What's the actual history of Sub-Saharan Africa?

Now I want to make three things clear before beginning this post: 1. I'm not white. (1/2 black actually) 2. When I say Sub-Saharan Africa, obviously I'm not counting North Africa, but though they deserve a mention, I do not mean to discuss the Horn of Africa either (Ethiopia, Somalia, etc.) 3. This is not meant to be a confrontational/argumentative post. I genuinely want to learn more about the historical aspects of this region.

I've been trying to research African history. A predominant view I've seen is that most of Africa was living in the stone age and had nothing. I know for a fact that this is not true, indeed, agriculture had a large presence in the area. But I've noticed something else:

When you discuss European or Asian history, you talk about people. You discuss events. No one just says "Oh the Greeks had these cool pilars and ships and stuff" or "the Chinese were really advanced and had great pottery." You learn about things like the Peloponnesian War, or the Warring States Period. You don't hear "these people had this tradition which was more advanced than othr people's traditions," you hear about people like Socrates and Lao Tzu. Hell, even thousands of years ago we have records of people like Sargon of Akkad. We have detailed (sort of) records of what went on in Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt, Akkad, India, Japan, and Mexico/Central America too (iirc a lot of their records were destroyed by conquistadors unfortunately). We have historical accounts of them.

Why, then, when I hear about the history of Sub-Saharan Africa, is it always about how great and advanced these places were, especially in comparison to Europe? It's just "Great Zimbabwe was super big and the remains are still there today, wow" or "there are these people in Tanzania who made steel thousands of years before everyone else, wow." And honestly, that's pretty cool. But when I think of history, I think of the actual events that were going on there. And what I find interesting is that much of this is in comparison to Europe. Honestly, the world wasn't globalized to really any extent until around 500 years ago. Civilizations could still be very isolated from each other.

So what is the real history of Sub-Saharan Africa? southern Nigeria for example, I find that area interesting, who were the warriors, philosophers, and leaders of the kingdoms there? Why does it have to be about how amazing they were? Why not just history?

This was a bit of a rant, and I do apologize for that. I also hope that this isn't too inflammatory. I posted here because I would like a casual perspective on it?