Question of the Iron Age in Africa by L-M Diop-Maes

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

I want to park and lock this here until I get it fully loaded for transfer to the history folder





Louise Maria Diop-Maes
La question de l’Âge du fer en Afrique
[The question of the Iron Age in Africa ]
translated by TNV forum member Aurore

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

From:
ankhonline.com



1. The outside-Africa and inside-Africa theories

In his article "La connaissance du fer en Afrique occidentale"[2], since 1952 and before
any dating was undertaken, the late H. Lhote, realized that the iron industry in black
Africa was indigenous and did not come from North Africa through the Sahara (contrary
to the claims made by R. Mauny based on an imaginative point of view instead of valid
reasoning)[3].


H. Lhote, to whom one must render hommage, observed that:

• 1. the bellows made of pottery is original and exclusive to the Sudan;
  
  
• 2. that the Berbers in the Sahara are not metallurgists: they mistrusted iron-working (the 'Enaden' are mostly repairmen);
  
  
• 3. no traces of blast furnaces have been found in the Sahara even though iron is present but the nearby peoples do not on their own know how to work iron;
  
  
• 4. there are numerous traces of blast furnaces in the Sudanese zone up to the 16th northern parallel [4];
  
  
• 5. the northern limits to finding these blast furnaces are found up to approximately the southern reaches of the BRZL linguistic family that uses a word of semitic origin for iron.
  

He concludes that:

"The ethnographic, linguistic, historical and archaeological facts can be
combined to affirm the exclusively African character of iron working in
the black world."

For R. Mauny, Blacks could not be anything but slaves to whom the Berbers "gave
menial tasks" [5]. But at the same time, those who are forced to do this labour can't
by definition understand it because, not only are they slaves, but they are incapable
of finding out by themselves the mining and smelting processes of iron ore. But how
can the Berbers, who do not know these techniques, have taught their supposed slaves?
R. Mauny explained this as follows: in the second half of the first millenium A.D. the
Saharan Berbers (non-initiated in iron-working techniques)enslaved metallurgical
artisans in North Africa who " brought with them the iron industry from the Mediterranean
coasts down to the borders of the black world" [6]. It was this same idea he used to
specify the following: "the 'mallems' brought in from the North certainly had slaves to
help them in their skilled work" (slaves, meaning black slaves). To be clear, it has to
be admitted that:

• 1) the reappropriated smiths from the North Sahara taught their technique to black slaves seized in the south by the same Berber masters,
  
• 2) these black slaves, who either by escaping, or "being sent specifically to obtain metal commodities" [7] managed to implant iron smithing in western Africa.
  

This transmission and translation were assured by the second half of the first millenium A.D. by the Berber "masters", who lacked this knowledge themselves, despite;

• the fact that iron became common in North African tombs only after the 3rd century B.C., while by the 4th B.C. "Ethiopians" on the Atlantic coast (Cerne), "used fire-hardened darts" and by the 5th century B.C. at least, the iron mining process was already being used in Nok (Nigeria);
  
  
• the fact that there is no common linguistic origin for the word 'iron' in North Africa on one hand and the Sudan on the other;
  
  
• the fact that there are no blast furnaces in the Sahara.
  

This theory, upon analysis, reveals itself as opinionated and relies on preconceived notions rather than on fact.

On their own, ethnographic, linguistic, historical, geographical, archaeological elements
that have been discovered or elucidated, contradict the hypothesis of the iron industry
being introduced in Black Africa from North Africa and the Sahara. We can also add other
evidence to that obtained by H. Lhote since 1952.

The smith occupies an important position in the traditional African society, either through
legends or through diverse and important roles the smith and his wife had to fill in the
black African village. The cult of the god Gou or Ogun, the god of iron and of war, also
points to the traditional nature of this industry in African society.

The greatest black Empires, from the most ancient (Ghana) to the most recent (Songhai),
Sahelian or Sudanese were postioned mostly in the Sahara, many large regions of which
were directly administered by black governers [8].

