Everything about African Archaeology totally explained
The continent of
Africa has the longest record of human activity of any part of the world and along with its geographical extent, it contains an enormous archaeological resource. Scholars have studied
Egyptology for centuries but archaeologists have only paid serious attention to the rest of the continent in more recent times.
Pliocene and Pleistocene Africa
The earliest evidence of archaeological activity anywhere comes from the
Rift Valley sites of
East Africa such as
Olduvai Gorge in modern-day
Tanzania. It is thought that the earliest
hominids evolved in Olduvai or somewhere similar around 4 million years ago. They are known as
australopithecines and
fossils of them include the famous
Lucy. The first, crude
Oldowan stone tools produced there were made as long as 2.5 million years ago by the later
homo habilis. Around a million years later, Developed Oldowan and then
Acheulian industries produced more advanced
handaxes made by
homo erectus. Archaeological study of this era was pioneered by people such as
Louis Leakey and his family and has centered on the earliest development of tool use, fire and diet in hominid societies. Sites such as
Kalambo Falls have produced well-preserved evidence of this activity.
By the beginning of the Middle
Palaeolithic, around 120,000 BC, African societies were
hunter-gatherers proficient in exploiting the herds of large mammals that populated the continent for meat, including elephants and the fearsome
African Buffalo. The area that's now the
Sahara desert was open grassland and it seems that early humans preferred this plains environment to the jungles in the centre. Coastal peoples also existed on seafood and numerous
middens indicate their diet.
Homo sapiens sapiens appears for the first time in the archaeological record around 100,000 BC in Africa and soon developed a more advanced method of flint tool manufacture involving striking
flakes from a prepared
core. This permitted more control over the size and shape of finished tool and led to the development of composite tools, that's
projectile points and
scrapers which could be hafted onto spears, arrows or handles. In turn this technology permitted more efficient hunting such as that demonstrated by the
Aterian industry.
Although still homos, there's evidence that these early humans also actively managed the food resource as well as simply harvesting it. The jungles of the
Congo Basin were first occupied around this time; different conditions and diet there produced recognisably different behaviours and tool types. There are also the earliest signs of
art appearing through the use of
ochre as a body decoration and paint and burial
rituals may have been practised.
Later Stone Age Africa
Around 10,000 BC, African societies developed
microlith technology which permitted even finer flint tools that could be mounted in rows on a handle. Such a tool was useful for harvesting wild grasses and also permitted fine shell and bone fish hooks, further varying diet. These nifty
Neolithic conditions led to eventual settlement sites being founded in parts of Africa as the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle was replaced by an agrarian and herding society. Other parts of the continent remained in the Palaeolithic however. Africa's earliest evidence for pottery and domesticated plants and animals comes from the north of the continent, in around 7000-6000 BC, and this different lifestyle is preserved in the images of
Saharan rock art. As the Sahara increased in size due to global climate change, its early farmers were forced south and eastwards, to the
Niger and
Nile valleys spreading their new ideas as they moved.
Metal-using Africa
Wheat and barley, sheep and goats were quickly adopted from Asia by African farmers but the early use of metalworking wasn't widely introduced in Africa until the
Egyptians joined the
Bronze Age around 4,000 BC. Pockets of bronze usage appeared in subsequent millennia but metal didn't supplant stone in the continent until around 500BC when both iron and copper spread southwards through the continent, reaching the Cape around 200AD. The widespread use of iron revolutionised the
Bantu farming communities who drove out the remaining hunter-gatherer societies they encountered as they expanded to farm wider areas of
savanna The technologically superior Bantu spread across southern Africa and became rich and powerful, producing iron for tools and weapons in large, industrial quantities.
Historical Africa
Trade with the Near East and Europe led to strong mercantile empires growing such as the Ethiopian kingdom of
Axum. The Bantu people built the impressive site of
Great Zimbabwe between the 10th and 15th centuries AD. The north of the continent had close cultural and economic ties with the Classical and medieval
Mediterranean. Cattle herding became important in East Africa and huge earthwork enclosures were built to corral the animals. The people of Christian
Ethiopia produced impressive rock-cut
monolithic churches such as that of St George at
Lalibela during the 13th century and the first
Portuguese forts appeared soon after this, penetrating as far south as
Zambia.
Further Information
Get more info on 'African Archaeology'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://african_archaeology.totallyexplained.com">African archaeology Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
