fortified town north of St Augustine was garrisoned and governed by its own Black militia..
- [Poverty Point and the Great Earthworks of the Lower Mississippi](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/372f9b30-3469-4e0f-8d86-15d2b7a6f1df) — 1700 BC | North America, United States, Louisiana, Mound builders, Trade, north_america: Six concentric ridges and a bird-shaped mound formed a trade capital drawing stone from a thousand miles away, raised without agriculture or draft animals..
- [Cahokia: The Mississippian Metropolis](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/25e770b0-4b9b-4f96-a205-460ce496f3a5) — 1050 AD | North America, United States, Cahokia, Mound builders, Urbanism, north_america: At its height Cahokia held more people than London of the same date, with a hundred and twenty mounds, a wooden calendar circle and a ruling elite buried in shell..
- [The Windover Bog Burials of Florida](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5456a63a-bd81-4e6e-9c4e-86e797477ec7) — 6000 BC | North America, United States, Florida, Ancient Americas, Archaeology, north_america: More than a hundred and sixty people buried in a Florida pond eight thousand years ago were interred with woven fabric and tended for injuries, the earliest known community of the south-east..
- [Nat Turner's Rising in Southampton County](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a76dc40f-bf37-4303-a415-a22b37c87d84) — 1831 AD | North America, United States, Nat Turner, Resistance, Virginia, north_america: Turner led the most consequential revolt in the United States, and his confession, taken by a hostile lawyer, must be read against the county's own court records..
- [The Amistad Captives and the Supreme Court](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/08054e80-1ce7-4cdc-bd32-1cddb74a5ba9) — 1841 AD | North America, United States, Amistad, Sengbe Pieh, Law, north_america: Sengbe Pieh led the seizure of the schooner and then won freedom for himself and his companions before the highest court in the United States..
- [Phillis Wheatley, Poet of Boston](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/69791c5b-bc1f-4635-a0c9-24e359a5be40) — 1773 AD | North America, United States, Phillis Wheatley, Literature, Biography, north_america: Kidnapped as a child and taught in the Wheatley household, she published verse in London and was examined by eighteen Boston gentlemen who could not believe an African had written it..
- [The First Rhode Island Regiment](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f08bae31-5a36-4e95-be9f-33c28456cc99) — 1778 AD | North America, United States, Military, Revolution, Black regiments, north_america: A regiment of Black and Native soldiers held the line at Newport and Points Bridge, and their pension files preserve their own accounts of service..
- [Benjamin Banneker, Astronomer of the Federal City](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/32b743cb-4ad9-4281-95f4-368c2d059c4c) — 1791 AD | North America, United States, Benjamin Banneker, Science, Astronomy, north_america: Banneker calculated ephemerides for his own almanacs, surveyed the boundaries of Washington and wrote to Jefferson challenging him on the humanity of Black people..
- [The Gullah Geechee Nation of the Sea Islands](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/dbbfde87-7f73-4d25-9145-b00576a27881) — 1750 AD | North America, United States, Gullah Geechee, Language, Culture, north_america: From the Carolina and Georgia islands a distinct African language, cuisine and craft tradition survived intact, with rice-growing skill brought directly from the Rice Coast..
- [Marcus Garvey and the Largest Black Movement in History](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1dded68e-1e5f-4963-a5cd-2547e8161866) — 1920 AD | North America, United States, Marcus Garvey, UNIA, Pan-Africanism, north_america: From Harlem the UNIA built a shipping line, a newspaper read across the world and millions of members on four continents..
- [The Ramapough, Pinelands and Other Reclassified Communities](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f6fb9320-7773-4b4b-b63e-b9dbeb4d0a99) — 1800 AD | North America, United States, Ramapough, Census, Classification, north_america: Along the eastern seaboard whole communities were shifted between racial categories by census takers, and their own records tell a different story of African ancestry..
- [The Melungeons of Appalachia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bde9af80-aa80-44db-a0e4-224d65dc9598) — 1790 AD | North America, United States, Melungeons, Appalachia, Genetics, north_america: Court records, tax lists and recent genetic studies point to African paternal ancestry among the mixed communities of the Tennessee and Virginia ridges..
- [The Black Seminoles of Florida](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/50dad7e9-4f53-448c-b968-a0afc8548124) — 1780 AD | North America, United States, Black Seminoles, Florida, Alliance, north_america: Africans who reached Spanish Florida formed allied towns with the Seminole, farmed their own fields, bore arms and fought three wars against the United States..
- [John Horse and the Black Seminole Exodus to Mexico](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e272b62c-09f9-428b-a82b-bb2491c743d9) — 1850 AD | North America, United States, John Horse, Black Seminoles, Mexico, north_america: Refusing re-enslavement in the Indian Territory, John Horse led his people across the Rio Grande, where Mexico granted them land at Nacimiento in exchange for frontier defence..
- [The Washitaw and the Mound-Building Question](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0211b444-53a4-4d8d-9cf0-4a8725b7c5d3) — 1700 AD | North America, United States, Washitaw, Mound builders, Oral history, north_america: Oral tradition among Louisiana communities claims descent from the mound builders, and this record collects the documents, land grants and court filings that must be examined rather than dismissed..
- [The Battle of Negro Fort on the Apalachicola](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1e477b9d-803c-450f-9aab-aa7ad819260a) — 1816 AD | North America, United States, Negro Fort, Florida, Resistance, north_america: A fort held by Black and Choctaw fighters was destroyed by American gunfire in a campaign aimed squarely at a free Black settlement outside United States jurisdiction..
- [The Serpent Mound of Ohio](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1b50b446-f6e8-4914-a94f-f806b22c92e1) — 300 BC | North America, United States, Ohio, Mound builders, Astronomy, north_america: A quarter-mile earthen serpent aligned on the solstices marks the astronomical knowledge of the Adena and Fort Ancient builders whose descendants were dispossessed and reclassified..
- [Bill Pickett and the Invention of Bulldogging](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a7f1027b-a807-44cf-bbb4-dbcbbe541d50) — 1905 AD | North America, United States, Bill Pickett, Rodeo, West, north_america: The Black and Cherokee cowboy invented the rodeo event of steer wrestling and toured the world, though film posters billed him as anything but Black..
- [The Black Caribs of Saint Vincent](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2eb55987-b07f-4b1d-88f3-bdc905ad5ab6) — 1635 AD | Americas, Saint Vincent, Garifuna, Maroons, Language, central_america: On Yurumein, Africans and Caribs fused into the Garifuna nation, held the island against Britain and France and kept an African-Amerindian language alive..
- [Machado de Assis, Brazil's Greatest Novelist](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/213a6a3f-558b-4a59-97ed-a5a13e2cf39b) — 1881 AD | South America, Brazil, Machado de Assis, Literature, Portraiture, south_america: The grandson of freed Africans founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters and wrote the novels that define the national literature, though later portraits lightened his skin..
- [The Saramaka Treaty of Suriname](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/32c78d09-327f-496e-8cac-11764fe9b7f7) — 1762 AD | South America, Suriname, Saramaka, Maroons, Treaty, south_america: Africans who escaped the Dutch plantations built matrilineal states in the rainforest and in 1762 signed a treaty recognising their freedom and territory..
- [Ansina, Companion of Artigas](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/386bd554-dcef-4698-9f18-a1c4a8cbe776) — 1820 AD | South America, Uruguay, Ansina, Independence, Biography, south_america: Joaquin Lenzina, the Black bard who followed Artigas into Paraguayan exile, is Uruguay's emblem of the African contribution to the nation..
- [Nanny of the Maroons and the Blue Mountain Treaty](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/39439436-6f3e-4827-bcf4-f5e1f4898ca7) — 1720 AD | Americas, Jamaica, Maroons, Nanny, Resistance, central_america: Queen Nanny's Windward Maroons fought the British to a standstill in Jamaica's cockpit country and secured land and self-rule by treaty..
- [Jose Maria Morelos, Priest and General of Mexico](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/50e210fc-b02d-471a-9afd-b9bda18ca997) — 1813 AD | Americas, Mexico, Morelos, Independence, Abolition, central_america: Of African descent from Valladolid, Morelos led the southern insurgency and wrote the abolition of slavery and of caste into the Sentimientos de la Nacion..
- [Pedro Camejo, the Negro Primero of Venezuela](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6814ca65-a5e5-4547-bb39-b2da28ff4e8c) — 1821 AD | South America, Venezuela, Pedro Camejo, Independence, Military, south_america: Bolivar's lancer rode first into every charge and fell at Carabobo, remembered in the words he spoke turning back to report his own death..
- [The Garifuna Exile to Roatan](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/751dc4db-e548-4993-852c-b711e51ba2f5) — 1797 AD | Americas, Honduras, Garifuna, Deportation, Diaspora, central_america: After the second Carib war Britain deported the surviving Black Caribs to a Honduran island, from which they rebuilt communities along the whole Central American coast..
- [Candelario Obeso and the Voice of the Magdalena](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/77b9007a-8de7-4fab-900b-fa0e5f2ebaca) — 1877 AD | South America, Colombia, Candelario Obeso, Literature, Language, south_america: Obeso wrote Cantos populares de mi tierra in the speech of Black boatmen, the first Colombian poet to make that voice literature..
- [The Haitian Revolution Begins at Bois Caiman](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a90d1eb7-d3e7-4c16-9b42-68622869f687) — 1791 AD | Americas, Haiti, Revolution, Bois Caiman, Resistance, central_america: The August ceremony in the northern woods opened the only revolution in which the enslaved destroyed slavery and founded a state..
- [The Dragao do Mar and the Raftsmen's Strike of Ceara](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b862b58d-ff07-4df6-8f09-77ee8f3ba348) — 1881 AD | South America, Brazil, Dragao do Mar, Abolition, Labour, south_america: Francisco Jose do Nascimento led the raft pilots of Fortaleza in refusing to carry the enslaved to southern ports, forcing Ceara to abolish slavery years before the empire..
- [Vicente Guerrero, the Black President of Mexico](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c1ac2dcb-d0e6-4f6b-b00e-e066c2b677af) — 1829 AD | Americas, Mexico, Vicente Guerrero, Abolition, Presidency, central_america: Guerrero fought the whole war of independence, took the presidency and in 1829 signed the decree that ended slavery in Mexico..
- [Luiz Gama, the Lawyer Who Freed a Thousand People](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d5450038-12ab-41be-9c33-5cb567eba30c) — 1870 AD | South America, Brazil, Luiz Gama, Abolition, Law, south_america: Sold into slavery by his own father, Gama taught himself law and won more than five hundred freedom suits in the courts of Sao Paulo..
- [Chica da Silva of Diamantina](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f8f55fe8-dbc8-4ccd-9201-c65ef38e7941) — 1760 AD | South America, Brazil, Chica da Silva, Biography, Wealth, south_america: A formerly enslaved woman became the wealthiest figure in the Brazilian diamond district, built her own church and educated her children in Portugal..
- [The Lagoa Santa Skulls: An African Morphology in the Heart of Brazil](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6f4fb079-aa9a-45ca-81e2-630a8851a996) — 8000 BC | South America, Brazil, Lagoa Santa, Anthropology, Ancient Americas, south_america: Dozens of crania from the Lagoa Santa caves cluster with African and Australo-Melanesian populations rather than later Amerindian series, a pattern acknowledged even by critics of the two-migration model..
- [San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan and the Rise of the Olmec](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2089e225-4901-4fee-b743-8b303a6334e1) — 1200 BC | Americas, Mexico, Olmec, Ancient Americas, Sculpture, central_america: The first Olmec capital rose on the Coatzacoalcos river with monumental sculpture already fully formed, and its rulers were portrayed with broad noses, full lips and tightly curled hair..
- [Cerro Sechin: Stone Warriors of the Peruvian Coast](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2bee3fbc-e2b3-40e8-a7e3-795f046830e9) — 1600 BC | South America, Peru, Sechin, Ancient Americas, Sculpture, south_america: Three hundred carved slabs depict armed men and severed heads in a monumental frieze older than the pyramids of Giza's successors in the Americas..
- [The Stone Sentinels of San Agustin](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/42d4d331-877d-40fc-8f44-67bc637e259f) — 100 BC | South America, Colombia, San Agustin, Sculpture, Ancient Americas, south_america: More than five hundred monoliths in Huila guard shaft tombs, their fanged faces and broad features carved by a people whose descendants still live in the upper Magdalena..
- [Olmec Traces in Colombia and the Southern Reach of the Culture](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/59f814fc-7e9a-4d5b-ac6b-8a08079f8982) — 600 BC | South America, Colombia, Olmec, Ancient Americas, Trade, south_america: Jade celts, were-jaguar motifs and colossal-head styling appear far south of Veracruz, and Colombian finds link the Olmec sphere to the Magdalena valley cultures..
- [Chavin de Huantar and the First Andean Temple State](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/994971d9-b82c-4575-acc2-d58bb7f07376) — 900 BC | South America, Peru, Chavin, Ancient Americas, Religion, south_america: The labyrinthine temple in the Peruvian highlands drew pilgrims from the coast and the jungle, its fanged deities setting the template for two thousand years of Andean religion..
- [Miguel de Buria, King of the Venezuelan Mines](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/61e7da9b-5963-49d6-9dca-905afcd35891) — 1552 AD | South America, Venezuela, Miguel de Buria, Maroons, Resistance, south_america: Miguel led the enslaved miners of Buria into revolt, crowned himself king, appointed a bishop and held a free settlement against the governor of Coro..