Who says that prior to the Arab invasions, the Berbers were the most numerous and
greatest conquerors of the central and southern Sahara?

The black populations living in the Sahara in the past, and ultimately suppressed by
the Arabo-Berber Muslims in the oases and mountain ranges, would have only been part of the "despised casts" of smiths after the invasion, like the Haddads [9], but who knew,
probably for centuries before, how to work iron. On the other hand, let's not forget the
"Haratins" were not only black slaves brought there from the caravans and slavers, but
also represented, perhaps above all else, a residual population of the neolithic Sahara, humid and negroid.

To this debate, detailed articles by P. Huard added more elements [10]. He abandons,
for example, the Libyan-Berber origin for Teda assegai [11]. He instead supports, as
does V. Paques, two traditions on the introduction of metal working to Fezzan: Jews
from the north brought it to Sebba, Sudanese smiths brought it to Ghat [12]. This group,
he writes, "passes for having been one of the first peoples to have worked iron in Chad
..., the Zaghawa were mentioned by the Arab story tellers since the 8th century ...
They have maintained their practices of agricultural sacrifice and do not get along with islamisation that has been going on for a millenia" [13]. How did the Arab story tellers describe the Zaghawa?

• Ibn Munabbet (738) 'counts the Zaghawa as belonging to the Sudanese peoples';
  
  
• Idrisi (12th century) 'depicts them as negro camel riders who occupied the area between Fezzan and Chari, Xaouar and Darfour'.
  
  
• Ibn Khaldoun (14th century) 'includes the Zaghawa as part of the black kingdoms of the Sudan.'

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

In the Ennedi, P. Huard showed 'the importance of figurative evidence and archaeological traces
concerning the age of iron working.' He writes, 'the extremely stiff arm holding a dagger can be
seen from the Nile at Hoggar to the middle of Niger, and is depicted at Hallema (North-East corner
of Ennedi) to the arm of a dressed spear-user, dating to the late iron age, finely engraved with
his herd of cattle with two of them sporting deformed horns, a practice amidst group C Nubian herders
that was spread through out the Sahara zone around Chad and still seen at Tibesti during the iron age.' [14].


Despite this, in 1964, eleven years after the publishing of the opposing theories of H. Lhote and
R. Mauny (1952-1953), and as a follow up of the observations P. Huard made and reported, he admitted
in his first set of conclusions, without reservation and without mentioning his reasoning, the
hypothesis of a slow and progressive transmission of Mediterranean iron into the black world in
the following fashion:

• 3rd century B.C.: the arrival of worked iron of Carthaginic origin through indirect trade
  ('dating proposed by R. Mauny')
  
• 4th century A.D.: black Sudanese acquire Mediterranean iron working ('dating thanks to W. Cline').
  

And yet he added:

'The traces of a possible ancient contribution of Mediterranean iron from the North-East to North-West
limits of Tibesti are being researched in the field.' [15].

This leaves us to suppose that, just up until now, the traces of evidence were not yet discovered.

Yet, we can keep as important elements of his conclusions the following propositions:

• 'What has been said about metals in the centre of Chad and to the West of the lake shows us that
  the questions concerning them bypass - both territorially and by their scope - the confines of the
  Sahara, in which the interest is to laterally record the evidence of the East-West transmission into
  the area between the valley of the Nile and Niger, where iron became one of the evolutionary factors
  attributing to the creation of organized states'.
  
• 'But from Chad to Mossi, the traditional factors collected going back to the local age of metals,
  are deformed, fragmented, and uncoordinated, and they require being put in their respective contexts
  at the heart of the common origins of the Nile valley, for which limiting factors of material and
  cultural transmission have been uncovered by Wainwright in Nigeria and Arkell in Ghana'. [16].
  

