African Geography, Migrations, and Settlement

STATES AND SOCITIES IN SUBSAHARAN AFRICA HIST 1301 | History African Geography, Migrations, and Settlement A narrow stretch of scrubland and woodland that hugs the Mediterranean Sea's southern coastline is to the north of the Sahara. Its climate, like that of other Mediterranean regions, is generally mild, with enough rainfall, rainy winters, and dry summers. Because of this, the fertile ground there is appropriate for cultivating crops like wheat and barley, which were first cultivated in the Fertile Crescent and spread over thousands of years throughout the Mediterranean. Similarly, there has been extensive cultural exchange between this part of northern Africa and other Mediterranean cultures, such as the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans. Consequently, this region has been greatly influenced by the cultural practices, languages, and religions of the greater Mediterranean world, and this influence has not abated. The semiarid Sahel, which is south of the Sahara, divides the northern desert from the southern savanna. Over 3,300 kilometres across the continent, the Sahel is a transitory region. The lengthening rainy season (four months on average), more moderate environment, and larger supply of pasturage and fodder plants (grasses, thorny bushes, and baobab trees) for livestock (particularly cattle and sheep) are all associated with more southward location. The Arabic term "shore," sahil, is the source of the English word "Sahel." This alludes to the widespread belief that the Sahara was an enormous sea of sand that could only be crossed extremely treacherously. Only little human settlements are feasible in the Sahara due to the region's severe dryness, which is inhospitable to both plants and animals. These are grouped around the oases that make up a small portion of the desert's overall area. These oasis were vital crossroads for commerce routes over the desert during the Middle Ages, and nowhere was this more evident than in West Africa, where rival mediaeval kingdoms fought for dominance over the region's marketplaces and the flow of products. The Sahara supplied great West African kingdoms with salt, a necessary commodity during the Middle Ages. Seldom found in the interior areas south of the Sahara, salt was extracted from locations like Taghaza and carried in massive blocks by camel caravans across the desert to settlements in West Africa and other countries. After gold, salt rose to become the second most valuable commodity trafficked across the Sahara. In fact, salt was so precious that the Ghanaian ruler kept it in the royal treasury with gold nuggets. The change from grasslands to tropical forests on the savanna denotes the southern boundary of the Sahel. The savanna, which is covered in grasses and has sporadic trees strewn throughout, is more moderate and rainy than the parched and dry Sahara. The savanna receives as much as 48 inches of rain annually (the rainy season runs from May to October) at its furthest point, close to the West African rainforests that encircle present-day Ghana and Sierra Leone. This is comparable to the average annual rainfall of New York City in the United States. In addition to having more foliage, the savanna is home to a larger variety of animals, such as giraffes, antelope, and cattle. The plains of the savanna, with their friendly temperature, topography, and ecology, have long been home to the highest concentration of human habitation in all of Africa. The Niger River meanders across West African savanna and the Sahel area. For hundreds of years, people have produced staple crops like millet, sorghum, and African rice along its verdant banks. The Niger is the longest river in West Africa, spanning around 2,500 kilometres. It was essential to the growth of the mediaeval West African kingdoms because it could support intense agriculture and served as a vital route for the transportation of goods and commodities. The great empires of West Africa sprung up in the regions that the Niger River drained, making money off the trade of gold from the south and salt from the north. These empires amassed enormous riches in this way. The tropical rainforest, Africa's third main ecosystem after the desert and the savanna, is located to the south of the savanna. The African rainforest occupies a far lesser area than the Sahara, at around two million square miles, or 10% of the continent's entire size. Despite this, the rainforest is home to thousands of different plant species and a wealth of wildlife, including chimpanzees, huge forest pigs, canopy monkeys, and pygmy hippos. Large areas of rainforest may be found in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d'Ivoire in West Africa. The Bantu first came into contact with the Nok people in this region, and it was from them that they learned the art of metallurgy, which allowed them to enter and eventually leave the tropical rainforest between 500 and 1000 CE. Following this, the Bantu gradually spread over much of southern Africa. It's possible