- [Luzia of Lapa Vermelha and the First Brazilians](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6bed68e6-9ccd-456f-8586-37b147d7dfff) — 9500 BC | South America, Brazil, Luzia, Ancient Americas, Anthropology, south_america: The skull known as Luzia, recovered near Belo Horizonte, was reconstructed with African features, and the wider Lagoa Santa series shares that morphology.
- [Cueva de las Manos: The Painted Hands of Patagonia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7c9af08e-fa79-4b54-acf2-cd6aa1b608d3) — 7300 BC | South America, Argentina, Rock art, Ancient Americas, Patagonia, south_america: Hundreds of sprayed hand stencils in Santa Cruz province record family groups over thousands of years, the oldest signatures of the southern cone..
- [Toussaint Louverture, Governor of Saint-Domingue](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8669b560-19af-4212-bc97-c8c273d38fe8) — 1801 AD | Americas, Haiti, Toussaint Louverture, Revolution, Biography, central_america: A formerly enslaved coachman became the general who beat Spain, Britain and France in turn and wrote a constitution abolishing slavery for ever..
- [Bayano and the Cimarron Kingdom of Panama](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9f219d9f-733a-4217-8617-0eaa6ddc2a1c) — 1552 AD | Americas, Panama, Bayano, Maroons, Resistance, central_america: Bayano's mountain state on the isthmus taxed the silver road for two decades and forced the crown into treaty negotiations..
- [Palmares: The Republic That Lasted a Century](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b82b058c-65dd-46eb-80f4-4f2f07142145) — 1600 AD | South America, Brazil, Palmares, Maroons, Quilombo, south_america: A federation of quilombos in the Brazilian interior sustained tens of thousands of free people, farmed, forged iron and defeated Dutch and Portuguese expeditions for nearly a hundred years..
- [The Valdivia Figurines of Coastal Ecuador](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c6f8b3cb-8349-4645-9485-e6ea1ecda2fe) — 3500 BC | South America, Ecuador, Valdivia, Ceramics, Ancient Americas, south_america: The oldest ceramics in the Americas were modelled into small dark figures with elaborate hair, made by a fishing people on the Ecuadorian shore..
- [The Colossal Heads of La Venta](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/df200b95-ff5d-47dd-9ba6-f5b0ac52529e) — 900 BC | Americas, Mexico, Olmec, La Venta, Sculpture, central_america: Basalt heads weighing up to twenty tonnes were dragged from the Tuxtla mountains and carved as portraits of individual rulers whose African features have been remarked on since the first nineteenth-century reports..
- [Alonso de Illescas and the Zambo Republic of Esmeraldas](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e42e4edc-ca9c-46c3-a632-0ab22d30efbb) — 1553 AD | South America, Ecuador, Esmeraldas, Maroons, Diplomacy, south_america: Survivors of a wrecked slave ship built an independent polity on the Ecuadorian coast, and Illescas negotiated with Quito as a sovereign rather than a subject..
- [Caral: A City in the Desert Before the Pyramids of Peru](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fb041579-1c73-4d4f-986f-4fbb1a8ba079) — 2600 BC | South America, Peru, Caral, Ancient Americas, Urbanism, south_america: Six stone platform mounds, sunken plazas and a knotted quipu on the Supe river make Caral the oldest urban centre in the Americas, contemporary with early Egypt..
- [Benkos Bioho and the Free Town of San Basilio de Palenque](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/797b7fbf-35cf-41e0-9fc4-ac77825e62ab) — 1603 AD | South America, Colombia, Palenque, Maroons, Language, south_america: Bioho's palenque behind Cartagena won a royal charter of freedom and its people still speak a creole tongue carried from Africa, the first free Black town in the Americas..
- [Dessalines and the Declaration of Haitian Independence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8dfa1144-7598-4d04-8aae-1bec8ea7ed1f) — 1804 AD | Americas, Haiti, Dessalines, Independence, Revolution, central_america: On 1 January the tricolour was torn white from blue and red and the second independent state of the Americas was proclaimed at Gonaives..
- [Maria Remedios del Valle, Mother of the Argentine Nation](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2ce74583-a2fd-402a-b9f6-f0d99b176963) — 1813 AD | South America, Argentina, Maria Remedios del Valle, Military, Biography, south_america: A Black soldier and nurse decorated as Captain by the Argentine army, she was later found begging in Buenos Aires and is now honoured on the day of Afro-Argentine culture..
- [Andre Reboucas, Engineer of the Empire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/50de55a4-1458-4f16-926c-997c3cab76cb) — 1880 AD | South America, Brazil, Andre Reboucas, Engineering, Abolition, south_america: The Black engineer who designed Rio's docks and water systems used his standing to finance and argue the abolitionist cause..
- [Juan Garrido, the Black Conquistador of Mexico](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/30cf30b5-7e14-4054-b6c5-68588f862aca) — 1519 AD | Americas, Mexico, Juan Garrido, Conquest, Free Africans, central_america: A West African-born free man who marched with Cortes, Garrido sowed the first wheat in New Spain and petitioned the crown for reward in a surviving probanza written in his own voice..
- [Moche Portrait Vessels: Individual Faces of Ancient Peru](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b76357d0-f958-4d2d-a82b-3c5f427d6a2f) — 200 AD | South America, Peru, Moche, Ceramics, Portraiture, south_america: Moche potters produced true portraiture, and among the ruling faces are unmistakably African profiles, evidence for a mixed early population on the north coast..
- [The Painted Hypogea of Tierradentro](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bf5ba1e6-19fe-467b-9e23-ea6c264dfaf6) — 600 AD | South America, Colombia, Tierradentro, Ancient Americas, Burial, south_america: Deep underground chambers cut into Andean ridges were plastered and painted in red and black geometry for elite burials, a funerary architecture unique in the Americas..
- [Tres Zapotes, Stela C and the Long Count](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fcae9de5-d147-4bde-ab75-2e44bd0259b7) — 500 BC | Americas, Mexico, Olmec, Calendar, Epigraphy, central_america: The broken stela from Tres Zapotes carries one of the oldest Long Count dates in the Americas, proving that the calendar credited to the Maya was inherited from the Olmec..
- [Juan Valiente: From Enslavement to Encomienda in Chile](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/020d5c70-3f4d-4332-b801-9d2d87b9c900) — 1540 AD | South America, Chile, Juan Valiente, Conquest, Biography, south_america: Sold in Mexico, Valiente bargained for the right to soldier, fought through Peru and Chile with Valdivia and died holding land and men at Tucapel..
- [The Painted Cliffs of Chiribiquete](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a78ca3ce-a112-417d-a170-f4cd14441650) — 10000 BC | South America, Colombia, Chiribiquete, Rock art, Amazon, south_america: On Colombia's sandstone tepuis, tens of thousands of images of jaguars, deer and dancing figures form what may be the largest rock-art complex on earth, made by the first Amazonians..
- [Tiwanaku and the Gate of the Sun](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1e875c5b-ed97-4978-862e-a685179e31f7) — 400 AD | South America, Bolivia, Tiwanaku, Ancient Americas, Sculpture, south_america: On the Bolivian altiplano a stone city of gateways and sunken courts governed a highland empire whose sculpture shows broad-featured lords holding staffs of office..
- [Monte Verde, Chile: A Settled Camp Before the Ice Melted](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/15863341-5f81-4de8-b0e8-366f04f87089) — 12500 BC | South America, Chile, Monte Verde, Ancient Americas, Archaeology, south_america: Wooden dwellings, cordage and medicinal plants preserved in a Chilean peat bog prove organised community life in the far south long before the accepted date for entry into the Americas..
- [The Black Confraternities of Colonial Lima](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1ee40647-bf85-4e1c-9d17-88f8228146a0) — 1600 AD | South America, Peru, Confraternities, Religion, Community, south_america: Cofradias organised by African nation financed funerals, bought members out of slavery and paraded their own saints through the viceregal capital..
- [Sebastian Lemba and the First American Revolt](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6a6e3cf8-a175-4886-8359-825c90fe4d7b) — 1532 AD | Americas, Dominican Republic, Lemba, Maroons, Resistance, central_america: Lemba led fifteen years of guerrilla war in the mountains of Hispaniola, the earliest sustained African rebellion in the New World..
- [Gaspar Yanga and the Freedom Town of Veracruz](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/82de6eed-9930-4f6c-a2b6-b28bf220001f) — 1609 AD | Americas, Mexico, Yanga, Maroons, Resistance, central_america: After forty years in the sierra Yanga forced Spain to recognise a self-governing Black town, today named for him, in the mountains above Veracruz..
- [Zumbi dos Palmares and the Last Stand at Macaco](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/24af6b0b-9c1d-456e-9c46-f3865cd5b982) — 1695 AD | South America, Brazil, Zumbi, Palmares, Resistance, south_america: Zumbi refused the crown's partial peace, fought on after the fall of the capital and was killed on 20 November, now Brazil's day of Black consciousness..
- [Rock Art of the Serrania de la Lindosa, Colombia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/308e5246-f448-4700-88ae-a9aa0a4e0cf1) — 18000 BC | South America, Colombia, Rock art, Ancient Americas, Amazon, south_america: Kilometres of ochre panels above the Guayabero river record ice-age animals and dark-skinned hunters, dated by excavators to roughly twenty thousand years ago.
- [Saint Martin de Porres of Lima](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a448de70-717d-4bab-926b-fcafecbad2ec) — 1639 AD | South America, Peru, Martin de Porres, Religion, Biography, south_america: The mulatto lay brother of the Rosary convent ran hospitals and orphanages for the poor of Lima and was canonised three centuries later, the first Black saint of the Americas..
- [Falucho and the Black Regiments of the Andes](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6f92253a-6cee-497a-bff0-b5f25557b34a) — 1824 AD | South America, Argentina, Falucho, Military, Independence, south_america: The soldier remembered as Falucho refused to salute the Spanish flag at Callao and was shot, one of thousands of Black troops who carried San Martin's campaigns..
- [Pedra Furada and the Deep Antiquity of Brazil](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4311848b-fd67-460b-b71e-aba32d33f699) — 20000 BC | South America, Brazil, Pedra Furada, Ancient Americas, Rock art, south_america: Niede Guidon's excavations in Piaui produced hearths, tools and painted walls that push human presence in Brazil far beyond the Bering-only model, and the earliest skeletal remains of the region are morphologically Afric
- [Toca da Tira Peia and Pre-Clovis Tools in Piaui](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8dec5237-9c12-45ff-b460-bc03a323614e) — 22000 BC | South America, Brazil, Archaeology, Ancient Americas, Piaui, south_america: Quartz tools sealed in datable sediment at Toca da Tira Peia carry human occupation of north-east Brazil back beyond twenty thousand years, reinforcing the case for an early southern population..
- [Santa Elina Rock Shelter and the Giant Sloth Ornaments](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/91c50be3-5b10-4e56-989a-a5e0b6092fcb) — 25000 BC | South America, Brazil, Santa Elina, Ancient Americas, Ornament, south_america: Worked sloth osteoderms turned into pendants in Mato Grosso show people living with megafauna, dressing and adorning themselves in the deep past of the continent..
- [Pero Jones and Bristol's Enslaved Servants](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ec39f8e0-1348-48d3-b4b4-684214be1ebf) — 1784 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Bristol, Georgian, Households, europe: A bridge in Bristol carries the name of an enslaved man who lived and died in the city.
- [South Shields and the 1930 Seamen's Dispute](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c6941632-e712-4295-9ffb-4170c82b9456) — 1930 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, South Shields, Maritime, Labour, europe: Tyneside's Black and Arab crews resisted a rota that shut them out of work.
- [Nathaniel Wells, High Sheriff of Monmouthshire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6c5238fa-9695-42a8-b7ec-e93c86ea03e6) — 1818 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Wales, Monmouthshire, Gentry, europe: A Black landowner served as sheriff and magistrate in Regency Wales.
- [Ira Aldridge on the British Stage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4a99a376-563e-4dfa-aa5f-792c206f2f66) — 1833 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Victorian, Theatre, Coventry, europe: The African-American tragedian became a provincial and London star and a Coventry favourite.
- [James Africanus Beale Horton, Army Surgeon](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/22573a26-6ee1-45a1-8f75-b194f200b838) — 1859 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Victorian, Medicine, Edinburgh, europe: A Sierra Leonean trained in Britain became a British army officer and political theorist.
- [Jonathan Strong and Granville Sharp](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/577e7d6b-6fd8-4e5e-ae0c-851e5ebcf4e0) — 1765 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Georgian, London, Law, europe: A beaten young man's case in 1765 began the English legal fight against slavery.
- [Glasgow's Black Sailors and the Broomielaw](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d7fd5b9f-da08-4afc-8e53-0dc4756c160a) — 1850 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Glasgow, Scotland, Maritime, europe: Clydeside records name African crew, students and residents through the nineteenth century.
- [The Colour Bar in British Nursing and the NHS](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a823cfb4-904a-4482-be6a-2c1c33edecf8) — 1950 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, NHS, Migration, Labour, europe: Caribbean nurses recruited to build the NHS met formal and informal barriers.
- [Victor the Moor of South Shields](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/657cbe38-1945-4ad5-9048-0d686866600d) — 200 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Roman Britain, South Shields, Inscriptions, europe: A tombstone at Arbeia names a Moorish freedman honoured by his former master.
- [The Bristol Bus Boycott](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f80ef400-1808-4c88-9af3-94a99ecb26d2) — 1963 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Bristol, Civil Rights, Boycott, europe: A 1963 boycott overturned a colour bar and helped produce Britain's first race relations law.
