This lecture introduces the African continent and traces the developments in the Sahara, Sudan, and Nigeria. With over 1,000 languages spoken today and geographical and cultural diversity with deserts, mountains, forests, and grasslands, a myriad of art forms developed. The Nok culture, for instance, produced abstract sculptures of humans with characteristic D-shaped eyes that led to the belief that African art was necessarily unnaturalistic. This belief was challenged with the discovery of the Yoruba in Nigeria who created very lifelike portraits as part of their shrines for kings and the ruling family.