Africa, the birth place of human kind, has had civilizations that have been neglected of being taught in the American education system that I have grown up in. It is now that I have been fortunate enough to learn about some of these civilizations. The hub of these civilizations were sustained by rivers which made trade a valuable revenue source as well as the sustainability that trees could provide. A city in Africa derived from a civilization called Nubia, was called Meroe. Meroe flourished between 300 B.C.E and 100 C.E. it was governed by a monarch, which consisted of prodominantly woman. The power given to woman during this time on earth makes this civilization very unique in terms of gender equality; however, it isn't unique in the fact that there is inequality through a hierarchy system of government. Meroe was located along the Nile River, and used Egypt as a trading partner, but they fought on numerous occasions and at one point, well for nearly a century, Meroe,the Nubian based civilization over threw  Egypt. Meroe was a city where people practiced economic specialties; "producing merchants, weavers, potters, and masons, as well as servants, laborers, and slaves"; while the surrounding "rural areas were populated by peoples who practiced some combination of herding and farming and paid tribute to the ruler". Meroe even though was strong and successful, had declined due to the lack of one very incumbent resource, trees; the trees were used for "wood to make charcoal for smelting iron".while this City was declining, another one was merging not so for away from each other, called Axum. Axum had very similar cultural traditions and it seems to have been differentiated from Meroe by its improvement of agricultural farming system. Axum was the civilization that taxed the people it traded with, allowing for additional wealth which would then benefit the civilization as a whole; this helped it become very successful in that area of reason. The Axum people had large monumental buildings and a huge cemetary for cherishing its people who have passed away. They adopted christianity as their religion, which later deteriorated due to the teachings of islam and there, islam became its new religion. This civilization is a well established one, leaving a mark as one that is going to be remember by people of the Ethiopia for a long time. There were many other civilizations in Africa, some that were small and not ruled by a centralized hierarchical system of government, similar to the indus valley civilization, which doesn't show any remnants of that in their society. These African civilizations weren't too different from others, at the same period of time, around the world. However there was a mass influx of differentials of different societies at the time, located around eurasia, due to the massive population which it housed, but in terms of areas with a similar population size as Africa, they were similar.