- [Sarah Parker Remond's British Lecture Tour](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/afdecff2-0221-49be-b123-74dd781ef491) — 1859 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Victorian, Abolition, Lectures, europe: An American abolitionist filled British halls and then trained as a doctor.
- [Cardiff's Tiger Bay and Its African Seafarers](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d6a66bb1-e58a-4961-ac36-2cb4e38fe632) — 1870 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Cardiff, Wales, Maritime, europe: Butetown became one of Britain's most established multi-ethnic dockland communities.
- [The Lant Street Girl of Roman Southwark](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a3c66c2b-7a3e-4da4-958c-9382152fe8bf) — 350 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Roman Britain, London, Archaeology, europe: Isotopes place a girl buried in Roman London's southern cemetery as born in North Africa.
- [Lilian Bader and Black Service in the Second World War](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ca24914f-63d5-4a39-927c-c676073247bc) — 1941 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Second World War, RAF, Yorkshire, europe: A Yorkshire-born woman of Barbadian descent served as an RAF instrument repairer.
- [Una Marson at the BBC](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fce10475-de65-4a43-ad8d-4e48d02fd4d8) — 1941 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, BBC, Literature, europe: The first Black woman producer at the BBC shaped wartime broadcasting to the Caribbean.
- [Dederi Jaquoah, African Prince Baptised in London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/86a0751a-b3b3-478b-85d6-6e0e14026b82) — 1611 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Tudor, London, Trade, europe: The son of a River Cestos king lived two years in a London merchant's house.
- [Saint Maurice in English Church Dedications](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f9372131-daed-40f8-89a1-ab9107cc598a) — 1200 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Medieval, Saints, Churches, europe: The African soldier-saint was venerated across medieval England.
- [Blackamoors in Jacobean Portraiture](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/dff68ae2-3539-45e2-874d-28d932220427) — 1630 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Stuart, Portraits, Households, europe: Painted household servants in early Stuart portraits and who they actually were.
- [Peter the Moor, Trumpeter to James IV](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/aeaf58b0-14ba-4932-b724-69de8b0e57e3) — 1504 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Scotland, Courts, Music, europe: Scottish treasury accounts pay a Black trumpeter at the royal court.
- [The Empire Windrush Docks at Tilbury](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8c6847c7-48d6-44c3-898f-6e230a3f8524) — 1948 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Windrush, Migration, europe: The 1948 arrival that named a generation, and the men and women aboard it.
- [Pablo Fanque, Britain's First Black Circus Proprietor](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e30704c5-b4f5-4884-a026-967d856d5ef2) — 1841 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Victorian, Norwich, Circus, europe: A Norwich-born equestrian ran one of Victorian Britain's biggest circuses.
- [Henry Sylvester Williams and the African Association](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3e87e7e3-0cc5-4241-8f1c-08bec92605b4) — 1897 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Pan-Africanism, Organising, europe: A Trinidadian law student founded the body that convened the first Pan-African conference.
- [Amy Ashwood Garvey's London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/05095bb8-4b01-4144-ba68-64a1fc19a090) — 1935 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Pan-Africanism, Women, europe: A co-founder of the UNIA ran a Soho restaurant that became a Pan-African meeting place.
- [Dr Harold Moody and the League of Coloured Peoples](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7b761076-d05e-4ca4-8681-991e582878f5) — 1931 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Civil Rights, Interwar, europe: A Jamaican doctor built Britain's most effective interwar civil rights organisation.
- [Joseph Emidy, Violinist of Cornwall](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e5618c1a-408c-45e1-b0b7-166b6d4a0d45) — 1799 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Cornwall, Music, Georgian, europe: Kidnapped from a Lisbon orchestra by the Royal Navy, he became Cornwall's leading musician.
- [The Murder of Kelso Cochrane](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/58316143-b53c-4d8c-80ab-ae648c5aece9) — 1959 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Notting Hill, Violence, europe: A Notting Hill killing in 1959 forced Britain to confront racist violence.
- [Scipio Africanus's Grave at Henbury](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1cea5314-0c6c-4ef3-a7b0-764ba040ac1d) — 1720 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Bristol, Georgian, Monuments, europe: A painted Bristol gravestone marks the burial of an African servant in 1720.
- [George Bridgetower in London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e6e2fe96-8989-4e31-bae5-c27904cb2183) — 1789 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Georgian, London, Music, europe: The violinist who premiered Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata built his career in Britain.
- [William Davidson and the Cato Street Conspiracy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/248b26a6-0725-4466-87cf-610370041558) — 1820 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Radicalism, London, Trials, europe: A Jamaican-born cabinetmaker was executed for plotting against the British cabinet.
- [Dr John Alcindor of Paddington](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/10c38443-4b77-4644-a40f-f0eb40ccf223) — 1899 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Medicine, Pan-Africanism, europe: A Trinidadian doctor served London's poor for thirty years and led Pan-African organising.
- [Liverpool's Kru Sailors and the Oldest Black Community](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2d6b62de-e381-47b8-ac90-ed80e6e90ac5) — 1790 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Liverpool, Maritime, Community, europe: Kru seafarers from Liberia settled in Liverpool from the eighteenth century onward.
- [The 1900 Pan-African Conference in Westminster](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/666f717e-55e6-46ba-a3aa-b8e9e6f5d31c) — 1900 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Pan-Africanism, Conference, europe: The first Pan-African conference met in London and petitioned Queen Victoria.
- [Phillis Wheatley in London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b03ea125-8900-4c16-9b27-6841756e5315) — 1773 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Georgian, London, Poetry, europe: The poet came to England in 1773 and published her book there.
- [John Ystumllyn, the Welsh Gardener](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/50201ee1-bc79-40b8-b211-531534bf9b1a) — 1750 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Wales, Gwynedd, Gardening, europe: An African brought to Gwynedd became a celebrated gardener and left a portrait.
- [Hector Nunes and the Limits of English Slavery](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/393964e3-56a0-424c-b7dd-42e7ff1ce506) — 1587 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Tudor, London, Law, europe: A 1587 case in which an English court refused to treat an African as property.
- [The 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/437901e5-7be8-404a-8e88-97845b807230) — 1945 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Manchester, Pan-Africanism, Congress, europe: Nkrumah, Kenyatta and Padmore planned African independence in a Manchester hall.
- [Diego, the African Who Sailed with Drake](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ac9a98b1-d9fa-4baf-bd34-990870420c17) — 1577 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Tudor, Exploration, Drake, europe: A freed African joined Drake's circumnavigation as an interpreter and ally.
- [Anne Cobbie, the Tawny Moor of Westminster](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b1757d97-890b-4c63-92b5-8b5233c7a30c) — 1626 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Stuart, London, Court Records, europe: Court papers from 1626 name a sought-after Black woman in a Westminster brothel.
- [Christian Cole, First Black Barrister in England](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e84a468a-c1ae-4ac7-9998-6a9e2f847918) — 1883 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Victorian, Oxford, Law, europe: A Sierra Leonean Oxford graduate was called to the English bar in 1883.
- [Quintus Lollius Urbicus, African Governor of Britain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/96beabe9-9458-4914-9863-c225ce3d1caa) — 139 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Roman Britain, Scotland, Antonine Wall, europe: A man from Numidia governed Roman Britain and built the Antonine Wall.
- [Julius Soubise, Fencing Master of London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f85290f8-7ead-4336-afa7-442c6896cc0d) — 1770 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Georgian, London, Fencing, europe: A formerly enslaved man became a fashionable London fencer and rider.
- [The Black Magus in English Parish Art](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a7280eb5-5933-46d4-909a-20a743ba1b5d) — 1450 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Medieval, Art, Churches, europe: Medieval English glass, screens and wall paintings show Balthasar as African.
- [Cesar Picton, Coal Merchant of Kingston](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/98fb2ba5-d32f-4d86-976c-ec53428a013d) — 1788 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Georgian, Surrey, Business, europe: An African brought to Surrey as a child died a propertied businessman.
- [Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's Narrative](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/37481c83-ff51-44fe-84c3-37c2b98f1296) — 1772 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Georgian, Bath, Narratives, europe: The first published autobiography by an African in Britain appeared in Bath in 1772.
- [Edward Swarthye, Porter of Gloucestershire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/dfc2e7df-ebd5-485a-a20b-dd031db18486) — 1596 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Tudor, Gloucestershire, Court Records, europe: A Star Chamber case records a Black servant whipping a white gentleman on his master's orders.
- [Learie Constantine and the Imperial Hotel Case](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ff3da284-c748-44d0-81ed-8cba6775d7c2) — 1943 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Law, Cricket, europe: A cricketer won a landmark 1944 judgment against a London hotel's colour bar.
- [Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1964c2f9-6084-46bf-a2a7-6cac55580f56) — 1958 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Press, Carnival, europe: A deported communist organiser founded Britain's first major Black newspaper and its carnival.
- [Ellen More and the Tournament of the Black Lady](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/16ee6848-1db3-48e2-8c8b-2fc035b27df5) — 1507 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Scotland, Courts, Tournament, europe: In 1507 Scotland staged a royal tournament in honour of an African woman of the court.
- [The West African Students' Union, London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c126784c-1dfe-4b4d-bc87-33e45937c4e4) — 1925 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, London, Students, Pan-Africanism, europe: A 1925 student body became a training ground for African independence leaders.
- [Cattelena of Almondsbury and Her Cow](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8a1a05c1-8def-4aae-81c0-b1cc7284f9e6) — 1625 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Stuart, Gloucestershire, Inventories, europe: A 1625 inventory shows an independent African woman living on her own in Gloucestershire.
- [Joseph Knight v John Wedderburn](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7197fc48-30ef-4050-868d-c32b3e9751a9) — 1778 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Scotland, Law, Freedom, europe: In 1778 Scotland's highest court ruled that slavery had no place in Scots law.
- [The Zong Massacre and the London Courts](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3ef41eab-76d3-4984-8452-93d5d2e30b32) — 1783 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Liverpool, Law, Abolition, europe: A Liverpool ship's mass murder became an insurance case in an English courtroom.
- [John Anthony, Mariner of Dover](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e9069ad8-a72d-46d5-8d8b-53bce680c725) — 1620 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Stuart, Dover, Maritime, europe: A Black sailor sued for his wages in the High Court of Admiralty.
- [Numismatics: Faces on British Coinage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/21f8acba-3b31-4020-b06e-eb87274d650e) — 1100 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Numismatics, Methodology, europe: Coin portraits as a parallel evidence stream.
- [Moorgate, Blackfriars and the Naming of the City of London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f90baaa0-d5a4-47c0-b0a7-635d84dddb1e) — 1300 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Toponyms, London, europe: City toponyms re-examined through onomastics.
- [The Norman-French Lineages of British Surnames](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8ae3b885-34f7-4c8f-af42-13e4d5807e9a) — 1066 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Normans, Methodology, europe: How Norman descent underpins many foundational names.
- [Morpeth and the Northumbrian Moor Names](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/148d5a55-71e7-4a33-9656-4bae46c6dfff) — 1250 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Toponyms, Northumberland, europe: Northern English toponyms and their earliest recorded forms.
- [The Surname Prince in English Records](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ab7d3080-abc9-420a-8f77-a8afff01f029) — 1400 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Nobility, europe: Prince as a foundational name, not an ironic one.
- [The Surname Cole and the Coal Names](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/954eb127-37d9-4729-b964-f16d96b4274d) — 1200 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Medieval Records, europe: Cole, Coles and Colman in medieval English documentation.
- [The Surname Blackman and Its Medieval Bearers](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/834d3b1c-db19-4fc0-9651-c3297a4a6fa6) — 1086 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Medieval Records, europe: Blackman appears in English records centuries before the Atlantic trade.
- [Blackheath: Reading a London Toponym](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/28796f55-38a1-4176-9f2a-29f739567585) — 1400 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Toponyms, London, europe: What the name of a royal ceremonial ground records.
- [The Original Knights of Britain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/455f00a3-4aba-4c62-8cfe-253400e7c922) — 1300 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Nobility, Sigillography, Heraldry, europe: Who the earliest documented knights were, read through seals and effigies.
- [Migrations Out of Africa into the British Isles](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/dbc8114b-af5a-48d0-a460-bc4352ca3d30) — 10000 BC | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Migration, Prehistory, europe: The demographic argument behind the onomastic evidence.
- [Engles and England: Reading the Name of a Nation](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/44e308c4-7370-456a-8247-553819d50c8b) — 600 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Etymology, Toponyms, europe: Part One of the Dictionary reopens the accepted etymology of England.
- [The Black Element in Welsh and Cornish Place-Names](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/77536b44-2147-45fa-acb6-1152ff603aa5) — 1300 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Toponyms, Wales, Cornwall, europe: Du, Dhu and their English cognates across the west.
- [The Surname Duke and the Ducal Names](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5246b07e-7fd4-4d0d-afa2-7cf388bd3ed7) — 1350 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Nobility, europe: Duke, Dukes and their continental cognates as evidence of rulership.
- [The Surname Blount and the Blunt Lines](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bba05cf5-2672-4a40-970e-e814fa79f94f) — 1320 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Heraldry, europe: A name family whose heraldry and manuscripts the Dictionary re-reads.
- [Black People Do Not Have Slave Names](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d7e3f830-58fe-4835-b91f-5f3da0cfe0de) — 1500 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Methodology, Historiography, europe: The central thesis of the Dictionary series.
