Africa is the second largest continent in size and population in the world. It includes about 800 million people living in varied landscapes of green forests, mountains, plains and deserts. 'Mother Africa' is where humans first evolved. There were many great cultures, including the famous Egyptian and Sudanese, going back thousands of years. In the early 1600's European slave traders and colonizers started moving in, and only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent of the European powers. Beginning with Ghana in 1957, these colonies eventually regained their independence. There are more than 2000 African languages today, including the widely-spoken Swahili, Hausa and Yoruba.