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Northeastern Africa. Wadi Kubbaniya (Egypt) - wild grasses and grinding stones (18-17,000 BP) sickles (15-11,000 BP) for harvesting wild grasses. Nabta Playa, Eastern Sahara Southern Egypt. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Northeastern Africa
• Wadi Kubbaniya (Egypt) - wild grasses and grinding stones (18-17,000 BP)
• sickles (15-11,000 BP) for harvesting wild grasses
Nabta Playa, Eastern SaharaSouthern Egypt
• 9-8,000 BP – early pottery making culture based on hunting and harvesting wild grasses (including sorghum);
• sorghum, at least, in possible early stage of domestication;
• Possible domesticated African cattle, or at least hard for wild cattle to survive independent of humans in this area (more clearly at Bir Kiseiba site, Egypt)
Nabta Playastone circle
Neolithic Megaliths (astronomical alignment)
ca. 7000 BP
By ca. 8000 BP sheep and goats introduced from Near East and incorporated into Saharan Pastoral Neolithic
Nomadic Pastoralism dependence upon domesticated stock and a mobile lifestyle
Farming communitiesin lower Nile (Egypt)ca. 7000 BP
Merimde (large site = 18 ha; 45 acres) and Fayum
Near Eastern Complex of Wheat, Barley, Goats, and Sheep
After ca. 5000 BP Spread of Pastoral
Neolithic & Farming (?) into Sahel/E Africa
(Following Tsetse Fly-free regions)
Sahel
WET
DRY
Modern Distribution of Tsetse Fly
Distribution of wild ancestors of Sub-Saharandomesticated African Plants suggests one broad region
encompassing 3 Domestic Complexes
Savanna complex: sorghum, African rice, peanuts, millets, watermelonForest margin complex: millets, beans, robusta coffee, oil palm, yams
Ethiopian complex: millet, tef, noog, arabica coffee, enset (“false banana”), chat
Forest margin
savanna
Ethiopian
Root Crop Agriculture (yams) and Arboriculture
(oil palm) in Tropical Forest and Woodland
Areas of Western, Central, and Southern
Africa
Continuation of Hunting and Gathering in some areas until historic times(trade and colonialism)
Yam “barn” in Nigeria forest regionOil palm
Bantu-speakers
12
3
• Bantu farming people expanded relatively quickly into lands occupied by hunter gatherers, displacing or absorbing them and, in some areas, developing complementary trade relations between foragers and early farmers.
• Bantu speakers now number about 60 million,
and most of sub-Saharan Africa now speaks some version of the Niger-Congo language family.
Tropical linguistic diaspora (beginning ca. 1,000 BC)
Arawak &others
Austronesian
Bantu
Ancestral Bantu Society
• Economics: Food production (yams and oil palm), with hunted, fished, and foraged foods (livestock complex of Saharan Africa later in eastern and southern Africa)
• Technology: Ceramics, iron (later), settled villages• Settlement: settled plaza villages composed of “Houses”
(kingroups based on lineal descent), and organized into districts of related houses
• Social political organization: hierarchical (conical clan) chiefship, matrilineal descent groups, initiation and elite life crisis rites, in-law avoidance
Chifumbaze ceramic complex of central and southern Africa
(e.g., Urewe, Kwale, Matola wares);
Spread by iron working farmers
Modern Bantu pottery
Pottery and iron artifacts used to track Bantu dispersals
Terra-cotta statues, 500 BC-AD 200, made byearly iron-working farmers
Nok site, near Taruga, on western
slopes of Jos plateau (Nigeria)
Bantu homeland inNigeria/Cameroon
Kingdom of Kongo, 1711
Major Bantu-speaking urban settlement, after ca. AD 1200-1500
As many as 18,000 people
Gedi, Kenya
Origins of the urban sites on the Swahilicoast and adjacent parts of the interior
are clearly indigenous (Bantu) developments, but subsequent growth between AD 1000-1500
due to trade in Indian Ocean, which laterinvolved conversion to Islam
Niger-Congo
Middle Niger (Inland Delta)
Middle Niger
• Prior to 300 BC, higher annual floods in Inland Delta area of the middle Niger River in the Sahel, just south of Sahara, meant little high land for permanent occupations;
• Wetter conditions also meant insect-born diseases, especially tsetse fly, discouraged settled occupation;
• 200 BC to AD 100, region (Sahel) became drier and herders and farmers of southern Sahara desert moved into area;
• Initial occupation of important site of Jenné-jeno, which became important urban and trade center during first millennium AD.
Jenné-jeno• Large community (12 ha; 30 acres) of round houses with mud
foundations by AD 100, reaching its maximum extent by AD 850, which included town area of over 40 ha (100 acres), with a mud-brick wall about 2km long
• Multi-centric urban settlement composed of occupation areas clustered around ecological features: rice-growing soils, levees for wet-season pasture, basins for dry-season pasture, access to major river channels for communication and trade.
• Evidence of North African or Islamic influences appears at Jenné-jeno in the form of brass, spindle whorls, and rectilinear houses, ca. AD 1200.
• After this point, Jenné-jeno begins decline and is abandoned by 1400, as neighboring historical city of Djenné becomes regional center.
Multi-centric Urbanism
Round house at Jenné-jenoExcavation of Jenné-jeno Mound
Koumbi Saleh, Ancient Ghana,
starting after AD 500
Timbuktu, Trans-Saharan caravan trade &
Songhai empire, 1500s
Benin empire, 16th to 18th century
Brass portrait head
Igbo-Ukwu, late 1st millennium ADburial and related features of a “priest-king,”
included 685 copper and brass wealth items and165,000 stone and glass beads
Trade was critical, which included ivory and slaves