- [The Surname Brown and the Brun Cognates](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3f344246-43e2-466d-9878-e6be72627456) — 1200 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Nobility, europe: Brown, Brun, Braun and Bruno as one aristocratic name family across Europe.
- [The Surname Bruce and the Brus Seals](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7b9f8676-3ee5-45f6-9dbd-79678c9c8897) — 1290 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Sigillography, Scotland, europe: Bruce read through its earliest seals and coinage.
- [Monumental Brasses as Portrait Evidence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1855e87b-25d6-458c-8521-919e46bcb150) — 1400 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Brasses, Churches, Methodology, europe: Engraved brasses across English parish churches and what they record.
- [Baratanac: The Name Behind Britain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/983b0be6-bedc-4795-a153-1dd96a18ac58) — 500 BC | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Etymology, Toponyms, europe: The onomastic argument that the island's oldest recorded name describes its melanated founders.
- [The Surname Morris and the Maurice Line](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f8015d18-e876-445a-b1e1-d4eaf86d5be9) — 1200 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Saints, Wales, europe: Morris, Morrice and Maurice as descendants of the African soldier-saint's name.
- [Sir James Audley, Knight of the Garter](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e99b3dee-e4a8-4d86-b51c-473b56cd938f) — 1348 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Nobility, Order of the Garter, Heraldry, europe: One of the original twenty-five Garter knights, presented as a Foundational Black landowner.
- [Advanced Geometry in the Ancient British Isles](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cb1fdaed-18e2-4793-9ac2-59eecb5a88f6) — 3000 BC | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Archaeology, Material Culture, europe: Material culture evidence cited in the 2022 Journal of Black Studies paper.
- [Sigillography: What Medieval Seals Show](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/da19b959-14b4-422a-8c39-9121475b4fdd) — 1300 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Sigillography, Methodology, europe: Wax seals as unretouched portrait evidence.
- [The Surname Grey and the Grey Effigies](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d464b7d1-4a6a-4787-8bad-e29f0a1363b4) — 1370 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Brasses, Heraldry, europe: Grey, Gray and their monumental brasses.
- [The Surname Moore and its Moorish Root](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c91b1866-34c6-41f0-be95-a9d2b50ed586) — 1250 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Moors, europe: Moore, More, Muir and Mor as a record of a people, not a place-name accident.
- [Manuscript Illumination and the Faces of British Nobility](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/da136894-f0f2-4c0c-af9a-bd5925eca0f0) — 1350 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Manuscripts, Nobility, Methodology, europe: Illuminated rolls and cartularies as visual primary sources.
- [The Surname Nero in British Records](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c72aff3b-12cb-4950-9e4d-9cc31a6ca810) — 1600 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Parish Records, europe: A rare but recurring surname in English parish books and its documented holders.
- [The Surname Blake and the Black Root](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c22faf85-364f-468f-b831-77807e82aedd) — 1300 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Heraldry, europe: Blake, Black and Blak as one name family in medieval England.
- [The Surname Dunn and the Dun Root](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ad90cf00-39e1-4f12-a153-3214e5af646b) — 1300 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Surnames, Ireland, europe: Dunn, Dunne and Donne as descriptive names in Britain and Ireland.
- [Blackburn, Blackpool and the Black Place-Names of Lancashire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/17d124c8-8002-44e5-9dcb-c33adf2805b5) — 1200 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Onomastics, Foundational Black British, Toponyms, Lancashire, europe: A county-level survey of black-element toponyms.
- [The African Auxiliaries of Roman Germania](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d40ca084-62a5-443a-a4ec-314250bfc006) — 200 AD | Europe, Germany, Roman Empire, Rhine, Legions, europe: Units raised in Africa garrisoned the Rhine frontier.
- [Saint Maurice's Legion in the Alps](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/50afe45e-d889-4bba-896b-fa0a07750d29) — 380 AD | Europe, Switzerland, Saints, Valais, Late Antiquity, europe: The Theban legion tradition placed African Christians at the heart of Alpine Europe.
- [The Black Madonna of Czestochowa](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c6b386e9-bc2a-481b-a868-794f425e7031) — 1382 AD | Europe, Poland, Black Madonna, Jasna Gora, Devotion, europe: Poland's national icon is dark-faced and has been repainted repeatedly.
- [Africans in Roman Pannonia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/09897a95-2a13-4885-9c3f-501893892c6e) — 150 AD | Europe, Hungary, Roman Empire, Danube, Legions, europe: Danube frontier units drew soldiers from Roman Africa into central Europe.
- [Black Africans in Renaissance Florence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7794dd9a-4108-4738-b641-766777fd5821) — 1490 AD | Europe, Italy, Florence, Medici, Households, europe: Medici household books name African servants, wet nurses and grooms.
- [Africans in Ottoman Thessaloniki](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3b250089-e147-49ef-a1f8-45f5674cdf63) — 1750 AD | Europe, Greece, Thessaloniki, Ottoman, Port, europe: One of Europe's great ports held a substantial African population.
- [Luxembourg's Africans in Habsburg Service](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/af8994c4-2443-4f94-82ec-f70e618d2738) — 1740 AD | Europe, Luxembourg, Garrison, Habsburg, Parish, europe: Garrison and parish records name Black soldiers and servants in the fortress city.
- [Africans in Tallinn's Harbour Records](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d6b0cad2-2f0d-49e5-9cb2-e614acb1da13) — 1790 AD | Europe, Estonia, Tallinn, Sailors, Registers, europe: Estonian port and church books document Black sailors and servants.
- [Black Servants in Baltic German Estates](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/16865342-582f-490c-811d-e91740a6969f) — 1750 AD | Europe, Latvia, Riga, Manors, Baltic Germans, europe: Latvian and Estonian manor archives record Africans in the Baltic provinces.
- [Africans in Vilnius and the Grand Duchy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ae831e6b-849c-41d8-84f1-d2364a4b4395) — 1700 AD | Europe, Lithuania, Vilnius, Radziwill, Courts, europe: Lithuanian magnate households employed African servants and musicians.
- [The Black Slaves and Freedmen of Malta](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1f07675b-8424-4dd1-bc2f-e29d263ed436) — 1600 AD | Europe, Malta, Knights of St John, Valletta, Galleys, europe: Knights' registers record thousands of Africans on the island.
- [Africans in Ottoman Cyprus](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3a73db3d-e40e-48b3-bde2-e62c4d838101) — 1650 AD | Europe, Cyprus, Ottoman, Nicosia, Freedmen, europe: Cypriot Ottoman records name African soldiers, servants and freedmen.
- [The Afro-Abkhazians of the Black Sea](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b1a20523-805b-4ee8-ae9a-e432cb3185d3) — 1850 AD | Europe, Georgia, Abkhazia, Black Sea, Community, europe: A documented African-descended community on Europe's eastern shore.
- [Africans in Imperial Russia's Service](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7d3f776b-c982-4770-9263-de834abac2e8) — 1700 AD | Europe, Russia, St Petersburg, Courts, Empire, europe: Peter the Great and his successors kept African courtiers, soldiers and diplomats.
- [Sephardic Livorno and the Africa Trade](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5a8ec23c-8dfa-44c1-83ae-17ab112fe874) — 1593 AD | Europe, Italy, Sephardic, Livorno, Trade, europe: Tuscany's free port hosted Jewish families trading directly with North Africa.
- [The Black Boyars' Servants of Wallachia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4c41e596-9128-4bf7-a06d-ea09a47047e4) — 1670 AD | Europe, Romania, Wallachia, Courts, Records, europe: Romanian princely and monastic records mention African servants and musicians.
- [Africans in Ottoman Bulgaria](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/060debaf-b130-40bc-aa42-ebd26547e747) — 1800 AD | Europe, Bulgaria, Ottoman, Varna, Community, europe: Nineteenth-century Bulgarian villages held communities of African descent.
- [Black Ottoman Soldiers in Belgrade](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6fe76877-e73a-42f2-95a3-018d680f4d22) — 1650 AD | Europe, Serbia, Ottoman, Belgrade, Garrisons, europe: Garrison registers name African troops stationed in Serbia.
- [Africans in Ragusa and the Dalmatian Coast](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8ef01382-3368-48d3-ae48-df1988bce9d1) — 1450 AD | Europe, Croatia, Dubrovnik, Notaries, Adriatic, europe: Dubrovnik's notarial books record African servants and sailors from the fifteenth century.
- [The Black Community of Ulcinj](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/182991e0-9eb3-45c6-a31c-6061864f4545) — 1700 AD | Europe, Montenegro, Adriatic, Ottoman, Community, europe: An Adriatic port with a documented African quarter into the twentieth century.
- [Africans in Ottoman Bosnia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5267be64-6d41-4967-8831-eaccf2cc931c) — 1600 AD | Europe, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ottoman, Sarajevo, Freedmen, europe: Sarajevo's Ottoman-era records name Black residents and freedmen.
- [Ottoman Africans in the Hungarian Plain](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7bf4d423-ef90-499c-bc7f-b06a33f4ccd7) — 1560 AD | Europe, Hungary, Ottoman, Buda, Garrisons, europe: Black soldiers and officials of the Ottoman administration lived in Hungary for 150 years.
- [Sephardic Salonica: Europe's Jewish Metropolis](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/55164cda-6cc6-4ba7-9c8e-1f8def547899) — 1550 AD | Europe, Greece, Sephardic, Thessaloniki, Ottoman, europe: A city where Iberian exiles and Africans lived side by side under Ottoman rule.
- [Africans at the Hungarian Court of Matthias Corvinus](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c68e8d3d-abe5-461c-bb3f-b44614c20b2b) — 1480 AD | Europe, Hungary, Buda, Renaissance, Corvinus, europe: Renaissance Buda employed North and West African servants and soldiers.
- [Sephardic Communities of Amsterdam and Their Iberian Roots](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f413ba0f-adfa-4920-96d2-a014ffc11c61) — 1650 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Sephardic, Amsterdam, Genealogy, europe: Iberian Jewish families carried North African ancestry into northern Europe.
- [Sephardic Bayonne and Bordeaux](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ce9efb74-55d6-4f23-bd7d-1e6abac7c36c) — 1550 AD | Europe, France, Sephardic, Bordeaux, Bayonne, europe: Portuguese Jewish merchant families settled south-west France after 1492.
- [The Beachy Head Lady](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/25a06e0f-a252-4c9e-b5a4-3e0ef10111cc) — 245 AD | Europe, United Kingdom, Archaeology, Sussex, Roman Britain, europe: A Roman-era woman of sub-Saharan African ancestry buried in Sussex.
- [The Black Madonna of Altotting](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/534be8c0-67af-4745-ac4f-4f65cdf6c018) — 1489 AD | Europe, Germany, Black Madonna, Bavaria, Pilgrimage, europe: Bavaria's pilgrimage centre and its dark Virgin.
- [Hans Jonatan, the Man Who Stole Himself](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/58b582f6-e42e-40cb-a96f-3010dead14e3) — 1802 AD | Europe, Iceland, Iceland, Freedom, Genetics, europe: An Afro-Caribbean man won his own freedom by walking away, and founded an Icelandic family line.
- [Africans at the Court of Christian IV](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/47dd8c1f-ad83-43c9-84aa-caf956427734) — 1620 AD | Europe, Denmark, Copenhagen, Courts, Renaissance, europe: Danish royal accounts record African servants and trumpeters in Renaissance Copenhagen.
- [Badin, Confidant of a Swedish Queen](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1b77f044-24d1-449d-9a2c-1779869e23e0) — 1760 AD | Europe, Sweden, Stockholm, Courts, Diaries, europe: Gustav Adolf Badin rose from enslavement to the inner circle of the Swedish court and kept a diary.
- [Black Sailors and Students in Gothenburg](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3aad19c6-25b8-4b7b-81c9-e0184d129a97) — 1790 AD | Europe, Sweden, Gothenburg, Trade, Registers, europe: Swedish East India Company and later port records document African presence.
- [Sweden's Caribbean Colony and Its People](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/41442078-da7f-4f07-b29e-97a3077b61d6) — 1784 AD | Europe, Sweden, Saint-Barthelemy, Colonialism, Archives, europe: Saint-Barthelemy tied Sweden directly to Atlantic slavery, and brought Africans to Stockholm.
- [Africans in Norwegian Port Towns](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/20fab4db-cc7f-4aad-8d6a-96885070b395) — 1780 AD | Europe, Norway, Bergen, Sailors, Church Books, europe: Bergen and Christiania records show Black residents from the eighteenth century.
- [Finland's First Documented Africans](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1d3266dc-646d-444b-a12c-def2337371c4) — 1850 AD | Europe, Finland, Helsinki, Turku, Records, europe: Nineteenth-century Finnish records name African sailors, performers and converts.
- [Abram Petrovich Gannibal, General and Engineer](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0f91cf99-2186-4de2-a608-2d69a2630ac3) — 1742 AD | Europe, Russia, Gannibal, Pushkin, Engineering, europe: An African taken as a boy became a Russian general and Pushkin's great-grandfather.
- [Black Africans in Habsburg Prague](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/237d8cb1-c03f-4fa3-8651-245c4c14eeaf) — 1600 AD | Europe, Czechia, Prague, Rudolf II, Courts, europe: Rudolf II's court drew African servants, musicians and envoys to Bohemia.
- [The Black Servants of Bohemian Nobility](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/35a28b9e-6ca2-4d85-9fbf-152e3241b2ff) — 1740 AD | Europe, Czechia, Bohemia, Moravia, Estates, europe: Eighteenth-century Czech estate records list African servants by name.
