Edited sentence: Documented accounts of solitary female Kushite rulers date back to the earliest years of the Kushite empire, but the most prominent Kandakes date from about a thousand years before the Common Era, and also at the beginning of the of the Common Era, from about 200 BCE to 350 CE.Earliest evidence of female rulers in Africa dates back before the Holocene epoch over 10,000 years ago.In some periods, men had ruled or shared rule with them the Kandakes.The capital region of the Kushite Empire was centered in Sudan, along the Nile, but the empire proper extended all through Africa and including Egypt.The empire was ruled a series of female warrior monarchs, queens regnant, high priestess, and queen mothers that ruled Africa in over a period spanning thousands years