WEST AFRICA IN ANTIQUITY

                                     WEST AFRICA IN ANTIQUITY

The Roots of 'Sudannic' (African?) Civilization

As we have already learned, by about 2000 BCE the lands south of the Mediterranean coast and west of the Nile valley had become desert regions, which supported only limited populations of herders and oasis farmers.  Traveling south from the Mediterranean coast there are more than a thousand miles of arid lands to cross before desert gives way first to semi-arid steppes, then open savanna and increasingly moist woodlands, and finally to the dense rain forests of the Atlantic coastal zone. Although nomadic pastoralists did move their herds seasonally from the central Saharan mountains to the Sahel and back, the desert was very difficult to traverse, particularly before the introduction of the camel in Roman times.  Desert routes were not the only possible ones between Egypt and the Niger valley, but the
savanna routes would have been much longer and are not known to have been regularly traveled in antiquity.  This means that while there likely were indirect exchanges of goods, people and ideas between the regions surrounding the Sahara, the economic, social, and cultural development of West Africa during classical Egyptian times must have taken place independently of any direct influences coming from either the Mediterranean coast or Egypt.

The most important agents of change affecting ancient West Africa before the advent of the camel were 1) the drying of the Sahara after 3000 BCE, 2) the spread of agriculture in the Sudannic belt in the wake of Saharan desiccation, and 3) the rapid spread of iron technology after about 500 BCE.  There was no separate age of copper or bronze in this part of the world, where iron use came comparatively late, but spread very rapidly. 

Archaeological evidence suggests that foraging survived in the lands of the modern Sudannic belt and Guinea forest much longer than they did in the Nile valley.  This is likely because there were few incentives for change before 3000 BCE.  The climate was relatively stable and the gathering and hunting communities under no particular pressures to change their ways.  Farming and cattle keeping almost certainly either spread out of the Sahara (cattle keeping) or were stimulated by the drought conditions that produced the desert (farming).  Both the Sudannic and Guinea Neolithic agricultural cradles developed within the context of desertification.  Probably, over time, the slow movement of communities toward the regions of higher rainfall created pressure on existing foraging economies, forcing them toward the innovations characteristic of the transition to farming, mainly the development of the farming villages that still dominate in rural areas.  Herding, of course, was quite well developed in the Sahara long before this era of dry conditions began.  Herders did not have to change their way of life much to adapt to the new climatic conditions.  However, with the spread of farming, they did find new economic niches, particularly as traders.

Long before iron tools came into use, agricultural techniques (including organizational ones) were being refined and productivity improved in the West Africa region.  This led to population growth, and with it larger settlements, more complex political organization, occupational specialization and the like.  This probably set the stage for the emergence, in the early Iron Age, of the first known Sudannic civilization, which is called Nok from its archaeological type-site in what is now central Nigeria.  In West Africa the formation of states was linked not only to agricultural improvements and population expansion that followed the development of iron tools; but also to the growth of local, regional and finally international trade.  Another element contributing to the growth of strong states was the conflicts that arose along the ecological lines dividing 1) the desert and semi-desert-based pastoralists (ancestors of modern Berber, Taureg, and Fulani peoples) from the farmers of the more fertile savannas.  Several savanna and forest margin areas can be identified as incipient civilizational centers.  Moving from the west to the east, they are 2) the Senegal valley and coast, home to the modern Wolof and Serer.  North and east of there 3) the area around Dar Tichitt (modern southern Mauritania) is ancestral to the northern branch of the Mande; and 4) the area of the upper Niger River is home to the southern branch of the Mande. 5) The lands from the Niger bend south through the Volta River valley, were home to ancestors of the Songhai, Mossi, and Akan peoples. 6) The lower Niger region (where the peoples of Nok lived) is the ancestral area for modern Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo people. 7) The region around Lake Chad, home of the modern Kanuri, was also one where states developed from a comparatively early date. 8) Last, though certainly not least, the grassy borderlands between modern Nigeria and Cameroon are the ancestral home of the Bantu-speaking peoples, who began a process of expansion that eventually covered the southern half of the Continent well before 500 BCE. 

It should be noted, before going further, that many West African peoples did not choose the path of state formation (often said to be the path of 'civilizational development'), but instead created political systems based on elaborate kinship models that coupled local autonomy and wider networks to create viable political orders.  It must be noted that in West Africa, even comparatively small communities could maintain their political independence by taking advantage of forest environments to shelter themselves from attack or takeover by more powerful neighbors.

Little material evidence is available to scholars working to reconstruct this era of West African prehistory, because so little archeological work has been done.  However, what is known about changes in material culture and something of their implications for social change or artistic development can be briefly summarized for those areas where archaeologists have been at work. The principal ethno-linguistic groups whose material cultures are under discussion below.

(1) [Taureg Berbers and related pastoralists.] Work in the desert and semi-arid regions of the modern Sahel indicates that cattle herding pastoralists continued to be the dominant populations.  Excavations to the north of the Niger bend indicate that in addition to herding cattle the people hunted wild animals and gathered plants, even fished where wet season streams permitted.  They lived in camps which permitted the to make seasonal moves with their animals.  Those farmers who remained in the desert oases came to be lorded over by their more mobile neighbors.  This was especially the case after the adoption of the horse by pastoralist populations.  African pastoralists, like their nomadic counterparts in other parts of the world, developed social organizations characterized by deep patrilineages.  (That is, people reckoned their membership in the lineage by reference to a very ancient founding father.)  These patrilineages often constituted over-arching units which may properly be called tribes.  (Remember the Hebrews in their early history, for example.)  Control over cattle, horses, and women typically conferred wealth and prestige.  Cattle raiding may have been one of the earliest forms of offensive war.  The socio-political system was typically patriarchal.