- [Africans in the Habsburg Netherlands' Guilds](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/699dda9e-8f24-4295-b3eb-d4eed86ca0b4) — 1560 AD | Europe, Belgium, Guilds, Flanders, Craft, europe: Guild admission books occasionally name Black craftsmen.
- [Black Gondoliers and Servants in Ottoman-Venetian Crete](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1499ac44-9a2f-4cfb-a640-0358848e2ad9) — 1550 AD | Europe, Greece, Crete, Venice, Notaries, europe: Venetian Crete's notarial records name African servants and boatmen.
- [The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/016a3367-74a8-4743-84bd-377aadbfb816) — 1466 AD | Europe, Switzerland, Black Madonna, Einsiedeln, Devotion, europe: Switzerland's most visited shrine centres on a dark Virgin.
- [Africans in Early Modern Vienna's Parish Books](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4a5d394b-537a-4d94-8258-b209aeaa3fb3) — 1690 AD | Europe, Austria, Vienna, Parish, Registers, europe: Baptism entries name African adults and children in the Habsburg capital.
- [The Moriscos' Expulsion and Those Who Stayed](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0d0cccf5-8539-49f2-824e-eb873c9230e3) — 1609 AD | Europe, Spain, Moriscos, Inquisition, Expulsion, europe: After 1609 many North African-descended Spaniards remained, hidden in plain sight.
- [The Black Madonna of Le Puy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/50accc58-b52a-4da5-a8d4-490607a26074) — 1200 AD | Europe, France, Black Madonna, Le Puy, Pilgrimage, europe: A dark Virgin at one of France's oldest pilgrimage sites.
- [Black Sailors of Copenhagen](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2acc77a2-a6ff-4e7d-89e7-e4a6e85703ed) — 1760 AD | Europe, Denmark, Copenhagen, Sailors, Danish West Indies, europe: Danish naval and customs rolls list African crew in the eighteenth century.
- [The Black Auxiliaries of Spanish Flanders](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/40d82432-0dcd-40e4-8765-c3c6dc94c02b) — 1600 AD | Europe, Belgium, Army of Flanders, Spain, Musters, europe: Spanish Flanders armies included African soldiers and servants.
- [Africans in Roman Britain's Cemeteries](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b9bd4fff-752e-4af3-ad0f-b0f7ee67e57a) — 350 AD | Europe, United Kingdom, Archaeology, York, London, europe: Isotope and skeletal studies place African-born people in Roman York and London.
- [The Black Trumpeters of the Iberian Armies](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a5238062-1397-475b-ad46-87b65461f029) — 1580 AD | Europe, Spain, Armies, Music, Musters, europe: Muster rolls list African musicians in Spanish and Portuguese regiments.
- [The African Gladiators and Soldiers of Roman Gaul](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0437d7d8-f8c8-4ff9-bfd3-2e293efc4488) — 180 AD | Europe, France, Roman Gaul, Inscriptions, Antiquity, europe: Inscriptions and mosaics record Africans across what is now France.
- [Moorish Envoys to Elizabethan and Continental Courts](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b5e21361-bcd6-4a09-901f-5e120eed6e0c) — 1600 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Diplomacy, Morocco, Portraits, europe: North African diplomats travelled across sixteenth-century Europe with retinues.
- [Abd al-Rahman I and the Emirate of Cordoba](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1d274b9f-52eb-4661-a163-84afbd179552) — 756 AD | Europe, Spain, Al-Andalus, Cordoba, Moors, europe: An exiled Umayyad prince of Berber descent founds the state that made Cordoba Europe's largest city.
- [The Black Madonna of Tindari](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8fb65429-d541-48e9-83ba-b4a64116f84e) — 1300 AD | Europe, Italy, Sicily, Black Madonna, Byzantine, europe: Sicily's dark Virgin carries an inscription about her own colour.
- [Tariq ibn Ziyad Crosses at Gibraltar](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b63f0fdd-6970-415e-93d2-deb5dc292f8a) — 711 AD | Europe, Spain, Moors, Al-Andalus, Berbers, europe: The Berber commander whose 711 crossing opened eight centuries of North African rule in Iberia.
- [Frederick Douglass in Ireland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/29ce2912-f22b-434a-a9fc-b107d54cf78e) — 1845 AD | Europe, Ireland, Douglass, Abolition, Lectures, europe: Four months in 1845 that Douglass called the turning point of his life.
- [Black Berliners and the Colonial Exhibition](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8ab6f7da-717b-4f79-9123-7c38240eb7ca) — 1896 AD | Europe, Germany, Berlin, Colonialism, Diaspora, europe: The 1896 exhibition brought Africans to Berlin, and some of them stayed and organised.
- [Court Moors of the German Principalities](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/78c2dbd7-b056-47dc-9265-b174c08fd88b) — 1750 AD | Europe, Germany, Courts, Hofmohren, Archives, europe: Dozens of small German states kept African servants, soldiers and musicians on the payroll.
- [Juan de Pareja in Velazquez's Studio](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/71f6f603-aa7a-4ea4-99a2-32bb6caaedf8) — 1650 AD | Europe, Spain, Madrid, Painters, Velazquez, europe: The enslaved assistant whose own painting hangs beside his master's portrait of him.
- [Black Amsterdam in the Golden Age](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1a0252bb-8985-4339-98e3-3bbeee2d3ba2) — 1650 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Amsterdam, Golden Age, Registers, europe: Church registers place hundreds of Africans in seventeenth-century Amsterdam.
- [Cupido and Sideron at the House of Orange](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/22b0add6-6639-40bb-92e9-51aa954b29aa) — 1780 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Orange Court, Letters, Archives, europe: Two African boys raised at the Dutch court left letters in their own hands.
- [Free Black Sailors of the Dutch Companies](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0deee3de-a147-4e94-b5e5-a3ec503a1921) — 1667 AD | Europe, Netherlands, VOC, Sailors, Labour, europe: VOC and WIC muster rolls record African crew on European ships.
- [Katharina of Augsburg in Durer's Sketchbook](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/49b11613-e607-4961-a11d-d620a656b2af) — 1521 AD | Europe, Germany, Durer, Augsburg, Portraits, europe: A 1521 silverpoint drawing names an African woman in a Portuguese-German household.
- [Africans in Antwerp's Golden Age](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/76a10a34-e013-4fe8-bd6e-cb5e9aea8d57) — 1550 AD | Europe, Belgium, Antwerp, Trade, Records, europe: Sixteenth-century Antwerp was a Black port city as well as a banking capital.
- [Black Troops and the Rhineland Occupation](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1ff6ce87-67ec-422f-8a49-41b746a2827c) — 1919 AD | Europe, Germany, Rhineland, Interwar, Propaganda, europe: After 1919 African soldiers in occupied Germany became the target of a mass propaganda campaign.
- [The Congolese Village at Tervuren](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/542734fb-93d0-4d3b-b8c6-cf5f80bf8a52) — 1897 AD | Europe, Belgium, Congo, Leopold II, Exhibition, europe: 267 Congolese people were displayed near Brussels in 1897; seven died there.
- [Expo 58 and the Congo Pavilion](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/09175b97-4c93-437d-b2f2-b784eb0bb1e2) — 1958 AD | Europe, Belgium, Brussels, Congo, Independence, europe: Belgium's last colonial spectacle became a turning point for Congolese activists.
- [Black Court Trumpeters of the Habsburgs](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/afaa3e71-9093-44a6-8429-5dd76af37d4c) — 1770 AD | Europe, Austria, Vienna, Music, Courts, europe: Imperial music lists name African trumpeters and drummers in Vienna.
- [Vienna's Ashanti Exhibition](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3d8fdd73-51bb-4a47-a69c-de366f80c654) — 1897 AD | Europe, Austria, Vienna, Exhibition, Ghana, europe: In 1897 a Ghanaian group was displayed in the Tiergarten, and the Viennese press debated it.
- [The Black Kings of the Swiss Altarpieces](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/447c78c8-b8be-48f0-ab94-0b755e481473) — 1470 AD | Europe, Switzerland, Art, Magi, Alps, europe: Late-medieval Swiss painters gave the magus Balthasar African features.
- [Angelo Soliman, Freemason of Vienna](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fcd8051f-b1ae-46ad-9c4b-dc86b4748ab2) — 1721 AD | Europe, Austria, Vienna, Freemasonry, Habsburgs, europe: A Central African brought to Europe as a child became a Viennese intellectual — then a museum exhibit.
- [Basel Mission Records and African Lives](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0c3c2309-8eb3-47d5-ad9a-2a4b0c9b3a62) — 1880 AD | Europe, Switzerland, Basel, Mission, Archives, europe: Nineteenth-century Basel archives preserve the letters and photographs of African students in Switzerland.
- [Africans of the Armada Wrecks in Ireland](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6cfd227d-9551-4f20-9575-86f4bde4669d) — 1588 AD | Europe, Ireland, Armada, Sligo, Survivors, europe: Spanish ships lost off Ireland in 1588 carried African crew and servants.
- [Black Servants in Georgian Dublin](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/63fd205d-5a96-46f1-90c5-2f73513226d4) — 1750 AD | Europe, Ireland, Dublin, Georgian, Registers, europe: Newspaper advertisements and parish books record Africans across eighteenth-century Ireland.
- [Africans at the Court of the Vasa Kings](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ce93c01a-c9cc-418c-b23c-5381aa8dd453) — 1650 AD | Europe, Poland, Warsaw, Krakow, Courts, europe: Polish royal accounts name Black servants and musicians in seventeenth-century Warsaw and Krakow.
- [Black Chamber Servants in Saxon Warsaw](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/492f00b8-0420-4c31-bb22-c98e859cad13) — 1720 AD | Europe, Poland, Warsaw, Dresden, Courts, europe: Augustus II's Polish-Saxon court kept African servants in ceremonial livery.
- [Rembrandt's Two African Men](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f810aea0-11bd-4eea-b71f-13d86658b4a1) — 1661 AD | Europe, Netherlands, Rembrandt, Amsterdam, Painting, europe: A 1661 study painted from life, not from imagination.
- [Aithiopes on Attic Vases](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/adccf449-951b-45a9-aa9c-c7a75c23c29e) — 500 BC | Europe, Greece, Athens, Vases, Antiquity, europe: Greek potters painted Black African faces with individual, observed detail.
- [Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Swordsman and Composer](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ba610814-5e10-46dc-ba07-c04d7ec91881) — 1745 AD | Europe, France, Paris, Music, Revolution, europe: Born in Guadeloupe to an enslaved African mother, he led Paris's finest orchestra.
- [General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5f66686f-24e4-4d71-976e-dfedd47893d5) — 1793 AD | Europe, France, Revolution, Army, Dumas, europe: The son of an enslaved Haitian woman rose to divisional general of the French Republic.
- [Black Fighters in the Greek War of Independence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/dab0d904-8b44-4183-9392-42a67f13db9c) — 1821 AD | Europe, Greece, Crete, Revolution, Ottoman, europe: North and East African men fought on both sides of the 1821 revolution, and some settled in Crete.
- [Jean-Baptiste Belley Takes His Seat in Paris](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/85e9e6b4-53fd-4cad-bcb9-3d41d75e8931) — 1794 AD | Europe, France, Abolition, Convention, Senegal, europe: A formerly enslaved African sat in the assembly that abolished French slavery.
- [Anton Wilhelm Amo, Philosopher at Halle](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/293549b3-3be9-463b-8c70-61f98430ee31) — 1729 AD | Europe, Germany, Philosophy, Halle, Gold Coast, europe: An African-born scholar taught philosophy in German universities in the 1730s.
- [The Black Confraternities of Naples](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/938a1585-1484-477f-87a1-b74834d10db9) — 1600 AD | Europe, Italy, Naples, Confraternities, Spanish Italy, europe: Africans in Spanish Naples founded their own religious and mutual-aid bodies.
- [Africans at the Court of Isabella d'Este](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c8662dd9-5db1-47f4-b4e9-fe70275a451d) — 1500 AD | Europe, Italy, Mantua, Renaissance, Courts, europe: Mantua's ducal accounts name African musicians, servants and children of the household.
- [Saint Benedict the Moor of Palermo](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6b72a43f-75ac-4500-a783-a7bfba774fef) — 1526 AD | Europe, Italy, Sicily, Saints, Palermo, europe: The son of enslaved Africans became a Sicilian saint venerated across Catholic Europe.
- [Black Gondoliers in Carpaccio's Venice](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fb344651-4532-41c9-ac5c-2efdada38a55) — 1494 AD | Europe, Italy, Venice, Painting, Labour, europe: Venetian painters recorded Africans working the canals as skilled boatmen.
- [Saint Victor the Moor of Milan](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/034815ed-b173-44ba-886e-df0ea5dde4a9) — 303 AD | Europe, Italy, Saints, Milan, Mauri, europe: A Mauritanian soldier-martyr venerated in northern Italy since late antiquity.
- [La Revue Negre Opens in Paris](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/53f005fe-c115-4330-b0d1-4e3b936acd08) — 1925 AD | Europe, France, Paris, Performance, Jazz, europe: 1925 turned Black performance into the defining image of French modernity.
- [Kojo Tovalou Houenou and Black Paris](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3db69507-7d2e-4980-a158-bc60798b0e59) — 1919 AD | Europe, France, Paris, Pan-Africanism, Interwar, europe: A Dahomean lawyer built the interwar movement that made Paris a Black political capital.
