An Economic History of Tropical Africa

Volume One : The Pre-Colonial Period

J.M. Konczacki, Z.A. Konczacki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136270840
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

These articles cover: early agricultural development; history of agricultural crops; patterns of land use and tenure; introduction and use of metals; economic and technological aspects of the Iron Age; patterns of trade; trade routes and centres; and media of exchange.

PART I

Agricultural Development

1

THE SPREAD OF FOOD PRODUCTION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA*

J. Desmond Clark

After the end of the Pleistocene, sub-Saharan Africa seems to have been more receptive of than contributory to cultural progress in the Old World as a whole. By that time favourable localities in the sub-continent – the margins of lakes and watercourses, the sea coasts, the peripheral regions of the equatorial forest – were sometimes supporting nearly, or entirely, sedentary communities of hunting-collecting peoples who were enabled to live in this way due to the permanent presence of one or more staple sources of food: freshwater fish, water animals and plants, and sea foods; and forest foods (the Dioscoreas, Elaeis guineensis, and other oil-bearing plants), either perennial or capable of being stored. Evidence of such occupation is seen in the midden accumulations in both cave and open sites at this time (1). Populations could thus become more concentrated and an increase in density may be inferred, the limiting factor being the maximum that any one environment could support by intensified collecting methods (Fig. 1).

The two ecosystems in sub-Saharan Africa most significant in determining subsequent economic developments were the plateau grasslands and lakes of East and East Central Africa and the peripheral parts of the lowlands and montane evergreen forest zones of West and West Equatorial Africa. In the one, dependence would seem to have been predominantly on a protein diet based on game and fish, with vegetable foods of subsidiary importance, and, in the other, probably on a starch diet based on vegetable foods, supplemented to some extent by protein from fish and, to a lesser degree, from game. The introduction of cereal crops was, therefore, of the greatest importance since it permitted the sedentary, Mesolithic population to occupy, widely and permanently, territory previously capable of supporting only temporary settlement. While the introduction of agriculture would have supplemented the perennial wild plants and encouraged plant cultivation, its chief importance in the plant-tending, ‘vegecultural’ communities would have been to encourage permanent occupation of areas previously uninviting to sedentary gatherers – dry savannah and continuous canopy forest. The chief development in food production in the higher rainfall, thicker vegetation region of the west and centre probably only took place, however, after the introduction of American and Asian food plants of the humid tropics and after metal-working had provided efficient tools with which to make effective inroads upon the forests.

Fig. 1

Domestication of stock – cattle, sheep and goats – may be expected to have been equally as revolutionary an innovation for human economy in both types of country. It would, however, have particular significance in providing a permanent source of protein for those occupying the forest periphery, though here its distribution must originally have been controlled by the tsetse fly.

It is well to remember with regard to agriculture that there are two factors requiring recognition: the one the cultivation of cereal crops, wheat, barley, millets, sorghum, etc.; and the other the cultivation of plant crops, ensete, bananas, yams, oil plants and trees, fluted pumpkins, pulses, etc. The initial ‘vegecultural’ stages in domesticating the latter group were almost certainly local developments south of the Sahara, (1) while, on the archaeological evidence, there can be little doubt that cereal cultivation spread to Africa from South-West Asia sometime during the fifth millennium B.C., perhaps somewhat earlier. What is believed to be the earliest Neolithic in North-East Africa is represented by the Fayum A culture dated to ±4300 B.C. by radiocarbon. By the first half of the fourth millennium Neolithic culture had spread to the upper Nile at Khartoum, where the Khartoum Neolithic at Es Shaheinab dates to ±3200 B.C. Arkell, however, considers that these dates are unreliable and would make the initial introduction into Lower Egypt earlier and the spread to the Sudan more rapid (2). Some confirmation for Arkell’s suggestion is found in the radiocarbon dating for three Saharan Neolithic industries with pottery occurring in rock shelters with paintings of cattle scenes in the Tassili. If the paintings can be associated with the industries, it would indicate that cattle were already domesticated in North Africa by the sixth millennium B.C. (3), (4).

