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I got an idea of just how extensively Islam grew in West Africa when I was in Senegal, which made up part of the Ghana Empire. In the Senegalese capital Dakar, when it was time for Friday lunchtime prayers just about everybody stopped what they were doing and headed to the mosque. Around 95% of Senegalese today are Muslim.

Dr. Kane explained to me how Ghana traded gold, weight for weight, for salt with the rulers of North Africa, which had abundant sources of rock-salt bars from salt mines.

Today, around 40% of the population of Morocco and 30% of Algerians are Berber, and there are small but sizable minorities in Tunisia and Libya as well as millions of people of mixed heritage. The Berber language is still often spoken within these communities.

Broadly speaking, Sunnis (who today constitute about 90% global Muslims) focus on following the Prophet's example, with no intercessor being necessary between the believer and Allah; whereas Shias emphasize the lineage of the Prophet's family through a series of imams and rely on a 'clergy' such as ayatollahs to guide them in their faith.

Keen to get a sense of the Coptic community today, I went to Cairo to meet Father Basilios Sobhy of the Church of the Virgin Mary in the district of Zeitoun. He explained how Coptic developed from the ancient Egyptian Pharaonic language and is still used in church services today.

The port-city of Utica became the capital of the North African province of the Roman Empire, which the Romans called ‘Ifrikiya’. Eventually the whole continent became known as Ifrikiya, or Africa.

Cristóvão da Gama’s troops were almost completely wiped out and Gama himself was captured with around ten of his men. He was offered the chance to live so long as he converted to Islam. He refused and was promptly executed.

In 1541, Gelawdewos and Portuguese raised an army under the command of Cristóvão da Gama, son of the famous explorer Vasco da Gama, who landed with his men at the port of Massawa.

Lalibela’s chief legacy is the remarkable series of churches hewn out of solid rock in a mountainous region about 650 kilometres from Addis Ababa, which continue to excite wonder and disbelief. Pilgrims and visitors flock in their droves to the city that today bears his name.

Today, Africa is pretty evenly split between its Muslim and Christian communities, with about 15 percent accounting for those who adhere to traditional African religions.

Psamtik II and subsequent Egyptian pharaohs tried to erase the memory of Kushite rule in Egypt.

Kush was an ancient kingdom in what is today northern Sudan. Although it lasted for 3,000 years, many people have never heard of it.

Ramesses II's appetite for huge building projects was matched by his sexual abundance; a libidinous fellow, he had about 50 wives and concubines and more than a hundred children, perhaps as many as 160. By the age of 15 he was already a father of seven!

Tutankhamun had a disorder that prevented him from walking with ease, and he died when he was around 18 years old.

Royal incest was not a taboo for the ancient Egyptians. Incestuous marriages were a way of concentrating power and wealth, and keeping it within the royal family.

In total there are well over 100 pyramids in Egypt, but the Great Pyramids at Giza are the ones that have induced wonder for millennia, ranking among the most magnificent of human achievements.

Many readers are familiar with the southern African word 'ubuntu' in the Nguni language, which means 'humanity to others' or 'I am what I am, because of who we all are', which captures the essence of Africa's indigenous beliefs.

I noticed that the children in this 25-strong community were raised collectively by all the women. This practice, called alloparenting by anthropologists, is not unusual in Africa. One study of the Efe people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo found that infants had an average of 14 alloparents a day by the time they were 18 weeks old.

What we can say with absolute certainty is that 99 per cent of our evolutionary history occurred on the continent. Everyone today is either African or the descendant of an African migrant.

Until 8,000 to 12,000 years ago, all humans were dark-skinned. Pale complexions, fair hair and light colored irises only evolved as humans migrated beyond Africa and adapted to different climates, which over time led to the varied racial characteristics we see today.

How hard PTSD is for those who have to watch it.

One day, she said, ‘We really ought to discuss our marriage.’

And I said, ‘What marriage? It hardly seems to exist.’

That was how it ended. One night in February. Not with a bang but a whimper. With little talk. But much pain. After thirty years.

Africa is where it all began for us modern humans. We should be united by our shared beginning in a way that enables us to look beyond race, to a time when such differences did not exist.

However, when there was no one to meet me at Denpasar Airport, they noticed this and turned to me by the luggage carousel for the first time.

'Want a lift, Doc?'
'How did you know who I am?'
'We guessed you must be the pathologist just by looking at you.'
'How?'
'Well, for a start you didn't laugh at the movie.'

First, when she was stabbed in the abdomen she had described this as feeling like punches, not like being cut or stabbed at all. This is a very common misperception of an individual who is stabbed: time and time again I have heard victims say that they could just feel a punch rather than the knife itself penetrating.

The heart is an organ one can hold neatly in the palm of one's hand. So small but so steady, a little fist, clenching and unclenching seventy times a minute, day and night, year after year, 30 billion times over a lifespan. A faithful friend. Until it stops.

People find it hard to believe that, in mass disasters, visual identification is unreliable, especially so when death has been traumatic or the body has been immersed in water.

Only moderate force is required to penetrate major organs like the heart or the liver, and so even perpetrators with little strength can kill by stabbing.

One of us was always just about to leave for work. And if we were both home there were a thousand topics which required our attention: the children and their schoolwork, difficulties at work, the house repairs... I wondered how I was supposed to fit love into all this?

I really do understand that it is hard, very hard, to recognise the finality of death. To understand that the son who was thinking and feeling and animated yesterday is not so today. To comprehend that yesterday he would have been in agony when I inserted my knife but today he cannot feel it at all.