[In summary, if there was no tangible proof of a North-South flow of iron industry across the Sahara,
there was various evidence, particularly archaeological, that allowed the affirmation of the invention
of an ancient iron industry in a very vast area from the Nile to Tibesti, from Chad to the west of the
lake, and going by Ennedi.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

One can conclude that there was a lateral transmission from the East to the West,
not only across the southern Sahara, but also across all of the Sudan to the Nile
and Niger, the location of origin being in both cases Nubia.

However, in the absence of certain dating, not only for the beginning of the iron
age in Nubia, but also for all of the other sites mentioned in central and western
Sudan, this could also signify an immense dispersion area of iron industry, even
before population migrations began in the valley of the Nile towards the west,
south-west and the south during the 6th century B.C.


As a matter of fact, concerning the age of iron working in Nigeria, Basil Davidson
indicated in his work Africa before the whites [18] that 'four charcoal fragments
in the Nok strata were revealed to have dates between 3500, 2000, 900 B.C. and 200
A.D by carbon dating'.

The author then continues by giving the following commentary by Bernard Fagg.

'The two first dates certainly come from more ancient sediments, while the 900 B.C.
(around the time of the climate of Nakura becoming rainier) and 200 A.D. dates show
the earliest and latest dates of the statuettes belonging to the Nok civilisation.'

It is necessary to attract attention to the assumption made freely that the two first
dates come from more ancient sediments. One must remain circumspect of interpretations
that attempt to move the date forward on objective results derived by scientific methods.

One can no longer explain the archaeological claim that allowed P. Huard to make the following remark [19].

'B. Fagg has recently lessened the obstacle that these dates created in keeping us
from putting forth a future description of the propagation of iron working in West
Africa when he wrote: " We think now that the Nok culture is the product of a
revolution that started around the introduction of iron and probably flourished
between -400 (possibly as early as -900) and +200".' In the general context of
this study', continues Huard, 'it is evidently the end of this period that seems
acceptable to us.'

We can naturally no longer see any reason to agree with his opinion.

In this region of Chad, the recent 'bovidien' an epoque during which iron was
affirmed to having been in use, is considered to be from the 1st millenium B.C.
Yet, P. Huard notes that 'in the recent bovidien' of Ennedi, in the style of Fada,
which we consider to have occurred before iron working, gave the Bailloud core
grid spears'. On the other hand, the Nubian group C (to whom the depiction of the
spearman accompanied by his herd of cattle in the north-east portion of Ennedi
belongs) started, according to Arkell, at the end of the 3rd millenium B.C.
(between -2300 and -2150) [20].

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Thusly, from 1967-1968, the factual analysis of these arguments allows me to conclude

• that against all probability, iron metallurgy in the African continent is
  indigenous and was not introduced by outside influences
  
• that this ancient and traditional industry remained very much alive just
  up until the era of colonialisation
  
• that we are dealing with transitional, siderolithic (in which stone and
  iron industries coexist) civilisations according to an expression by W. Fagg;
  
• that the establishment of a black African chronology is still in its infancy.
  Lack of precision allows us to be able to think that iron technology could have
  started as early as the 3rd millenium B.C. or during the first (Nok);
  
• that archaeological discoveries done up until recently have revealed
  Nigeria, Mali, Chad, Zambia, and the region of the Great Lakes as the
  principal siderolithic sites. But they are not limited to this list.
  Prof. Hiernaux indicates that dimple-based pottery was recently discovered
  at Kasai (Congo). And William Fagg writes, '
  
• it is possible that we only know
  of certain traces of deeply buried, ancient cultures that reside within rocks
  that are not readily accessible
  
• '. He expresses later on the idea that
  civilisations buried in African soil risk never being uncovered.
  

Along this line of thought, another factor that we can never underestimate is
the speed of degradation via oxidation of all of the iron objects coming from
the hot and humid climates of Africa.