- [Louis Aniaba at the Court of Louis XIV](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d670bc77-2922-4d7d-be1d-2900eab15497) — 1690 AD | Europe, France, Versailles, Louis XIV, West Africa, europe: A West African prince baptised by Bossuet and commissioned as a French officer.
- [The Black Madonna of Rocamadour](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4f25eff0-c79d-4d3c-9f15-ea54c723551a) — 1250 AD | Europe, France, Black Madonna, Pilgrimage, Devotion, europe: A dark Virgin at the centre of medieval France's busiest pilgrimage route.
- [The Mourarias of the Algarve](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/98e2d3c4-523f-40de-a92a-70a4e2d66f2b) — 1250 AD | Europe, Portugal, Moors, Algarve, Mouraria, europe: After the Reconquest, Moorish quarters persisted as legally recognised communities.
- [Black Confraternities of Porto](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6b788129-1b2a-4b45-9e63-6ca7cdc3d16b) — 1786 AD | Europe, Portugal, Porto, Confraternities, Records, europe: Northern Portugal's African brotherhoods and their surviving account books.
- [The Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of Black Men](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ae86c891-c65a-4a14-aaff-4fc199ed5664) — 1565 AD | Europe, Portugal, Confraternities, Lisbon, Freedom, europe: Africans in Portugal organised their own legal, funeral and manumission society.
- [Black Lisbon: A Tenth of the City](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0150dec1-656e-42f2-8a9c-f659f6481b61) — 1550 AD | Europe, Portugal, Lisbon, Confraternities, Urban Africa, europe: Sixteenth-century censuses and travellers agree that Lisbon was substantially African.
- [Lagos 1441: The First Cargo Landed in Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0d22879b-a9cd-48a3-92fe-a7df37e08710) — 1441 AD | Europe, Portugal, Lagos, Atlantic Trade, Algarve, europe: The Portuguese port where the Atlantic trade in Africans began, and where a Black community formed.
- [The Black Madonna of Montserrat](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8ff4431f-d581-41dc-98dd-18cd435d835d) — 1310 AD | Europe, Spain, Black Madonna, Catalonia, Devotion, europe: Catalonia's national image of the Virgin is dark, and has been repainted lighter and darker over centuries.
- [Juan Latino, Black Professor of Granada](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cfe0beed-34cc-49f0-86c0-1af51376a19c) — 1518 AD | Europe, Spain, Granada, Scholars, Renaissance, europe: An African-born humanist held a chair of Latin in sixteenth-century Spain.
- [The Almohad Century in Iberia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/18229fa2-ef54-4b6a-81f2-c1de23d04c33) — 1147 AD | Europe, Spain, Almohads, Seville, Berbers, europe: A Masmuda Berber dynasty rules southern Europe from Seville.
- [The Almoravids at Sagrajas](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b89c0895-5c07-4f09-be33-c0c7a76ddceb) — 1086 AD | Europe, Spain, Almoravids, Berbers, Sahara, europe: Sanhaja Berber and West African troops decide the fate of eleventh-century Spain.
- [Ziryab: The Musician Who Refashioned Cordoba](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/41aa8716-f855-4577-9bdc-ba3992e2aee0) — 822 AD | Europe, Spain, Cordoba, Al-Andalus, Music, europe: A dark-skinned Iraqi-African courtier whose nickname meant blackbird and who set the style of Andalusi Europe.
- [Walter Tull: Professional Footballer, British Army Officer](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/385ed439-0125-4bf4-a7a6-95448c62c202) — 1917 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Walter Tull, First World War, Football, Black Britons, europe: Tottenham forward, then an infantry officer commissioned against the letter of British military law, killed leading his men in March 1918.
- [The Black Boy Inns: A Map of a Forgotten Description](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b6dbbb9e-a81e-4085-957c-f9a8945d8143) — 1665 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Charles II, Place Names, Black Europe, Folk History, europe: Dozens of Black Boy pubs and lanes survive across England, most of them first recorded after 1660 — a distribution map of what people meant by the word.
- [The 1919 Race Riots in Britain''s Port Cities](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/100c6132-b01e-4821-9afa-2c414d13cd69) — 1919 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, 1919 Riots, Liverpool, Cardiff, Black Britons, europe: Black seamen who crewed British ships through the war were hunted through eight port cities in 1919 — and the state answered with repatriation, not protection.
- [Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b1a12ae4-f4b0-4e42-b6c8-2359d46372b2) — 1898 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Music, Victorian Britain, Black Britons, europe: A Black Londoner wrote one of the most performed choral works in British history at twenty-three — and sold it outright for fifteen guineas.
- [Andrew Watson, the World''s First Black International Footballer](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/081c70c3-28f5-44bb-addd-0cd115db7937) — 1881 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Scotland, Andrew Watson, Football, Black Britons, europe: He captained Scotland on his debut in 1881 and beat England 6-1 — the world''s first Black international footballer, and an architect of the passing game.
- [Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Goddaughter of Queen Victoria](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/dbdd441e-5507-40df-b3d6-4750c9c8d996) — 1850 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Victorian Britain, Yoruba, Black Britons, europe: A Yoruba girl presented to the Royal Navy in 1850 became Queen Victoria''s goddaughter, educated at the crown''s expense and married in a society wedding at Brighton.
- [Mary Seacole and the British Hotel at Balaclava](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e2573173-5bda-4444-a8dd-bbeec7404b12) — 1855 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Mary Seacole, Crimean War, Medicine, Black Britons, europe: Turned down by the War Office, she paid her own way to the Crimea, built a hotel and hospital behind the lines, and treated men under fire.
- [William Cuffay, Chartist Leader Transported to Tasmania](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8159dfa6-9f8a-40c7-9259-c552e818bb06) — 1848 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, William Cuffay, Chartism, Labour History, Black Britons, europe: London''s Chartist leader, mocked by The Times as "the Black man and his party", convicted on informers'' evidence and transported to Tasmania.
- [Robert Wedderburn, the Preacher Who Went to Prison for Sedition](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/55b23e18-fbd4-4c83-9026-ea62e54d02ad) — 1820 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Robert Wedderburn, Radicalism, Abolition, Black Britons, europe: A Soho chapel, government spies in the congregation, and a Jamaican-born preacher jailed for telling London that the enslaved had the right to rise.
- [Tom Molineaux Against Tom Cribb, 1810](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/fcaf6ccf-b1f2-4479-b1a3-475bfbcf2597) — 1810 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Tom Molineaux, Boxing, Sport, Black Britons, europe: Forty rounds, a disputed stoppage and a crowd that would not let an American-born Black fighter take the English championship.
- [Bill Richmond, the Black Terror of Georgian Boxing](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4f4be852-a355-42c1-aec2-c77dd7f05ea2) — 1805 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Bill Richmond, Boxing, Georgian England, Black Britons, europe: From slavery on Staten Island to the most fashionable boxing school in London and a ceremonial post at the coronation of George IV.
- [Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and the Madragana Line](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/37efd8fc-a240-4b7d-965f-5623aceadcc1) — 1761 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Queen Charlotte, Royalty, Moors, Black Europe, europe: The queen consort of George III descends from Madragana of Faro — a documented Moorish line in the pedigree of the British crown.
- [Dido Elizabeth Belle at Kenwood House](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/193306b6-bd46-4479-8eac-244c14b576c7) — 1779 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Dido Belle, Georgian England, Kenwood, Black Britons, europe: Raised in the household of the judge who ruled on Somerset''s case, painted as an equal in 1779, freed and provided for by his will.
- [The Black Poor of London and the Sierra Leone Scheme, 1786](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/23b4ebaf-badf-454a-9e88-06d97132d047) — 1786 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Black Loyalists, London, Sierra Leone, Black Britons, europe: The relief registers of 1786 name hundreds of Black Loyalists stranded in London — and record the resettlement scheme that Equiano and Cugoano fought from within.
- [Olaudah Equiano''s Interesting Narrative, 1789](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5f7ab6bf-2e01-46d9-87b6-b2072a9290bd) — 1789 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Olaudah Equiano, Abolition, Literature, Black Britons, europe: Nine editions, a nationwide subscription tour and a fortune earned from his own book — Equiano turned autobiography into the abolition movement''s most effective weapon.
- [Ottobah Cugoano''s Thoughts and Sentiments, 1787](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/55ecd8b3-05e7-411d-af5f-0905210114ae) — 1787 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Ottobah Cugoano, Abolition, Sons of Africa, Black Britons, europe: In 1787 an African in London demanded immediate total abolition and compensation for the enslaved — years ahead of the societies that claimed the cause.
- [Ignatius Sancho: Shopkeeper, Composer, and the First Black Briton to Vote](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3b847b72-8ed8-4028-a873-f54604e8cefc) — 1774 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Ignatius Sancho, Georgian England, Abolition, Black Britons, europe: Grocer, composer and correspondent of literary London — and the first Black Briton on record casting a parliamentary vote.
- [Somerset v Stewart: The Case That Shook Slavery in England](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/eb89036e-6598-4da6-818a-e367946798ec) — 1772 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Law, Abolition, James Somerset, Black Britons, europe: A recaptured man''s habeas corpus petition forced the Court of King''s Bench in 1772 to admit that English law had no foundation for holding him.
- [Francis Barber, Heir to Dr Samuel Johnson](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ee5070ee-a598-4ef4-a2c3-f0157ae40f61) — 1752 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Georgian England, Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson, Black Britons, europe: Samuel Johnson educated him, relied on him, and left him the estate — the Jamaican-born Francis Barber, whose descendants are still traceable in the Midlands.
- [Blackamoor Heraldry in the English Coat of Arms](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0729375b-ebac-468a-980a-4a354a207281) — 1350 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Heraldry, Moors, Black Europe, Symbols, europe: The Moor''s head runs through hundreds of British coats of arms, civic seals and inn signs — a heraldic record of contact that the later explanations do not fully cover.
- [Elizabeth I''s Deportation Proclamations, 1596-1601](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b8f0f3a6-2641-4615-b6a4-a1ce9e0eacb9) — 1596 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Black Tudors, Elizabeth I, Law, Black Europe, europe: The crown''s attempt to remove "divers blackamoores" from England is best evidence of how many were already there — and there is little sign it was ever carried out.
- [Mary Fillis of Morisco, Baptised in London, 1597](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f469ec65-6a9a-4322-98be-90b6054ab643) — 1597 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Black Tudors, London, Morocco, Black Europe, europe: A twenty-year-old Moroccan woman in Elizabethan London, baptised at Aldgate in 1597 in a register entry long enough to give us her father, her origin and her own words.
- [Reasonable Blackman, Silk Weaver of Southwark](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/94e34a37-6165-466e-bfb8-7223d85394e2) — 1579 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Black Tudors, London, Southwark, Trades, europe: An independent African silk weaver with his own Southwark workshop, recorded in Elizabethan parish registers alongside his marriage and his children''s baptisms.
- [Jacques Francis, the African Diver of the Mary Rose](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/613adeaf-6803-4df3-8f63-fd5f2cb69786) — 1547 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Black Tudors, Mary Rose, Jacques Francis, Legal History, europe: An African diver led the salvage of the Mary Rose and testified under oath in an English court in 1548 — over objections that an African''s word should not count.
- [John Blanke, Trumpeter to Henry VII and Henry VIII](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0d576746-17de-4383-a660-f0750ce953d8) — 1511 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Black Tudors, John Blanke, Tudor England, Black Europe, europe: Paid by the crown, painted on the Westminster Tournament Roll and successful in petitioning Henry VIII for a raise — the Black Tudor trumpeter we can actually see.
- [Beachy Head Lady: An African Woman in Roman Sussex](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1d1ebe62-ee89-4c59-9e8d-a3f692424190) — 245 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Roman Britain, Sussex, Archaeology, Africans in Europe, europe: A young woman of sub-Saharan African ancestry who grew up in Roman Sussex — African by descent, local by upbringing.
- [The Ivory Bangle Lady of Roman York](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5448dcb2-4b7e-4155-8a9c-c8cbc423dbcd) — 350 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Roman Britain, York, Archaeology, Africans in Europe, europe: A wealthy woman of North African ancestry, buried in fourth-century York with ivory, jet and a Christian blessing — evidence of an African elite in Roman Britain.
- [Charles II: The King They Called the Black Boy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cb89a488-0c15-492d-a8b9-0b794116f212) — 1660 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Black Europe, Charles II, Stuart England, Royalty, europe: His own mother called him dark, the country called him the Black Boy, and the inn signs bearing that name still stand — the documentary case around Charles II and the Moorish line in the European royal pedigree.
- [The Aurelian Moors of Hadrian''s Wall](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5d789e13-edf3-4fe3-b725-9949ee215e15) — 253 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Roman Britain, Moors, Hadrian's Wall, Africans in Europe, europe: A Roman inscription in Cumbria names a unit of Moors stationed on Hadrian''s Wall — an African garrison holding Britain''s northern frontier.
- [Septimius Severus: The African Emperor Who Died at York](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/003e8de8-b3ee-4314-9459-a640d0f22be8) — 208 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, Roman Britain, Septimius Severus, York, Africans in Europe, europe: For three years the Roman empire was governed from York by an African-born emperor whose court, army and family reshaped the northern frontier.
- [John Archer, Mayor of Battersea, 1913](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5c17f840-a123-464d-a3ba-99a8475b2f8d) — 1913 AD | United Kingdom, Britain, John Archer, London, Politics, Pan-Africanism, europe: "You have made history tonight" — the first Black mayor of a London borough, elected in Battersea in 1913 and later a Pan-African Congress delegate.
