Recent historical events make it clear that the world is in for a long-term continuation of ethnic rivalries that have been going on for centuries. The short-term hegemony of the European empires, the Soviet Union, and the United States temporarily subdued some of those conflicts, but older identities are now reasserting themselves. The most complicated, diverse ethnic setting is in Africa, where several thousand languages provide powerful identities to as many ethnic groups. The Peoples of Africa provides a brief description of more than 1,800 individual ethnic groups living today in Africa.