The Emergence of Farming

AFRICA IN ANCIENT TIMES HIST 1301 | History The Emergence of Farming While there is ongoing disagreement among researchers over the beginnings of agriculture in Africa, it is generally agreed upon that the three different places where agriculture originated were Egypt's Nile River, Sudan's eastern Sahara, and West Africa's great bend of the Niger River. Egypt and the Nile River basin contain the earliest indications of agriculture in Africa. There, probably from southwest Asia, agricultural technology and knowledge about the domestication of wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cattle were brought to the area sometime after 7000 BCE. The adoption of these techniques revolutionised the area and set Egypt on the route to fame. These customs spread during the course of the following few millennia, reaching Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco in the west of North Africa. Separately, agriculture developed on the grasslands south of the Sahara. The beginnings of that process may be found as early as 9000 BCE, when the Nilo-Saharan people of that area started using the northern neighbours' methods for gathering and grinding grains to use on the tropical grasses of the Nile valley, such as pearl millet and sorghum. A millennium-long wet era that started about 11,000 BCE allowed for these developments. The Sahara was soaked by monsoon-like weather at this time, which resulted in lakes and a verdant environment with acacia and grass forests that supported an abundance of fauna. The Red Sea highlands' wild cattle were tamed by the Nilo-Saharan people around 8000 BCE, and they also started to make earthenware that they used to store and prepare these grains. As early as 6000 BCE, intentional domestication of these wild grains had started to emerge from collection. Watermelons, cotton, and gourds were among the many other plants that the Nilo-Saharans tamed over the course of the following several millennia. Far to the west of the NiloSaharans, near the bend of the Niger River in West Africa, agriculture also developed on its own. It was there that the Niger-Congo people began to domesticate yams, most likely piecemeal at first, starting at the same time the Nilo-Saharans of the eastern Sahara began to practise agriculture. The Niger-Congo people of West Africa were undoubtedly actively using stone tools to clear land by 3000 BCE in order to cultivate products like groundnuts, peas, and oil palm. A rice variant that was exclusively African was also domesticated throughout the course of the following several millennia by the Niger-Congo people, and it was grown in the marshes around the Niger River. Technological developments in metallurgy amplified the effects of farming. Just before to 3000 BCE, bronze was brought into Egypt from the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. After thereafter, bronze technology progressively spread over western North Africa and into sub-Saharan Africa by way of the Nile. The introduction of bronze led to a significant rise in agricultural productivity since it was significantly harder than the farming materials these cultures were previously employing. Bronze-bladed ploughs pushed by oxen could go deep into the ground and churn over a lot of soil, unlike wooden ploughs, which are only suitable for scratch farming. Throughout the Bronze Age, iron implements were common in Egypt. Iron daggers were, in fact, buried with the pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1323 BCE, and hundreds of iron artefacts from centuries earlier have been discovered by researchers at sites in the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. But the majority of these iron items, which included jewellery made of iron, were decorative. Only about 1000 BCE did the number of iron tools in the Near East start to surpass those of bronze tools. This is because it is significantly more difficult to make iron than bronze. Because the iron kinds that could be made earlier were not as strong as bronze, the early artefacts were often decorative. People didn't start experimenting with iron more seriously until the Late Bronze Age Collapse (1200–1100 BCE), when tin was hard to get by. Many blacksmiths in the Near East had perfected the technique by 900 BCE, producing significantly stronger iron implements than bronze ones. Egypt has evidence of advanced ironworking technique from the seventh century BCE, when immigrants from different Near Eastern regions arrived in the region. For a long time, contemporary historians believed that Egypt was the source of ironworking technology's proliferation throughout Africa. Currently accepted wisdom, however, indicates that sub-Saharan Africa is most likely where ironworking technique originated independently. The consensus among contemporary experts is that iron smelting in sub-Saharan Africa probably occurred several millennia before the metal was brought to Egypt. From Central Africa—modern-day Chad, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan—the oldest evidence originates from around 1000 BCE. From that point on, the technique seems to have moved westward into the Niger River region, where it was being utilised by the West African Nok culture by 500 BCE. The Nok originally made jewellery out of iron, and they settled around the junction of the Benue and Niger Rivers in modern-day Nigeria. They eventually started manufacturing weapons and farming implements out of it as well. Others adopted iron because it was evidently useful for making stronger and more resilient equipment for clearing forests, aerating soil, and digging trenchbased irrigation systems. Consequently, ironworking technology expanded throughout West Africa and eventually beyond throughout the ensuing few centuries. Iron technology was essential to the Bantus who were migrating. They cleared the surrounding woods with iron implements and expanded prehistoric irrigation systems by excavating deeper ditches that were fortified with embankments, resulting in Iron Age farms. In the process, they dispersed ironworking technology over sub-Saharan Africa and Equatoria.