Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Recent years have seen a renewed focus on the impact that the transatlantic slave trade had on Africa's cultures and peoples. Yet as Luke

Pepperer's new book, Motherland highlights, the continent's story is much more diverse and multifaceted

than that. Matt Elton caught up with Luke to hear more about these stories, from female-led societies

to the long history of the rap battle.

Luke, thank you so much for being with us today. We're here to talk about your new book,

Motherland. Before we go any further, I wanted to talk about the subtitle, which is a journey

through 500,000 years of African history and identity. Was that prospect not enormously daunting when you started?

Hey, Matt. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It's such a pleasure to be here.

It is a big span, isn't it? I mean, when I pitched the book, I was a naive mid-20-year-old,

so that probably explains partly why. You know, I'd gone for something so massive.

But actually, in all seriousness, the reason it's such a large span

and why I went for that is because I really wanted to get across to readers and to history

lovers, the huge breadth and depth of African history, the fact that it is where our species

originated, and from that time, 500,000 odd years ago,

to now there have been people inhabiting what we know as Africa, who have just been doing things,

who've been making tools, making art, developing languages, traveling, migrating, hunting, farming,

fighting, etc.

And have been doing it for such a long span of time.

So I wanted to really drive that home.

And also it gave me so much scope to explore what I thought were the really fascinating parts of that history.

And something your book does really nicely is it pairs these big overarching arguments

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