that Bantu speakers began to leave this region as early as 3000 BCE. However, these ironworking farmers were able to move throughout most of the subcontinent's eastern, western, and southeastern areas after adopting Nok ironworking technique. Their Iron Age economy was based largely on agricultural, namely sorghum and millet, with some animals (cattle, pigs, and chicks), however cultivation took precedence over animal husbandry most of the time. The Bantu were able to select the best ground for farming since the areas they migrated into were sparsely inhabited by roaming bands of hunter-gatherers. Bantu communities of the early Iron Age were usually tiny, with a livestock enclosure of goats or cattle enclosing a dozen or so circular homes. Larger towns (often spanning several hectares) can be found in areas like Natal, where a limited population and great wildlife have made big Bantu kinship groupings happy. For the purpose of smelting carbon steel, settlements were positioned near to wood and iron ore. Although there was minimal opportunity for commerce, the early Iron Age Bantu economy was inevitably centred on self-sufficiency. However, there was some small-scale trading, especially of highly sought-after goods like salt and copper in parts of Tanzania and the Congo. The Bantu evolved and utilised the resources of the more advantageous locations and adapted to the local surroundings up until around the ninth century CE. They continued to be a kinship-based, stateless society throughout. While males took care of animals, hunted for meat and animal skins for clothing, and conducted commerce with neighbouring settlements, women cultivated crops, cooked, and watched over the younger children. There is ample archaeological evidence of male domination; women leaders were the anomaly. In any event, there was no strictly hierarchical power structure to exercise central authority; instead, authority was decentralised. In the savanna to the south of the Central African rainforest and on the plateau between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers in the interior of southern Africa, relatively strong Bantu kingdoms started to emerge starting in the eleventh century. The area's former residents were driven out by their sizable colonies. Neolithic agriculture and animal husbandry, on the one hand, and the adoption of Iron Age technology, tools, and weaponry, on the other, combined to bring about this transformation in the political landscape of ancient Africa. These areas were under the political, economic, and cultural domination of the successive Bantu kingdoms that arose in the Middle Ages. The Bantu, who originated in West Africa, would have been familiar with most of the topography and climate of southern Africa, which includes extensive savanna and desert regions like the Namib and Kalahari in southwest Africa. Grassland covers vast stretches of the contemporary nations of Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. It also covers a sizable portion of the region that bridges southern Mozambique to northeastern South Africa. The savanna of southern Africa has many characteristics with West Africa, including its vegetation and fauna. The climates of southern Africa and West Africa are similar in that they both have semiarid to temperate zones and differ in the quantity of rain they get. In general, the region's eastern portion—which includes Mozambique and eastern South Africa—is wetter than its western portion. The chilly Benguela Current of the Atlantic Ocean contributes to the west's dehydration. The dryness that followed in western South Africa had a major role in the formation of the Namib and Kalahari Deserts. The vast civilizations that were emerging in southern Africa throughout the Middle Ages took use of the region's water systems. For instance, the Limpopo River basin spans the eastern border of Botswana, the northernmost point of South Africa, and the southernmost portions of modern-day Mozambique and Zimbabwe. San hunter-gatherers from southwest Africa moved to the basin, where their migration was aided by the well-watered terrain and moderate climate. Bantu peoples also settled there. The Bantu, who came from the north, carried with them the skills they had developed over many centuries of migration throughout sub-Saharan Africa in ironworking, farming, and herding animals. They employed this knowledge to establish farms over vast field systems in the basin starting in the eleventh century and to amass enormous herds of cattle. The necessity to oversee local government and manage the resources of the basin increased along with the number of towns around the Limpopo River. As a result, the Bantu peoples of the area—especially in the Iron Age culture of Leopard's Kopje in Zimbabwe—emerged with centralised systems of government. This cattlekeeping civilization, named for the location where it was discovered (kopje meaning "small hill"), ruled the region for over two centuries before Great Zimbabwe, a larger and more sophisticated empire, took over in the thirteenth century.