Chad: A Land of Rich Archaeological Sites

Sure, I can help you with that. Chad is a landlocked country located in Central Africa. The country has a rich history and is home to some of the most significant archaeological sites in Africa. The territory now known as Chad was once part of a broad expanse of land stretching from the Indus River in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where ecological conditions favored early human settlement.

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The earliest known inhabitants of Chad were the dark-skinned cave dwellers described by Herodotus as inhabiting the country south of Fezzan. During the 7th millennium BC, the northern half of Chad was much wetter than it is today, as evidenced by large game animals depicted in rock paintings in the Tibesti and Borkou regions.

The region of eastern Sahara and Sudan from Fezzan, Bilma, and Chad in the west to the Nile valley in the east was well peopled in Neolithic times, as discovered sites attest. Several states were formed across central Chad at the end of the 1st millennium AD in the Sahelian zone between the desert and savanna. For almost the next 1,000 years, these states, their relations with each other, and their effects on the peoples who lived in stateless societies along their peripheries dominated Chad’s political history.

Chad emerged from a collection of powerful states that controlled the Sahelian belt starting around the 9th century. These states focused on controlling trans-Saharan trade routes and profited mostly from the slave trade. In 1900, France occupied Chad and integrated it as part of French Equatorial Africa. In 1960, Chad gained independence under President François Tombalbaye. Since then, Chad has experienced political instability and violence.

Certainly! Chad has been plagued by political instability and violence since gaining independence in 1960. The country has experienced several coups and rebellions, and the current government is a military-led transitional government that came to power after the death of President Idriss Déby in April 2021.

In 2021, Chad witnessed large-scale demonstrations against the rule of the transitional military council headed by the son of the late President Idriss Deby Itno, which resulted in two deaths. The pre-election period was marred by a ruthless government crackdown on protesters and the political opposition.

The country has also been affected by intercommunal violence, with at least 309 people killed and more than 6,500 internally displaced in 2021.