- [The Catalan Atlas Depicts Mansa Musa](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0407661a-c583-468a-b3b2-8fe024febe88) — 1375 AD | Cartography, Mali Empire, Europe: How European cartography absorbed African wealth into its imagination.
- [Kerma: Africa’s Forgotten Metropolis](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f5bec04c-32b3-4664-bb68-e6f2a92f6772) — 2000 BC | Nubia, Kerma, Archaeology, Africa: A walled city on the Nile with deffufa temples and royal tumuli.
- [The Land of Punt Expeditions](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ee4d85ec-1abf-4e5a-8cc6-cad57a096a17) — 1500 BC | Trade, Ancient Egypt, Punt, Africa: Hatshepsut’s fleets and the African trade partners painted at Deir el-Bahari.
- [Sea Peoples and the Bronze Age Collapse](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/14076b33-5d19-47b6-8d08-66535482064c) — 1100 BC | Bronze Age, Migration, Mediterranean: How a systems failure across the Mediterranean reshaped African power.
- [Piye and the 25th Dynasty](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/18340849-7c12-4478-b4fd-10572cb75800) — 750 BC | Kush, Ancient Egypt, Africa: Kushite kings take the double crown and restore the temples of Amun.
- [Queen Amanirenas and the Roman Wars](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7e05a139-834f-4060-ac7c-1fd230e3e283) — 700 BC | Meroe, Rome, Kandake, Africa: Meroë’s one-eyed kandake negotiates a treaty with Augustus.
- [The Iron Furnaces of Meroë](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/99742263-1098-4fc9-9f90-3d0a235fef0b) — 600 BC | Meroe, Metallurgy, Africa: Metallurgy, deforestation and the economics of an African iron belt.
- [Memnon of Ethiopia in Greek Memory](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c6c7a213-2d6f-4fcb-8126-a6bd48c8736a) — 500 BC | Greece, Iconography, Mediterranean: Tracing the Aethiopian hero across vase painting and epic tradition.
- [Herodotus Among the Aethiopians](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/cb9eaf2f-9f3c-43bc-8fff-286656f6224d) — 450 BC | Greece, Sources, Mediterranean: What the Histories actually say about complexion, and what later editors changed.
- [Leo Africanus Describes Timbuktu](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f52c3f4f-138b-4dac-ba3d-8d04c66804a4) — 1510 AD | Timbuktu, Sources, Africa: Libraries, jurists and the price of books in the Sudanic cities.
- [The Almoravid Movement](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/046b23c4-3b33-409f-b73d-c90250975744) — 1050 AD | Almoravid, Morocco, Africa: A Saharan reform movement reshapes Morocco and al-Andalus.
- [Juan Latino of Granada](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a1611fd9-6dd1-442c-a513-af1b2773f8c3) — 1560 AD | Spain, Scholarship, Europe: An African-born humanist publishing Latin verse in Habsburg Spain.
- [The Fall of Carthage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ed6514eb-d406-48b2-8faa-fb8fd84458fa) — 146 BC | Carthage, Rome, Africa: Rome’s destruction of a North African superpower and the diaspora that followed.
- [Carthage and the African Interior](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/899fcbe9-be5d-4f74-87a1-f0e3c897e812) — 200 BC | Carthage, Numidia, Africa: Punic ports, Numidian cavalry and the trade routes behind Hannibal.
- [Afonso I of Kongo Writes to Lisbon](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/91a523f2-ccd2-4783-808a-4ed0fc33a165) — 1526 AD | Kongo, Slavery, Sources, Africa: Royal letters protesting the slave traffic in his kingdom.
- [Sundiata and the Mali Empire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/12707e47-85a8-4803-8e05-bfc31bfe37e1) — 1235 AD | Mali Empire, Law, Africa: The Kurukan Fuga charter and the making of a Mande state.
- [Ta-Seti: The Land of the Bow](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1a2b7de3-7cf0-4ebc-979b-a00631903f90) — 3100 BC | Nubia, Kush, Ancient Egypt, Africa: Nubia’s archer kingdom south of the first cataract, older than dynastic Egypt itself.
- [Mansa Musa’s Pilgrimage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4bbaea57-52e5-4832-9e66-9d5dac49eab0) — 1324 AD | Mali Empire, Gold, Africa: A gold economy shocks Cairo and enters European maps.
- [The Black Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d172f145-9426-4394-b417-f4d9bdd4b9bc) — 2600 BC | Ancient Egypt, Iconography, Africa: Reading the statuary and pigment conventions of Egypt’s earliest royal portraits.
- [Ibn Battuta in Mali and Kilwa](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e9ec12bc-c33a-4f05-a8aa-72e0d507c29c) — 1350 AD | Sources, Mali Empire, Swahili, Africa: A traveller’s notes on African justice, cities and courts.
- [Garamantes of the Sahara](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/039790a0-48f4-403f-a105-17bbc650acee) — 300 BC | Sahara, Garamantes, Engineering, Africa: Underground foggara channels and a desert civilisation in Fezzan.
- [Sunni Ali Baru and Songhai’s Rise](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bfe6a715-a18d-445a-a7e3-92fce64522e0) — 1468 AD | Songhai, Timbuktu, Africa: Cavalry, river fleets and the conquest of Timbuktu.
- [Portuguese Caravels Reach the Gold Coast](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ed453466-fe5f-4610-9a44-ce036853d731) — 1450 AD | Portugal, Trade, Africa: Elmina, trade forts and the beginning of Atlantic entanglement.
- [Jamaica’s Windward Maroons](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1d04ecac-417f-4a97-80ee-5218535f61b5) — 1680 AD | Maroons, Jamaica, Resistance, Americas: Treaty warfare in the Blue Mountains and the limits of empire.
- [Benin City and Its Walls](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/de883254-aa17-4553-9934-3864ae1a53fd) — 1400 AD | Benin, Art, Architecture, Africa: Earthworks, guilds and a royal bronze tradition in the forest kingdom.
- [Osei Tutu and the Golden Stool](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9c8cc983-a854-4c1e-95d8-96f58a62e9f9) — 1700 AD | Asante, Statecraft, Africa: Asante confederacy building in the Akan forest.
- [Swahili Stone Towns](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/01c6a400-94b3-4322-ae61-cb09ab5afdee) — 1000 AD | Swahili, Trade, Indian Ocean, Africa: Kilwa, Lamu and an Indian Ocean world in African hands.
- [Ibn Hawqal in the Sahel](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f414887d-1b3a-4f9d-8cfd-0f1e51d213de) — 960 AD | Sources, Sahel, Africa: An Arab geographer describes West African credit and kingship.
- [Igbo-Ukwu: The Bronze Casters](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e9b38342-79bc-4d20-871c-a3a02961c485) — 850 AD | Igbo-Ukwu, Metallurgy, Art, Africa: Lost-wax masterworks in the Nigerian forest belt centuries before contact.
- [Ifriqiya and the Trans-Saharan Caravans](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/87dc6b96-ed0f-467d-a430-10a3fcc4b1f5) — 800 AD | Trade, Sahara, Africa: Salt, gold and enslaved labour on the desert corridors.
- [Lalibela’s Rock-Hewn Churches](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ac249629-b827-4ece-bfd1-00757e90d330) — 1200 AD | Ethiopia, Architecture, Africa: Ethiopia carves a new Jerusalem out of living stone.
- [Al-Idrisi Maps the African World](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/924cdc00-ed9d-4327-9593-da04eea750a1) — 1150 AD | Cartography, Sources, Mediterranean: A Sicilian court cartographer and the sources he trusted.
- [The Baqt Treaty with Nubia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/099ab65e-eb9a-44fa-a1a5-247aedf43937) — 650 AD | Nubia, Makuria, Islam, Africa: Christian Nubia holds the line and negotiates terms with the caliphate.
- [Palmares: The Maroon Republic](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/93c07bd4-5f27-4dd5-8fda-ec6b89f21afc) — 1650 AD | Maroons, Brazil, Resistance, Americas: A fugitive polity in Brazil that outlasted many colonies.
- [Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1fbb4607-e53d-49f0-a38c-e42f7888b17d) — 1624 AD | Angola, Njinga, Diplomacy, Africa: Four decades of diplomacy and war against Portuguese Angola.
- [Queen Amina of Zazzau](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3ccdf759-f781-44a3-863a-139b5ce7b041) — 1600 AD | Hausa, Warfare, Africa: Fortifications and campaigns in the Hausa city-states.
- [Bilal ibn Rabah](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6ac1d4ae-eb2f-4d6d-a59e-d80dcd64ad61) — 570 AD | Islam, Abyssinia, Middle East: The Abyssinian companion whose voice called the first congregations.
- [Ghana: The Land of Gold Begins](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5ac04b43-6147-4ccd-8b0a-1be8b314af1c) — 500 AD | Ghana Empire, Gold, Trade, Africa: Soninke statecraft and the first great western Sudanic trading power.
- [Augustine of Hippo](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/88072175-8e5e-4cfa-97c9-c72f062a068f) — 400 AD | Christianity, Numidia, Africa: A North African bishop who set the terms of Western thought.
- [Ezana and the Christian Aksumite State](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1398ceb5-37e2-4955-ac2d-5f939094d22a) — 325 AD | Aksum, Christianity, Africa: An African kingdom adopts Christianity within a generation of Nicaea.
- [The Desert Fathers of Egypt](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/bd0bfd96-875a-49f4-affc-4cea8f177c04) — 250 AD | Christianity, Egypt, Africa: Coptic monasticism and the African roots of Christian ascetic practice.
- [Septimius Severus, African Emperor](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b02c66ad-6455-4067-bfe1-eba4985c3625) — 180 AD | Rome, Leptis Magna, Africa: A Leptis Magna family takes the purple in Rome.
- [Aksum Rises on the Red Sea](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/436be874-c884-41a7-bc94-bb99964ce2c2) — 100 AD | Aksum, Trade, Africa: Coinage, stelae and an empire linking Africa to India.
- [Anton Wilhelm Amo, Philosopher](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7bac803f-ab71-404e-ad36-61a5746d77ac) — 1750 AD | Philosophy, Germany, Europe: An African professor in the German Enlightenment academy.
- [The Ethiopian Official on the Gaza Road](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/73ed6fcc-798d-489b-936b-498905791b40) — 30 AD | Aksum, Christianity, Africa: An early record of an African court treasurer literate in Greek scripture.
- [Ignatius Sancho’s London](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d23a4ec3-3cdb-4258-bdb2-d5214148dccc) — 1770 AD | Britain, Letters, Europe: Letters, music and the Black Georgian public sphere.
- [Numidian Kings: Masinissa to Juba](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2f76125f-fb90-4e6d-bd4e-c864121dfd8f) — 100 BC | Numidia, Rome, Africa: Dynastic politics between Rome and the Berber-African heartland.
- [Bois Caïman and the Haitian Revolution](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/055dde2e-e556-4541-a156-1e1b43ffbe18) — 1791 AD | Haiti, Revolution, Americas: The only revolution to make a state out of the enslaved.
- [Haiti Declares Independence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/76e89ac1-1014-4ba1-9b0d-d77f67a014fc) — 1804 AD | Haiti, Revolution, Americas: Constitution, indemnity and the price of Black sovereignty.
- [Shaka and the Zulu Reformation](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/1f0b0714-295b-4461-bfae-224a57775901) — 1818 AD | Zulu, Warfare, Africa: Regimental reorganisation and the politics of the Mfecane.
- [Tondibi and the Fall of Songhai](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7ae6e9ff-f976-42db-882b-964476357c03) — 1591 AD | Songhai, Morocco, Warfare, Africa: Moroccan muskets end a West African imperial century.
- [Alexandre Dumas and the Black Generals of France](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5c196d66-9c03-4133-90fc-c5f572ef1590) — 1830 AD | France, Literature, Europe: A Saint-Domingue-born general and the literature that followed.
- [Ethiopia at Magdala](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/3d169d48-cf21-4c5a-8104-9e7cf36c91b3) — 1868 AD | Ethiopia, Archives, Africa: British invasion, looted manuscripts and a contested archive.
- [The Berlin Conference Carves Africa](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/17b21a18-77d3-4d3d-be9b-44f2f7c0dceb) — 1884 AD | Colonialism, Diplomacy, Africa: Lines on paper that still govern borders today.
- [The Black Madonnas of Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e4dfd76e-6cda-43e8-9fe8-2716a8db5a40) — 1100 AD | Black Europe, Black Madonna, Religion, Art History, europe: More than four hundred medieval shrines across France, Spain, Italy, Poland and Switzerland venerate a Madonna carved and painted black — and the oldest of them were made black deliberately.
- [Saint Maurice: The Black Knight of the Holy Roman Empire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4d242c02-d807-47d4-914a-cc7568691494) — 1240 AD | Black Europe, Saint Maurice, Heraldry, Holy Roman Empire, europe: The patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire was depicted from 1240 onward as an unmistakably Black African knight, in stone, in altarpieces and on the coats of arms of German and Swiss cities.
- [The Black Seminoles of Florida](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/8c041b93-272f-439b-ae33-e8aef220080e) — 1738 AD | Black Indians, Seminole, Florida, Fort Mose, Resistance, north_america: At Fort Mose in 1738 the Spanish crown chartered the first legally free Black town in what is now the United States. Its people became the Black Seminoles.
