Question

why had europeans called Africa a dark continent

Answer 1

The term "Dark Continent" was used far back in the sixteenth century for places that were unexplored, little known, or uninhabited. It was also applied to places like South America or the extreme cold and night-ridden places like Greenland. But with time it got synonymous with Africa. The Europeans took Africans as different,backward, less knowledgeable, underproductive and ignorant of modernism. There were looked down upon for not embracing world religions & carrying human and animal sacrifices, superstitions, blood rituals, witchcraft, ancestral worship and veneration, and in polygamy. They lived in huts and hovels. They wore little or no clothing, slung babies on their backs. Africa meant wilderness of jungles and animals; and of tropical diseases and parasites so several Europeans were struck by maladies such as malaria during the slave trade. So Africa turned 'Black Africa' and was regarded as unsafe & dangerous place to live in during that time.