(2) [Wolof and Serer] The Senegal valley area is not one which has had extensive archaeological work.  It was home to agricultural peoples, who made small, geometrical stone tools, and lived in small settlements.  They grew sorghum, millet, and a native rice.

(3) [Northern Mande or Soninke] By contrast the area around Dar Tichitt in southern Mauritania has been the subject of much archaeological attention, revealing successive layers of settlement near what still were small lakes as late as 1200 BCE.  At this time people there built circular compounds, 60-100 feet in diameter, near the beaches of the lakes. ('Compound' is the name given to a housing type, still common today, in which several members of related families share space within a wall.)  These compounds were arranged into large villages located about 12 miles from each other.  Inhabitants fished, herded cattle and planted some millet, which they stored in pottery vessels.  This was the last era of reasonable moisture in this part of the Sahara.  By 1000 BCE the villages, still made up of compounds, had been relocated to hilltop positions, and were walled.  Cattle were still herded, more millet was grown, but there were no more lakes for fishing.  From 700-300 BCE the villages decreased in size and farming was reduced at the expense of pastoralism.

Architecturally, the villages of Dar Tichitt resemble those of the modern northern Mande (Soninke), who live in the savanna 300-400 miles to the south.  These ancient villagers were not only farmers, but were engaged in trade connected with the salt and copper mines which developed to the north.  Horse drawn vehicles passed through the Tichitt valley, bringing trading opportunities, ideas, and opening up the inhabitants to raids from their more nomadic northern neighbors.  Development of the social and political organization necessary to handle commerce and defense must have been a factor in the subsequent development of Ghana, the first great Sudannic empire, in this part of West Africa.

(4) [Southern Mande, also known as Mandinka, Mandingo and Bambara] It is not clear whether the southern Mande had settled in the regions of the upper Niger by this period or not.  They probably formed a part of the populations who were gradually infiltrating south from the drying Sahara.  It seems likely that their villages were similar to those of Dar Tichitt.  They were probably also instrumental in the process of extending the copper and salt trade from the desert into the mineral-poor agricultural regions to the south.

(5) [Songhai and related] The peoples living in the area of the Niger Bend at this time are ancestral to the modern Songhai.  They have inhabited this area for a very long time.  The antiquity of their settlement can be inferred from the fact that they speak a language belonging to the Nilo-Saharan family.  This in turn suggests that were descended from the older African aquatic culture populations.  The Songhai and their neighbors exploited the great River itself, and as well cultivated sorghums and millet, and hunted for wild game.

(6) [Akan, Mossi, Yoruba, Igbo among many others] In the forest margins, which stretch from south of the Niger Bend to the mountains of Cameroon, people farmed the more difficult to clear woodlands and planted yams, groundnuts (peanuts), and cowpeas (black-eyed peas).  They also cultivated the kola and various species of palm to obtain a variety of products, including palm wine, palm oil, and palm fibers for cloth.  Their settlements were characteristically large and occupied permanent sites over long periods.  Farmers, as is still the practice, lived in the village or town and farmed land around the outskirts.  The hoe was the principle agricultural implement.  It is a tool which historically has been associated with women.  The social organization of these hoe-users was almost certainly more female-oriented than that of their pastoralist neighbors to the north.  Even today a higher proportion of the forest and forest-margin dwellers are matrilineal, with females occupying a wide range of jobs, including trader, potter, oracle and lineage official.

(7) [Fulani, Hausa, Kanuri] The open country from the Bend of the Niger to Lake Chad is home to three populous modern nations.  The Fulani do not come from this area, but have migrated there from a more northwesterly homeland in comparatively modern times.  They have pastoralist origins, linking them to the Sahara.  However, their language is West African in its roots.  On the other hand the agricultural Hausa have strong cultural links to the ancient farming stocks of the region, but speak a language related to modern Arabic, Berber, and Hebrew.  The Kanuri live in an area, around Lake Chad, which has had extensive archaeological work, particularly an area known as Daima.  Settled life on the successive shorelines of the lake has a very long history, dating back to the African aquatic culture.  North of the Lake, as the drying times set in, was home to semi-nomadic herding populations with trade links to the central Saharan copper mines, and perhaps to Libya, at a comparatively early date.  South of the lake the land supports savanna agriculture.  The lake itself provided fishing, and settlements in the region tended to be large.

(8) [Proto-Bantu speakers] The contemporary communities of speakers of proto-Bantu, living along the modern Nigeria-Cameroonian border, were also farmers, skilled in the use of the hoe.  Even before the advent of iron, they produced sufficient crops to support a steadily growing population.  This meant that in each generation more land was needed for farms.  It is hypothesized that in order to satisfy this need proto-Bantu speaking pioneers began to move south and east into virgin territory between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago.  It is now believed that their expansion took two main paths.  The first led along the northern margins of the forest to the east, and from thence eventually down the eastern side of the Great Rift towards the fertile Zambezi valley in the far south.  The second took other groups, by land and canoe, gradually into and through the great equatorial forest.  They and their descendants not only brought agriculture to the forest, but also eventually arrived on the southern savannas, where more open country proved an invitation to further rapid expansion of the settler frontier.

When iron became available, it spread rapidly along the commercial and kin networks that must have linked the growing number of Bantu-speaking communities.  They used the new metal to produce much more effective hoes with which to grow more yams and peas.  Perhaps even more important was the invention of the iron machete, a crucial tool for the clearing work necessary to bring virgin forestlands under cultivation.  The advent of the iron hoe and machete gave a boost to the expansion of the Bantu-speaking peoples, whose linguistic descendents now inhabit almost the entire Continent south of a line stretching from Cameroon to the southern part of Ethiopia.