Transcript Northeastern Africa Wadi Kubbaniya (Egypt) - wild

Northeastern Africa
• Wadi Kubbaniya (Egypt) wild grasses and grinding
stones (16-15,000 BC)
• sickles (13-9,000 BC) for
harvesting wild grasses
Nabta Playa, Eastern Sahara
Southern Egypt
• 7-6,000 BC – early pottery making
culture based on hunting and
harvesting wild grasses (including
sorghum) and fruits, recovered
from 100+ hearths and other
cooking features;
• sorghum, at least, in possible early
stage of domestication, although
debated by some who feel wild
sorghum only domesticated much
later (4000-2000 BC);
• Possible domesticated African
cattle, or at least hard for wild cattle
to survive independent of humans
in this area
Bir Kiseiba, Egypt
(Eastern Sahara)
Early evidence of domesticated cattle in
Africa (Bos primigenius), ca. 7-6000 BC
By ca. 6000 BC sheep and
goats introduced from Near
East and incorporated into
Saharan Pastoral Neolithic
Nomadic Pastoralism
dependence upon domesticated stock and a mobile lifestyle
Neolithic
Tethering
Stones
Farming communities
in lower Nile (Egypt)
ca. 5000 BC
Merimde (18 ha; 45 acres)
Fayum
Near Eastern Complex
of Wheat, Barley, Goats,
and Sheep
Fertile Crescent
Expansion of Near East
Farming complex into
Africa, notably wheats,
Barley, goats, and sheep
Nabta Playa
stone circle
Neolithic Megaliths
(astronomical alignment)
ca. 5000 BC
After ca. 3000 BC
Spread of Pastoral
Neolithic & Farming (?)
into Sahel/E Africa
(Following Tsetse Fly-free regions)
Modern Distribution of Tsetse Fly
WET
DRY
Distribution of wild ancestors of Sub-Saharan
domesticated African Plants suggests one broad region
encompassing 3 Domestic Complexes
savanna
Forest margin
Ethiopian
Savanna complex: sorghum, African rice, peanuts, millets, watermelon
Forest margin complex: millets, beans, robusta coffee, oil palm, yams
Ethiopian complex: millet, tef, noog, arabica coffee,
enset (“false banana”), chat
Root Crop Agriculture
(yams) and Arboriculture
(oil palm) in Tropical
Forest and Woodland
Areas of Western,
Central, and Southern
Africa (how old?, likely
2,000 to 1,000 BC or
earlier)
Continuation of Hunting
and Gathering in some
areas until historic times
(trade and colonialism)
Oil palm
Yam “barn” in Nigeria forest region
Abelam (Sepik River, New
Guinea, decorated yams)
Bantu-speakers
British-American
English
1
2
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.
Austronesian
Arawak &
others
Bantu
Tropical linguistic diaspora (beginning ca. 1,000 BC)
Ancestral Bantu Society
• Economics: Food production (yams and oil palm), with
hunted, fished, and foraged foods (livestock complex of
Saharan Africa did not do well in tropical forested areas;
introduced 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
Modern Bantu pottery
Chifumbaze ceramic complex of
central and southern Africa
(e.g., Urewe, Kwale, Matola wares);
Spread by iron working farmers
Pottery and iron artifacts used to track Bantu dispersals
Iron-working
• Diffusion from SW Asia and Mediterranean or independent
indigenous development?
• Neolithic to Iron Age with no transitional bronze production, to
some means that technology diffused from SW Asia fully
developed.
• The primitive iron-smelting furnaces at Taruga (Nigeria) date
from 400 BC, oldest evidence in West Africa (as early as Meroë
in Sudan; seen by diffusionists as the staging point for spread
of iron-working into tropical Africa from Egypt);
• Sites in Rwanda/Burundi possibly earlier, before 1000 BC
• Iron first seems to be used for ceremonial, decorative, and
high-value artifacts, later becoming increasingly important as
weapons and utilitarian tools
Nok site, near Taruga,
on western
slopes of Jos
plateau (Nigeria)
Terra-cotta statues, 500 BC-AD 200, made by
early iron-working farmers
Bantu homeland in
Nigeria/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 Swahili
coast 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 later
involved 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 of 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
Excavation of Jenné-jeno Mound
Round house at Jenné-jeno
Djenné
Djenné, Mali
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
Oba (king) of Edo people
Benin City, 1891
Benin City, ca. 1600
Igbo-Ukwu, late 1st millennium AD
burial and related features of a “priest-king,”
included 685 copper and brass wealth items and
165,000 stone and glass beads
Trade was critical, which included ivory and slaves
Nubia & Ethiopia
• Kerma, Meroë, Napata, Aksum (covered
during lecture on Egypt, on test 2)
• Pages 356-369; 383-390 on test 1