The staple cereals cultivated in the lower Nile at this time were barley and emmer wheat, and the silos of the Fayum A peasants contained 80 per cent barley and 20 per cent wheat (5). The bifacially worked serrated sickle blade is an intimately related tool, and it seems probable, therefore, that the extent of the distribution of all forms of sickle blades in Africa may perhaps provide some indication of the extent of wheat and barley cultivation, and so of the use of these crops asstaples in the continent in prehistoric times. In this distribution area can be included the Nile Valley, the Mediterranean coast west to Cyrenaica, the eastern oases of the Sahara, and perhaps the Western Sudan and the Tigré plateau of Ethiopia.

From the sixth to the third millennium B.C. the Makalian Wet phase in Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, which would seem to be the equivalent of the Atlantic stage in Europe, permitted movement of human and animal populations from the Mediterranean littoral southwards, and from the savannah of West and Central Africa northwards. Such a favourable habitat enabled Later Stone Age Mesolithic hunters and fishers, with their improved methods of food getting, to populate the Sahara to an extent never before possible, and must have rendered these communities particularly receptive of and quick to adopt the new practices of cereal and crop cultivation and domestication of animals (especially the latter) when these were diffused (Fig. 2).

The material culture of the Mesolithic/Neolithic populations of the Southern Sahara, from Mauritania in the west to the Nile at Khartoum in the east, indicates a way of life based on hunting and fishing. This is shown especially in the bone harpoons, fish-hooks, and bifacially worked stone projectile points, and implies a reasonably well-watered and bush covered terrain that was very different from the desert conditions that exist there today (6). It would seem not improbable that the inhabitants of the settlements grouped round the pans and river courses of such sites as Asselar, Taferjit, Tamaya Mellet and In Guezzam were Negroids whose spread had been made possible by the northward displacement of the Sudan and Sahel belts. Skeletal remains of Negro-type have been found at Asselar, Tamaya Mellet, Early Khartoum, and several other sites in the central Sahara.

Fig. 2

Contact with populations living to the south of the desert during these millennia, and the later movement out of the desert that must have been forced on some of the inhabitants by the post-Makalian dry phase after the middle of the third millennium B.C., are likely to have been the causes whereby knowledge of and experiment in cereal crop cultivation passed to the sub-Saharan populations.

Dambo and waterside sites and the fringes of forests must have seen the first attempts at tropical agriculture and plant cultivation. Much surface material and a very few stratified sites together with one or two radiocarbon dates tend to confirm this. In tropical West Africa (Guinea, Mali, Mauritania (7), the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Ghana (8), (9), and Nigeria (Nok Culture)) (10), (11) two stages of Neolithic culture were present or can be inferred, the main distinguishing feature being the absence of pottery from the earlier stage. In the north-eastern and north-western parts of the Congo basin only one stage has so far been distinguished (12). Almost nothing is known about the settlement patterns of any of these West African and Congo forest and savannah cultures except where rock shelters were used, but it can be inferred that the usual form was an open village consisting of, for Neolithic groups in the forest, a fair-sized population.

If Vaufrey (7) is correct in supposing that a proportion of the polished celt-like artifacts from Aouker and Hodh (15 – 17°N: 5 – 10°W) were used as hoes, it will imply that some incipient cultivation at least was being practised in this now desert region at some time during the Sahara Wet Phase (i.e., before 2000 B.C.) when suitable terrain for cultivation may be expected to have existed there. Alternatively, these hoe-like celts may have been nothing more than the working ends of digging sticks for collecting wild vegetable foods. If, indeed, some of these celt-like tools are hoes and the absolute dates are in any way reliable, it would seem that experimentation with yam and millet cultivation, which had been under way from the fifth to the third millennium, had, by the time of the Nok Figurine culture in the first millennium B.C., resulted in the appearance, firstly of incipient, and then of full, food-producing communities on the fringes of the forest and in the savannah.