6. that, in these conditions, it seems premature to confirm the first centres
of propagation of iron in Africa and the routes of dispersal of iron across
Africa, especially since the different metallurgical centres already found seem
to all be situated in the very distant past. The Prof. Hiernaux wrote in 1962:
'if we are tempted to look at Meroe, where iron scoria formed important stockpiles,
while we look for the cradle of metallurgy in central and oriental Africa, we must
wait for substantial data that will allow us to create hypotheses that will be
sufficiently supported.'[21]

If it seems proven, in the 60s, that traditional iron metal working in Africa is
very ancient, was widespread and indigenous, the cradle of these processes, their
exact dating and the hyptothetical routes of propagation remain to be determined [22].

All of these considerations do not keep people from teaching without perturbation
the path of transmission of iron-working techniques from North Africa to the
occidental Sudan across the Sahara. Even the fact that Henri Lhote uncovered
the original and indigenous character of iron industry in occidental Africa
has been forgotten.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

2. Confirmation of the indigenous invention of iron metallurgy

Despite the slow accumulation of dates, we have to wait for the first
international colloquium of archeology of Cameroon, held at Yaounde from
the 6th to 9th of January, 1986, and whose transcriptions were published
[23] to finally get the following statement:

'Long and sterile quarrels occurred between certain researchers who
opposed the archaeological findings. The reason for this is simple.
The founders [workmen] were Blacks...' [24]

The author was especially referring to copper.

Pertaining to microlithic industry of north-east Zaire, the Belgian
prehistorian F. van Noten wrote [25]: 'The industry of Ishango was dated
-21 000 /- 500 B.P. that is 19 000 B.C., which seemed too old... But seeing
the dates obtained at Matupi, this result seems today less improbable.' Here
is how dates and facts were systematically separated from each other because
they didn't fit with someone's visions of how things should be. In 1984, in
their important work, 'The dating of the past, measuring time in archaeology'
[26], R.P. Giot and L. Langouet specified that, contrary to what was said,
one date is already an indication (but not necessarily a confirmation), and
that the quality of the sample, in all points of view, is the essential element.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

One must emphasize the fact that the stores at Nok have provided iron hachets
'still shapped like those in stone' [27]. This is why W. Fagg coined the phrase
'siderolithic' civilisation that went directly from stone to iron and continued
to develope these two industries in a parallel fashion.

On the other hand, in 1976, C.A. Diop commented on the Nok dates in the following fashion:

'These statuettes from Nok were found in place, 12 m deep with scoria, and
tailpipes, and were dated by the 14C carbon dating of twigs of carbonised
wood that were associated with them. The ages obtained were the following:
3500 B.C., 2000 B.C., 900 B.C. These dates were perhaps too old for African
iron, but none of the arguments put forth to reject these dates was
scientifically valid or consistant. We must take them into consideration along
with other facts that will support or refute them.



Fagg omitted to provide an intelligible schematic of the alluvial positions
of the twigs (polluting materials); it is impossible to reach the (supposed)
area where the upstream twigs came from without removing other more contemporary
twigs from the gully, that is the twigs from the more conventionally accepted
iron age date (500 B.C.), and those twigs dated to the more ancient ages were
supposedly contaminated with later samples, which is not the case.

Fagg's idea that the C-14 dating technique was not precise when the dating was
carried out is false and should not be taken into consideration.

The interpretative diagram above corresponds roughly to the dates that were
put in place from data taken on the materials, some of which came from a
conversation I had with the professor Th. Shaw on this subject at the congress
of UISPP in September 1976 in Nice.

However the excavation of a Senegalese tumulus 25 km from Kaolack (Ndalane) has
revealed facts that were judged as abberations by their discoverer G. Thilmans,
IFAN, Dakar (cf. C. A. Diop, "Datations par la méthode du radiocarbone, série
III", Bulletin de l’IFAN, t. XXXIV, série B, n° 4, 1972, pp. 678-701. Voir
p. 690 DaK-110 et DaK-111.]

