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There is evidence of agriculture in Africaprior to 3000B.C. It may have developed independently, but many scholarsbelieve that thespread of agriculture and iron throughout Africa linked it tothe major centersof the Near East and Mediterranean world. The drying up ofwhat is now theSahara desert had pushed many peoples to the south intosub-Sahara Africa.These peoples settled at first in scatteredhunting-and-gathering bands,although in some places near lakes and rivers,people who fished, with a moresecure food supply, lived in larger populationconcentrations. Agricultureseems to have reached these people from the NearEast, since the firstdomesticated crops were millets and sorghums whose originsare not African butwest Asian. Once the idea of planting diffused, Africansbegan to develop theirown crops, such as certain varieties of rice, and theydemonstrated a continuedreceptiveness to new imports. The proposed areas of thedomestication ofAfrican crops lie in a band that extends from Ethiopia acrosssouthern Sudan toWest Africa. Subsequently, other crops, such as bananas, wereintroduced fromSoutheast Asia.
Livestock also came from outside Africa.Cattle wereintroduced from Asia, as probably were domestic sheep and goats.Horses wereapparently introduced by the Hyksos invaders of Egypt (1780-1560B.C.) and thenspread across the Sudan to West Africa. Rock paintings in theSahara indicatethat horses and chariots were used to traverse the desert andthat by 300-200B.C., there were trade routes across the Sahara. Horses wereadopted by peoplesof the West African savannah, and later their powerfulcavalry forces allowedthem to carve out large empires. Finally, the camel wasintroduced around thefirst century A.D. This was an important innovation,because the camel’sabilities to thrive in harsh desert conditions and to carrylarge loads cheaplymade it an effective and efficient means of transportation.The cameltransformed the desert from a barrier into a still difficult, butmoreaccessible, route of trade and communication.
Iron came from West Asia, although itsroutes of diffusionwere somewhat different than those of agriculture. Most ofAfrica presents acurious case in which societies moved directly from atechnology of stone toiron without passing through the intermediate stage ofcopper or bronzemetallurgy, although some early copper-working sites have beenfound in WestAfrica. Knowledge of iron making penetrated into the forest andsavannahs ofWest Africa at roughly the same time that iron making was reachingEurope.Evidence of iron making has been found in Nigeria, Ghana, and Mali.
This technological shift cause profoundchanges in thecomplexity of African societies. Iron represented power. In WestAfrica theblacksmith who made tools andweaponshad an important place insociety, often with special religious powers andfunctions. Iron hoes, whichmade the land more productive, and iron weapons,which made the warrior morepowerful, had symbolic meaning in a number of WestAfrica societies. Those whoknew the secrets of making iron gained ritual andsometimes political power.
Unlike in the Americas, where metallurgywas a very lateand limited development, Africans had iron from a relativelyearly date,developing ingenious furnaces to produce the high heat needed forproductionand to control the amount of air that reached the carbon and iron orenecessaryfor making iron. Much of Africa moved right into the Iron Age, takingthe basictechnology and adapting it to local conditions and resources.
Thediffusion ofagriculture and later of iron was accompanied by a great movementof people whomay have carried these innovations. These people probablyoriginated in easternNigeria. Their migration may have been set in motion by anincrease inpopulation caused by a movement of peoples fleeing the desiccation, ordryingup, of the Sahara. They spoke a language, proto-Bantu (“Bantu” means“thepeople”), which is the parent tongue of a language of a large number ofBantulanguages still spoken throughout sub-Sahara Africa. Why and how thesepeoplespread out into central and southern Africa remains a mystery,butarchaeologists believe that their iron weapons allowed them to conquertheirhunting-gathering opponents, who still used stone implements. Still,theprocess is uncertain, and peaceful migration—or simply rapid demographicgrowth—mayhave also caused the Bantu explosion.
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