These Neolithic communities were all equipped with wood-working tools, the axe and the adze, and, it would seem, with the hoe also. Their distribution covered what is now the Sahel belt of the southern Sahara and spread into the forest proper. Without adequate carbon dating, however, the age of these cultures cannot be determined, though the few dates that do exist show that the Neolithic had not penetrated to the Ghana coast before the beginning of the fourth millennium, while the Nok Culture seems to have lasted from ±918 B.C. to about A.D. 200 (13). It may be suggested that the soft stone hoe was the implement used for yam (Dioscorea cayenensis or other indigenous Dioscoreas) and sorghum cultivation in higher rainfall zones where a more broad-bladed tool than the pointed digging stick would be required for mound cultivation or for breaking up new ground under a thick vegetation cover.

In Ethiopia and the lake region of the East African Rift very different cultural assemblages are found. The most significant are those at Agordat near Axum in Eritrea (14), Quiha and Tuli Kapi on the northern and western parts of the Ethiopian high plateau, (15) and the settlements and burial mounds in the Nakuru-Naivasha basin in Kenya, and in Ngorongoro in Northern Tanganyika (16), (17), (18). The cultural associations of the hoe cultivators of central Abyssinia reported by Père Azais (19) in Woolega and Kaffa lie, presumably, more closely with the Southern Sudan and West Africa than with those of the Agordat and Gregory Rift Cultures, among which pastoralism seems to have assumed greater importance. It would seem also probable that there is an association between the stone hoe cultures of Western Ethiopia and ensete cultivation, since there is a measure of agreement in the distribution of both.

Most of the other East African Neolithic cultures made much use of obsidian for their smaller percussion flaked tools, knives, scrapers, burins, and projectile barbs. This suggests a somewhat more mobile hunting and pastoral form of livelihood. Some writers have suggested that the whole cattle complex of the Sahara Neolithic peoples was derived from Arabia via the Horn. The archaeological evidence, however, lends no support to this hypothesis, and the rock art in particular indicates that the pastoral groups depicted therein came from the Sahara or Nubia to the Horn, and not the other way round (20). Other than the pecked and ground stone axes, of which several distinctive types are found, these assemblages lack the heavy wood-working equipment of the forest and savannah cultures. The most characteristic domestic equipment consisted of stone bowls and palettes of various kinds, usually made from lava, together with flat grindstones and deep, bag-shaped pottery, sometimes with handles and spouts. In some instances, evidence of permanent dwellings (Hyrax Hill) and settlements (Lanet) suggests a different cultural tradition with a fairly long history and probably some form of incipient agriculture. Cattle were present in the northern part of the Horn by the second millennium B.C., if we can accept the evidence of the Deir-el-Bahari bas reliefs, and some of the later Kenya Neolithic peoples are known to have owned cattle (Hyrax Hill). Among this last, the zebu strain has been identified, so that it is likely to have been acquired sometime after the first half of the first millennium B.C. when, it is believed, this stock began to be diffused across the straits from Southern Arabia.

The grindstones and bowls strongly suggest some form of crop cultivation. In Eastern Ethiopia these crops may have been wheat, barley and teff (21), while in the Gregory Rift area the plants are more likely to have been primarily finger millet (Eleusine sp.), with the addition of various sorghums and Pennisetum. The length of time during which these Neolithic communities occupied East Africa and Ethiopia is not known, but a carbon date of 1063 ± 80 B.C. (22) for a late phase of the Stone Bowl Culture suggests that they were already established there in the second millennium B.C., while another date of A.D. 1584 ± 100 for the late settlement site at Lanet probably represen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I Agricultural Development
• Part II Land Use and Tenure
• Part III Introduction and Use of Metals
• Part IV Some Economic and Technological: Aspects of the Iron Age
• Part V Patterns of Trade
• Part VI Trade Routes and Trade Centres
• Part VII Media of Exchange and: Standards of Value
• Index