The dating that was come across by Daka and Gif-sur-Yvette, in the conditions
chosen by the researcher, of charcoal collected from the location, 330 cm deep,
gave the following results:

DaK-110 = 4811 +/- 137 BP that is 2861 +/- 137 BC

GIF-2508 = 4770 +/- 115 BP that is 2820 +/- 115 BC

results that are even more significant if one takes into consideration that Mrs.
Delibrias, at Gif, did not know about the measurements I had obtained.

However, it is important to emphasize that an iron and copper tool was extracted
from that tumulus that is associated to the end of the Neolithic, that was of
Capsian tradition. The difficulty came at first from the fact that it would be
unseemly to date this material to such a distant time in the past.

Even though dating via thermoluminescence techniques is still semi-imperical [28],
it would be interesting to use it to test the tailpipes of Nok and the pottery
from the Ndalane tumulus; this would permit to rapidly answer the question.

Finally, the dates that we established for M. Roset, unfortunately in very bad
conditions for taking measurement, something he admitted, if they are confirmed,
will take the date of iron in the southern Sahara from the 5th century B.C. to
the 10th century B.C. 'in the Termit mountain range'.

DaK-145 = 2628 +/- 120 BP that is 678 BC

DaK-147 = 2924 +/- 120 BP that is 974 BC

DaK-148 = 1747 +/- 110 BP that is 203 AD"


The above dates indicate that we can perhaps go back to the question of the iron
age in black Africa. [29]

Since then, new research has been undertaken in different regions and new dates
have been provided.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

The above dates indicate that we can perhaps go back to the question of the iron
age in black Africa. [29]

Since then, new research has been undertaken in different regions and new dates
have been provided.

In fact, in the western part of the Nok region, at Taruga, supplementary dates
have been obtained, the oldest dating back to the 9th century BC. [30] In the
north of this region, in the Termit mountain range, in oriental Niger, the abundant
traces of ancient iron metallurgy (furnaces, scoria, hearths [from blast furnaces],
diverse objects) has permitted J.P. Roset and G. Quechon to date four charcoal
samples in the IFAN laboratory in Dakar (C.A. Diop), that we have just seen. The
results were published in 1974 in the notebooks of ORSTOM [31]. The most ancient
date goes back to 974 BC around the iron age of the western portion of the Termit
mountain range [32]. Something that few people judged as plausible. But following
new digs carried out by G. Quechon, other dates were provided by two laboratories
at the University of Paris (J.Ch. Fontes and J.F Saliege). Again not only were the
previous dates confirmed, but the iron age was moved back to the second millenium
BC, before 1350 [33]. Such dates of course exclude the North African origin of
iron metallurgy in western sub-Saharan Africa, but instead confirm the correct
reasoning of H. Lhote.

All of this didn't keep C. Coquery-Vidrovitch from writing even in 1993 that the Nok
civilisation learned iron technology 'from Carthaginian influences', through an
intermediary in the central Sahara [34], a statement confirmed rather than refuted by
the following sentence pertaining to metallurgy in West Africa:

'the dates and the style of the ovens were more ancient than the iron industry
in Meroe, and one can conclude that the technology was either indigenous or more
probably dispersed from Punic North Africa' [35] (emphasis ours).

Beyond that, in the Journal des Africanistes (62, 2, 1992 : pp. 55-68 ), in
collaboration with F. Paris, A. Person et J.F. Saliège, Gérard Quéchon wrote:

'... in the Egaro region (West Termit), two pots coming from the sites contained
iron objects, which provided even more ancient dates: 2520 and 1675 BC and even
2900-2300 BC in one case. These dates were obtained in good, laboratory conditions
(Saliege, Lodyc, University of Paris and M. Curie) as well as in the field (Paris
excavation and Quechon, 1986)'. (emphasis ours)

'The probability of the calibrated age in this time range is 95% (confidence range 2a).
The calibration table used is that of Klein et al. 1982' [36].

