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Northeastern Africa

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.

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Northeastern Africa

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  1. Northeastern Africa • Wadi Kubbaniya (Egypt) - wild grasses and grinding stones (16-15,000 BC) • sickles (13-9,000 BC) for harvesting wild grasses

  2. Nabta Playa, Eastern SaharaSouthern 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

  3. Bir Kiseiba, Egypt (Eastern Sahara) Early evidence of domesticated cattle in Africa (Bos primigenius), ca. 7-6000 BC

  4. 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

  5. NeolithicTethering Stones

  6. Farming communitiesin lower Nile (Egypt)ca. 5000 BCMerimde (18 ha; 45 acres)FayumNear Eastern Complex of Wheat, Barley, Goats, and Sheep

  7. Fertile Crescent Expansion of Near East Farming complex into Africa, notably wheats, Barley, goats, and sheep

  8. Nabta Playastone circle Neolithic Megaliths (astronomical alignment) ca. 5000 BC

  9. After ca. 3000 BC Spread of Pastoral Neolithic & Farming (?) into Sahel/E Africa (Following Tsetse Fly-free regions)

  10. Modern Distribution of Tsetse Fly WET DRY

  11. 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

  12. 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)

  13. Oil palm Yam “barn” in Nigeria forest region

  14. Abelam (Sepik River, New Guinea, decorated yams)

  15. Bantu-speakers

  16. British-American English

  17. 2 1 3

  18. 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.

  19. Austronesian Arawak & others Bantu Tropical linguistic diaspora (beginning ca. 1,000 BC)

  20. 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

  21. 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

  22. 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

  23. Nok site, near Taruga, on western slopes of Jos plateau (Nigeria) Terra-cotta statues, 500 BC-AD 200, made by early iron-working farmers

  24. Bantu homeland in Nigeria/Cameroon

  25. Kingdom of Kongo, 1711

  26. Major Bantu-speaking urban settlement, after ca. AD 1200-1500 As many as 18,000 people

  27. 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

  28. Niger-Congo

  29. Middle Niger (Inland Delta)

  30. 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.

  31. 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.

  32. Multi-centric Urbanism Excavation of Jenné-jeno Mound Round house at Jenné-jeno

  33. Djenné

  34. Djenné, Mali

  35. Koumbi Saleh, Ancient Ghana, starting after AD 500

  36. Timbuktu, Trans-Saharan caravan trade & Songhai empire, 1500s

  37. Benin empire, 16th to 18th century

  38. Brass portrait head

  39. Oba (king) of Edo people Benin City, 1891 Benin City, ca. 1600

  40. 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

  41. Nubia & Ethiopia • Kerma, Meroë, Napata, Aksum (covered during lecture on Egypt, on test 2) • Pages 356-369; 383-390 on test 1

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