- [Alessandro de' Medici: The Black Duke of Florence](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7e06bff5-66df-4ec2-a30f-41475ebae0e8) — 1531 AD | Black Europe, Medici, Florence, Renaissance, europe: Alessandro de' Medici ruled Florence from 1531 until his assassination in 1537. Contemporaries called him il Moro — the Moor — and his portraits show it.
- [The Sephardic Jews of Iberia before 1492](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/de29951e-732c-42c0-9e82-761e76cc1d9c) — 1300 AD | Sephardic, Iberia, Al-Andalus, Black Europe, Diaspora, europe: For seven centuries Sephardic Jewish communities lived, wrote and governed alongside the Moors in Iberia, moving continuously between the Maghreb, the Sahel and Europe.
- [The 1492 Expulsion and the Sephardic Diaspora](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ffec966a-8ef5-4b01-85ac-1a65b0ed72f5) — 1492 AD | Sephardic, 1492, Expulsion, Inquisition, Black Europe, europe: In the same year Granada fell, the Alhambra Decree expelled Iberia's Jews. Most went south into Africa and east into the Ottoman world — the two destinations that shaped Sephardic identity thereafter.
- [Black Phenotype Tribes in Early America](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d3182774-6270-481e-a3e4-124bdfd9ae8c) — 1500 AD | Black Indians, Americas, Pre-Columbian, Washitaw, Phenotype, north_america: Early European accounts, colonial censuses and Indigenous oral tradition all record American nations whose people were described as black — a record later flattened into a single racial category.
- [The Moors Cross into Iberia](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0606e664-88e2-477e-90ab-0686a1531165) — 711 AD | Moors, Iberia, Al-Andalus, Black Europe, Tariq ibn Ziyad, europe: In 711 an army led by Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed from North Africa into Iberia and ended Visigothic rule, beginning nearly eight centuries of Moorish presence in Europe.
- [Córdoba: The Moorish Capital That Outshone Europe](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0dc55ed8-6931-4aa5-963a-8318a93a6fff) — 929 AD | Moors, Cordoba, Al-Andalus, Black Europe, Science, europe: Under Abd al-Rahman III, Córdoba became the largest and most literate city in Europe, with paved and lit streets, running water, hospitals and a library of hundreds of thousands of volumes.
- [Unity Makes Strength: Decoding a Powerful Coat of Arms of the African Diaspora](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/48d95f7f-596e-4a10-aea8-684ea41d9c05) — 2026 AD | Coat of Arms, African Diaspora History, Heraldic Symbolism, L'Union Fait La Force, Cultural Heritage, Vintage Illustration, African Art, Sub-Saharan Africa: Explore the rich symbolism within a historic coat of arms, a powerful visual testament to the strength found in unity and shared heritage.
- [The Mapuche Resistance: Unconquered People of South America](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/69d7377f-beb4-4531-86e1-f9ebe04026c5) — 1550 AD | Mapuche, resistance, Indigenous, Chile, south_america: The Mapuche people resisted Spanish colonization for over 300 years through military adaptation and cultural resilience.
- [The Nazca Lines: Ancient Geoglyphs of the Desert](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/98c731df-c8c8-468c-8e2a-3d6ff938ca00) — 200 AD | Nazca Lines, geoglyphs, Peru, archaeology, south_america: The Nazca civilization created enormous desert geoglyphs and sophisticated underground aqueducts in ancient Peru.
- [Cahokia: America's First Great City](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/78a9d028-261b-4e92-8e99-ce57e6e9e955) — 1050 AD | Cahokia, Mississippian, mounds, urban, north_america: Cahokia was pre-Columbian North America's largest city, featuring massive earthen mounds and sophisticated urban planning.
- [The Majapahit Empire: Southeast Asia's Greatest Kingdom](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4807e35a-0a7e-47a9-8b96-5df41c364ae6) — 1293 AD | Majapahit, Indonesia, Hindu-Buddhist, empire, southeast_asia: The Majapahit Empire united much of the Indonesian archipelago, creating a powerful Hindu-Buddhist kingdom with lasting cultural influence.
- [The Polynesian Voyagers: Masters of Pacific Navigation](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/07442494-6aeb-4012-9ed7-1ace92596ca3) — 1000 BC | Polynesia, navigation, Pacific, maritime, oceania: Polynesian navigators crossed millions of square miles of open ocean using stars and traditional knowledge in humanity's greatest maritime migration.
- [The Gupta Empire: India's Golden Age of Science and Art](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/5d62b3d2-65b8-4b3d-b569-8cebd0f26119) — 320 AD | Gupta Empire, mathematics, golden age, science, south_asia: The Gupta Empire produced revolutionary advances in mathematics, astronomy, and the arts during India's classical golden age.
- [The Ancestral Puebloans: Architects of the Southwest](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a94d2dbd-2702-40cc-9612-223772f05b67) — 750 AD | Puebloans, cliff dwellings, Chaco Canyon, Southwest, north_america: The Ancestral Puebloans created stunning cliff dwellings and a sophisticated road network centered on Chaco Canyon.
- [Aboriginal Australians: The World's Oldest Continuous Culture](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4bb45a69-124b-422a-ba23-40f619dc3ae7) — 50000 BC | Aboriginal, Australia, Dreamtime, oldest culture, oceania: Aboriginal Australians maintain the world's oldest continuous culture spanning 65,000 years, with sophisticated land management and artistic traditions.
- [The Moai of Rapa Nui: Monumental Statues of Easter Island](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7f1db291-7e07-4abf-9110-2584932e208b) — 1250 AD | Moai, Easter Island, Rapa Nui, Pacific, oceania: The Moai of Rapa Nui are monumental stone statues carved to honor ancestors, transported across the island using ingenious techniques.
- [The Indus Valley Civilization: Cradle of Urban Planning](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/0b67f803-838c-46b3-806c-77e1912b4165) — 2500 BC | ancient civilization, urban planning, Indus Valley, archaeology, south_asia: The Indus Valley Civilization pioneered urban planning with grid streets, advanced drainage, and standardized construction across a vast territory.
- [The Srivijaya Maritime Empire: Masters of the Sea](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6c9fecba-4a10-440e-85a2-e6001badc4b7) — 650 AD | maritime empire, Buddhism, trade, Srivijaya, southeast_asia: The Srivijaya Empire controlled Southeast Asian seas for centuries, becoming a hub of Buddhist learning and international maritime trade.
- [The Invention of Paper and Printing in China](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/699e8969-6675-4bf6-9526-2d08fbb6f8f0) — 105 AD | China, Invention, Paper, Printing, Technology, east_asia: China's invention of paper and printing technology transforms the recording and sharing of human knowledge across the world.
- [The Haudenosaunee Confederacy](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/821f6b7f-f842-4e2e-86e8-2a3100ef3048) — 1500 AD | Iroquois, Democracy, Native American, Governance, Haudenosaunee, north_america: Five Iroquois nations form one of the world's oldest democracies, establishing principles that would later influence the U.S. Constitution.
- [The Khmer Empire and Angkor Wat](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6697342a-da70-4efe-8f72-1d865a5e061f) — 1150 AD | Khmer, Cambodia, Angkor Wat, Architecture, Hindu, southeast_asia: The Khmer Empire builds Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious monument, at the heart of a million-person metropolis.
- [The Inca Empire: Masters of the Andes](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/738f89ca-16ae-4df0-8474-e8dac5fa699f) — 1450 AD | Inca, South America, Andes, Machu Picchu, Engineering, south_america: The Inca Empire creates the largest pre-Columbian civilization in the Americas, with remarkable engineering feats across the Andes.
- [The Maurya Empire and Ashoka the Great](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/6416dcfb-0065-43db-83af-35656753d777) — 268 BC | India, Maurya Empire, Ashoka, Buddhism, Non-violence, south_asia: Ashoka the Great transforms the Maurya Empire through Buddhist principles of non-violence and tolerance after the devastating Kalinga War.
- [The Rise of the Persian Empire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/4a48187f-fb1b-47ed-83a3-36a075efd174) — 550 BC | Persia, Cyrus the Great, Achaemenid, Empire, middle_east: Cyrus the Great founds the Achaemenid Empire, creating the largest empire of the ancient world with revolutionary policies of tolerance and governance.
- [The Unification of China under Qin Shi Huang](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/028f7eed-f279-464b-92d5-1f26a538a575) — 221 BC | China, Qin Dynasty, Great Wall, Terracotta Army, Unification, east_asia: Qin Shi Huang unifies China for the first time, standardizing its systems and beginning construction of the Great Wall.
- [The Rise of the Maya Civilization](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/33e45662-8f6c-4a5f-8ae1-df36ec669646) — 250 AD | Maya, Central America, Writing, Astronomy, Architecture, central_america: The Maya civilization develops advanced writing, mathematics, and astronomy, building magnificent cities across Central America.
- [The Spread of Islam and the Golden Age](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/382d7914-d622-4f37-aa2a-7e89cf68018c) — 750 AD | Islam, Golden Age, Baghdad, Science, Mathematics, middle_east: The rise of Islam leads to one of history's greatest intellectual and cultural golden ages, with groundbreaking advances in science, mathematics, and medicine.
- [The Code of Hammurabi](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9fab1ae8-560b-4eaa-87b2-c94ca771fe61) — 1754 BC | Babylon, Law, Mesopotamia, Hammurabi, middle_east: King Hammurabi of Babylon creates one of the earliest written legal codes, establishing principles that would influence legal systems for millennia.
- [The Founding of Tenochtitlan](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b433eb60-a096-4c4a-b467-2b3a3c45a282) — 1325 AD | Aztec, Tenochtitlan, Mexico, Architecture, Mesoamerica, central_america: The Aztecs found Tenochtitlan, building one of the world's largest and most sophisticated cities on an island in Lake Texcoco.
- [Unearthing Black Europe: Heraldry, Surnames & Lost Royalty](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/e42b993e-77e7-4294-ab18-37af2de8c071) — 1200 AD | Medieval Europe, Black history, Genealogy, Heraldry, Onomastics, Lost royalty, Cultural erasure, Primary sources, europe: Decades of research reveal how melanated ruling families, complete with heraldry and castles, were erased from medieval European history. Discover the forgotten Black royalty of Europe and challenge conventional narrativ
- [Oldest DNA of Britain’s Earliest Humans Rewrites History About Its Earliest Inhabitants](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/f1af13a2-e7d4-4ceb-86c3-853b7071d5b1) — 10000 BC | Black, europe
- [Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d10cf7a2-6e15-4b41-bb09-2c7382874503) — 2560 BC | Great Pyramid, Giza, Architecture, Khufu, north_africa: Pharaoh Khufu commissions the construction of the Great Pyramid, which would become one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
- [The Library of Alexandria Founded](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/2c7de5a8-3727-4142-9383-b07abf4fa528) — 283 BC | Alexandria, Library, Scholarship, Ptolemaic Egypt, north_africa: The Great Library of Alexandria is established in Egypt, becoming the ancient world's largest and most significant center of learning.
- [African Independence Movements Begin](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/9f4b5422-5037-4740-ad05-d667dfb15140) — 1957 AD | Ghana, Independence, Kwame Nkrumah, Decolonization, west_africa: Ghana becomes the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from colonial rule, sparking a wave of decolonization across the continent.
- [The Rise of Ancient Kemet (Egypt)](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/ef288011-76c7-465f-b366-1dd245fdfa5b) — 3100 BC | Ancient Egypt, Kemet, Pharaohs, Civilization, north_africa: The unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under King Narmer marks the beginning of one of the world's greatest civilizations.
- [Nelson Mandela Elected President](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/c845a9a0-05e7-4970-b14c-22f0ef7e35b7) — 1994 AD | South Africa, Nelson Mandela, Apartheid, Democracy, southern_africa: After 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela becomes South Africa's first democratically elected president, ending apartheid.
- [The Great Zimbabwe Flourishes](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/7d561f81-915d-4649-b740-66ba61678690) — 1200 AD | Great Zimbabwe, Architecture, Trade, Stone City, southern_africa: The city of Great Zimbabwe reaches its peak, showcasing remarkable stone architecture and serving as the capital of a powerful trading kingdom.
- [Kingdom of Kush Conquers Egypt](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/b057f0d4-f022-4999-8fb8-d24d33c96734) — 747 BC | Kush, Nubia, Black Pharaohs, 25th Dynasty, north_africa: The Nubian Kingdom of Kush, under King Piye, conquers Egypt and establishes the 25th Dynasty, known as the Nubian Dynasty.
- [Mansa Musa's Legendary Pilgrimage](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/d29f7a8e-c020-4609-b312-93a52f46f9c8) — 1324 AD | Mali Empire, Mansa Musa, Hajj, Gold, Timbuktu, west_africa: Mansa Musa of Mali embarks on his famous hajj to Mecca, distributing so much gold that he destabilizes the Egyptian economy.
- [Ethiopian Victory at the Battle of Adwa](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/a75dc20b-0274-42cc-aac2-1a2e04daa58d) — 1896 AD | Ethiopia, Battle of Adwa, Menelik II, Anti-Colonialism, east_africa: Emperor Menelik II defeats the Italian invasion at Adwa, preserving Ethiopian independence and inspiring anti-colonial movements worldwide.
- [The Rise of the Aksumite Empire](https://www.theprogenitors.com/post/707b65b7-93cc-43c6-8600-bf4ceac123a8) — 100 AD | Aksum, Ethiopia, Trade, Ancient Empire, east_africa: The Kingdom of Aksum in modern-day Ethiopia rises to prominence, becoming one of the four great powers of the ancient world.