Of course of the authors publish these two dates "with all reservation" and "are
waiting confirmation through other results", but homing in on the date obtained
at Ndalane (Senegal) is imposing itself (cf. the above publication by C. A. Diop,
in Notes Africaines, n°152, October 1976, IFAN, Dakar), as well as the re-examination
of the lower layers at Nok and neighbouring sites.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

In the work, otherwise clear, precise and well-documented of Marianne Cornevin, which
usually restores the history of research, the pertinent arguments of H. Lhote (1952)
is completely ignored as well as the article by C.A. Diop cited above (1976) and mine
as well (1968). The suggestion of the independant invention of iron metallurgy in the
south of the Sahara has put into question 'the carthaginian theory' that was presented
back in 1985, with an article by D.W. Phillipson in African Archaeology! (p. 119)

In his contribution to Métallurgies Africaines [37], entitled 'Les métallurgies du
cuivre et du fer autour d’Agadez...', D. Grebenart indicates that the ancient iron
age is represented by forty different sites located on the southern side of the
Tigidit cliff (p.114). 'It started around 500 B.C. and seemed to have had a southern
origin' (p.110) (emphasis ours). Since then, he has found even older dates (9th century).

In North Cameroon, A. Marliac obtained 700 B.C. for the iron age in the bottom layer
[38]. He will have to dig even more deeply. In Gabon, the iron age started around 600
B.C. [39], or perhaps even earlier.

'In Gabon in the middle valley of Ogoue, founders [workmen] were present since ca 2600
BP in a timely fashion and on isolated sites at Otoumbi (2 640 /- 70 and 2 400 +/- 50
BP) and at Lope 10 (2 310 /-70 BP); they don't leave any traces of ceramics (Oslisly
1992a). Later on the founders appear at Moanda in the High Ogoue ca 2300 - 2100 BP
(Schmidt et al 1985), near Oyem ca 2 280 BP (Clist 1989) and in the east of the Makokou
country ca 2 150 (BP) (Peyrot and Oslisly 1987).'

The authors also indicate that,

'on the banks of the middle valley of Ogoue, around 2 300 - 2 200 BP we see
a net expansion of founders of Okandian tradition identified on the Otoumbi 2
( 2 260 +/- 120 BP) and Okanda (2110 /- 70 BP) sites, which will largely take
over areas between savannah enclaves of the Lope/Okanda reservation (Okanda and
Lindili sites) up until ca 1 900 - 1 800 BP'.

If we go into central-oriental Africa or 'interlacustre', the work of Marie Claude van
Grunderbeek, Emile Roche and Hugues Doutrelepont has revealed 'very ancient traces' of
iron metallurgy [40]. The dates obtained at Burundi (ca 1 230 B.C. at the Rwiyange I
site, ca 1 210 B.C. at the Mubuga V site) were put into perspective with dates taken
from sites located near the banks of Lake Victoria: ca 1470, ca 1250 and ca 1080 B.C.
(at Katuruka, southern bank of the lake). In other words, it is during the 13th century
B.C. and perhaps the 15th when the iron age started in thsis region. This is how the
authors concluded:

'Seeing the great age of certain of the dates, the hypotheses provided about the
propagation of iron technology in interlacustre African need to be reconsidered.'

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Contrary to the theories supported by M. Guthrie and J.H. Greenberg (and generally
thought of as correct), F. van Noten thinks that iron working knowledge is not linked
to a 'Bantu expansion' because:

'It has been noticed that, comparatively, in the Bantu languages, the words dealing
with metallurgy are very diverse for the vocabulary designating the forge.' [41]

'However,' he continues, 'several reconstructions allow one to think of an iron usage
at the proto-Bantu level, likes forges, hammer and bellow... Finally, other metallurgical
words appear to have an identical origin with Bantu and non-Bantu languages.... it is
difficult to tell if the 'Bantus' worked iron before their expansion, we can't find any
linguistic evidence'.

'In the absence of writing, archaeological reconstructions don't allow one to establish
direct correlations between the documentation of the iron age and the linguistic notions
of the Bantu' [42].

