Discovering Africa: from Pliny to the travels of Dr Livingstone

The country north of the vast and inhospitable Sahara Desert was well known to the Greeks and Romans of ancient times. But what lay beyond: the terra incognita in Ptolemy’s map above?

 It was not until the voyages of Portuguese navigators during the 15 th century that a vast continent was revealed, extending far into southern latitudes. My presentation will illustrate, through maps and literature from the RGSSA collection, how Europeans discovered and slowly penetrated this unknown continent, up until the beginning of the great “scramble” when colonists divided it up between them.