The history of South Africa starts more than 100,000 years ago, when the first humans inhabited the region. The historical record of this ethnically diverse country is generally divided into four distinct periods: the pre-colonial era, the colonial era, the post-colonial and apartheid era, and the post-apartheid era. Much of this history, particularly of the colonial and post-colonial eras, is characterized by clashes of culture, violent territorial disputes between European settlers and indigenous people, dispossession and repression, and other racial and political tensions