Th. Obenga [43] reminds us that several African peoples designate iron 'by the same
metaphore as the Egyptian clans': metal of the sky. This asks again, at the same time,
the question on the origin of iron in Pharaonic Egypt and in Nubia in comparison to
iron in east, west and central Africa.

On this subject C.A. Diop wrote:

'Iron ore use, contrary to the use of meteoritic iron was affirmed to have existed
2 600 BC in Egypt, by several soft iron samples [44]; we have never come
to the conclusions of such an important discovery. However, cast-iron using an alloy
of iron and carbon containing approximately 6% carbon; makes it brittle. Soft iron,
or pure, is theoretically void of carbon, which explains its malleability. We go from
cast-iron to soft iron by progressive extraction of carbon from the special alloy in
the casting process; during this process of reducing the carbon content, we go from
all intermediary concentrations of carbon in the iron, corresponding to the different
varieties of cast-iron, to steel: steel is but an alloy of iron and a carbon content
of less than 0,85%' [45].

'So those who have made soft iron have passed by steel; that is the case of the
Egyptians of the pyramids, and such is the case of the black African smith. It is
important to distinguish between two types of smiths:

• He who produces cast-iron from a blast furnace and whose task stops there;
  he is the producer of pig iron: wen bu nuul (in Walaf) [46]. That is the
  metallurgist smith.
  
• The refining smith who, by reheating and appropriate hammering of the cast-iron,
  reduces the carbon just up to the right amount corresponding to whether he wants
  steel or iron; his work is equivalent to that which occurs in a Bessemer converter,
  where one reduces cast-iron into steel. Steel never comes out of a blast furnace,
  it would be too wonderful; it is the work of the refining smith.'
  

'So, taking into consideration the processes of making iron, it would be absurd to say
that the Africans did not know about steel and that they only knew how to make soft iron;
those who can do the least can do the most; those who made soft iron knew when to stop
the reduction process to make steel; if they could make 'hard' iron or soft iron, it
was all dependant on what the domestic uses would be. The technical performance is thus
more involved when producing pure iron than in the production of steel: today, specialists
lose themselves in conjectures before two samples of pure iron (from more recent time
periods than the iron of the pyramids) found in India and China. How can you explain for
one time period such a power of reduction that gives completely pure iron?'


'How long ago does the iron age go back in Africa?'

Reuniting the elements allows us to put the question of the iron age in black Africa
forth in the very near future.


The skill involved in iron metallurgy shown by the Egyptians around 2 600 B.C. has
been affirmed; at this time, iron was not yet available from the Orient, and Egypt
had no iron ore, which leads us to believe that it came from Nubia and the rest of
black Africa. Since the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians were used to installing factories
to derive primary materials from the ground in the region of Nubia and the country of
Kush. Thus luxury furniture was made at the heart of black Africa. The same procedure
was probably used in the treatment of iron ore at a very ancient date that still needs
to be determined. It is not until research is further advanced that we will know,
whether Egypt and the depth of Africa that influenced each other. This provides, in
our eyes, an increase in interest in several important discoveries, the interpretation
of which has disappeared (Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien,
Dritte ABTEILUNG, BI 117)" [47].

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Concerning Nubia, one must distinguish between the Northern region, between the first
and fourth cataract, and the region located south of the fifth cataract. In the review
Meroïtic Studies, Meroïtica 6, S. 17-18, Berlin 1982, Peter L. Shinnie et François J.
Kense (Calgary) published an important article entitled: 'Meroitic Iron Working', which
showed that the presence of iron objects dating back to the 18th dynasty (1580-1320 B.C.)
was sporadic.

'They are not necessarily proof that iron was being smelted in Egypt and it may have
come from western Asia in lingot form and have been forged into objects of use or ritual
in Egypt', they mentioned without realizing that it could have come just as well from
central Sudan (Termit). In Nubia, 'a few iron objects were found in royal tombs from at
least the time of Taharqa' (p. 20), that is to say at the beginning of the 7th century
BC (the Nepata region upstream of the fifth and sixth cataract). At Meroe (between the
fifth and sixth cataract)

'The earliest fragment of slag from iron smelting was found in a level which
carbon 14 dates suggest is to be dated somewhere in the late sixth century BC'.

