Transcript Northeastern Africa Wadi Kubbaniya (Egypt)

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
• 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 Playa
stone 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 communities
in lower Nile (Egypt)
ca. 7000 BP
Merimde (large site = 18 ha;
45 acres) and Fayum
Near Eastern Complex
of Wheat, Barley, Goats,
and Sheep
Sahel
After ca. 5000 BP
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
Continuation of Hunting
and Gathering in some
areas until historic times
(trade and colonialism)
Oil palm
Yam “barn” in Nigeria forest region
Bantu-speakers
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 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
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 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
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 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