But the technique revealed by the furnaces and bellows is different from that which
was practiced in Egypt. Unless new sites come about that haven't yet been discovered,
or haven't yet been dug deeply enough, or older traces of iron metallurgy in Nubia, in
the actual state of current research, Meroe can no longer be considered the centre of
the propagation of iron across Africa, because in interlacustrine East Africa and in West
Africa has been dated back to the 13th to 15th century B.C., that is six to seven hundred
years before it existed in Nubia, without even invoking the sites of Nok, Ndalane, and the
even more ancient dates of the Termit mountain range (3rd millenium B.C.). In fact, each
region has its own particular furnaces and bellows (cf. addendum). However, in the first
centuries of our era, those of Meroe are, according to R.F. Tylecote (London), similar to
those used by the Romans [48]. But during a recent academic defence on the thesis
devoted to central African furnaces (the nature of the quality of the iron ore,
the use for which the iron coming out of the furnace was intended...), it was noted
that the founding smiths changed their furnaces and their procedures depending on the
circumstances and needs. In these conditions it is difficult to assign types of furnaces
in tight categories. Depending on the uses the types and origins of each type changed.
The criteria for classification is thus very complex.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

We still don't know where iron metallurgy started in Africa. But its technique managed
to expand from neighbour to neighbour, without massive migrations of people.

S. Lwanga-Lunyiigo (Uganda), co-author of chapter 6 of volume III of the General History
of Africa (Unesco 1990), showed his opinion in these terms (pp. 186-187):

'Supporting my conclusions on archaeological proof, I have recently come up with the
hypothesis that the Bantu language populations occupied since ancient times a large
band of territory going from the Great Lakes region of East Africa to the Atlantic
shore of Zaire, and that their supposed migration from West Africa to central,
eastern and southern Africa never took place.'

The known facts indicate that people of negroid features occupied sub-Saharan Africa
since the middle of the stone age and the populations of Bantu speakers came from this
negroid lines. It is possible that the Bantu languages developed thanks to interaction
with primitive black collectives, borrowing heavily from each other and that culminated
in the appearance of new Bantu languages based off of various linguistic almagamations.
This does not eliminate though the genetic factor that demonstrates the unique origin
of the populations connected linguistically, but underlines that the genetic factor put
forth by the linguists to explain the origin or origins of the Bantu is not in any way
exclusive.

The archaeological traces show the presence in sub-Saharan Africa of several settlements
of primitive blacks in many areas... In west Africa, the most ancient proof of the black
presence come from Iwo Eleru in western Nigeria, where a 'proto-black' skull was exhumed,
dating back to the 10th millenium (-9250) BC.

I agree with this reasoning. It is corroborated further by the linguistic considerations
of F. van Noten and Th. Obenga, as described above.

In Zambia, iron is present at least since the beginning of the Christian era. In South
Africa (southern bank of Limpopo) iron metallurgy is proven to have existed since the
3rd century A.D.

The very presence of the iron industry which developed in sub-Saharan Africa, in parallel
to that of stone and other metals (copper, gold, tin, bronze...) implies, in passing, at
a relatively large population. Trade already existed in black Africa at this epoque (cf.
the expeditions of the Egyptian caravan leader Herkouf, already mentioned at the end of
the 4th dynasty, around 2400 B.C.). Also, 'a certain number of objects found in digs show
that, since the ancient iron age, there existed vast networks of trade' [49]. F. van Noten
noted that trade was 'in principle limited' to the areas closest to large rivers, because
those sites that were located too far away from the river axes or from the interlacustre
region yielded very little in the way of imported objects.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Bumped cos Zar asked about it a fortnight ago.
Sorry I never xferred everything from here
Can't thank "Arara Sabalu" enough for xlating.
Hope you're doing fine wherever u r 2day.