How was West Africa peopled & where from?

[zarahan]

truthseeker said:
Once again, I'm specifically addressing your [Asante's] statement that West Africa was unihabited until Egyptian migration. I provided detailed evidence the region was inhabited long before that period.

Asante did not seem to give a direct response to the evidence
of long occupation that you presented. But anyway 10-11kya sees
to be a rough starting point for more elaborate developments?


With regards to later migrations into the area, I'd be willing to say there were several. There is no evidence that the inhabitants who were there 50,000yrs died out as is the obvious case in Europe since modern humand didn't arrive in Europe until about 40, or so thousand yrs ago. Therefore, it's not out of the realm of possability to assume that these people later developed pottery techhnology. However, if we don't do more study of the region, we will never know for sure. That's why I keep saying we need to pay more attention to these areas and not make the ssumption that there's nothing there to find. Furthermore, even though the region was inhabited doesn't mean that others couldn't migrate in at later periods and settle areas not settled, or merge with the people already there, or both.

So you are saying that West Africa could have had cultures and peoples
in place from early times - developing their cultures in-situ, to be later joined
by others from within Africa- at various times and places?


Once again, this is why we need to do more archeological investigations in the various areas of Africa.
The so-called Sahelian Deep Culture goes back some 20,000 years.

[truthteacher2007]

Mar 27, 2014 21:04:03 GMT -5 zarahan said:

truthseeker said:
Once again, I'm specifically addressing your [Asante's] statement that West Africa was unihabited until Egyptian migration. I provided detailed evidence the region was inhabited long before that period.

Asante did not seem to give a direct response to the evidence
of long occupation that you presented. But anyway 10-11kya sees
to be a rough starting point for more elaborate developments?

I would say it has to be older than that. 10 to 11K is when we have evidence of pottery. We still don't know if there are older examples yet to be found. Also, what came before the advent of this technology? How long did those phases last?

With regards to later migrations into the area, I'd be willing to say there were several. There is no evidence that the inhabitants who were there 50,000yrs died out as is the obvious case in Europe since modern humand didn't arrive in Europe until about 40, or so thousand yrs ago. Therefore, it's not out of the realm of possability to assume that these people later developed pottery techhnology. However, if we don't do more study of the region, we will never know for sure. That's why I keep saying we need to pay more attention to these areas and not make the ssumption that there's nothing there to find. Furthermore, even though the region was inhabited doesn't mean that others couldn't migrate in at later periods and settle areas not settled, or merge with the people already there, or both.

So you are saying that West Africa could have had cultures and peoples
in place from early times - developing their cultures in-situ, to be later joined
by others from within Africa- at various times and places?

Exactly. I'm not saying I have any difinative evidence, for a time when this would have happened but such a scenario is not outside the real of possability. This is why i predicate my theory by stating we need more archeological exploration of the region. No one was expecting to find pottery that old and had it not been for an accident of nature, we would never have found out. What else is there waiting to be found and what light will it throw on our understanding of the history of that region?


Once again, this is why we need to do more archeological investigations in the various areas of Africa.
The so-called Sahelian Deep Culture goes back some 20,000 years.

I'm not familiar with this. Could you provide more detailed information? Did they have olive pit stuffed noses? No seriously, I really do want to know, about the Sahelian culture that is.

[amunratheultimate]

Before 10 000BP, West Africa, below the Sahara and Sahel, was sparsely inhabited by small groups of hunter-gatherers who got absorbed by Niger-Congo speakers coming from the North. Those Niger-Congo speakers coming from the North ultimately came from East Africa as both their language homeland and DNA homeland indicates.

[amunratheultimate]

West Africans and Niger-Congo speakers all have the major part of their origin from East Africa, probably around Sudan, at a time probably preceding the Green Sahara period (but after the main ooa migration). The Green Sahara period could relate to the period of expansion of Niger-Congo speakers toward the then green sahara to eventually reach West Africa like Mali, Senegambia, etc.

In the book, African Languages: An Introduction (Nurse 2000) they say:

A second, but still early and important stage in Niger-Congo history was the proto-Mande-Congo era. At this period, or so it appears from the evidence of word histories, the cultivation of Guinea Yam and possibly other crops, such as the oil palm, began among at least the peoples of the Atlantic and Ijo-Congo branches of the family (Williamson 1993 proposes the early words for these crops; Greenberg 1964 identifies an Atlantic and Ijo-Congo verb for cultivation,*-lim-). Between possibly about 8000 and 6000 BC, these peoples spread across the woodland savannas of West Africa, the natural environment of the Guinea yams. At that time, woodland savanna environments extended several hundred kilometers farther north into the Sudan belt than they do today. (Edit:Green Sahara period)

Here it posit that Ancient Niger-Congo speakers may have expanded demographically and geographically in West Africa while bringing with them yams and other crops cultivation(palm tree, raffia palm tree, black-eyes peas and voandzeia) while domesticating the guineafowl (among other things).

Before their migration in West Africa from the north . West Africa was probably inhabited by small groups of hunters gatherers. Almost no traces of previous population in West Africa exist beside maybe remnant in the the Jalaa and Laal languages. We can also note the A00 haplogroup found recently among African-American and West African people. The first group to split from the rest of the human populations (and vice versa, that is the other humans are the first group to split from them). Which could also be some remnant of previous hunter gatherers populations in West Africa along with certain other A and B haplogroups.

In this book:


It describes the situation before the migration of Niger-Congo speakers in West Africa this way:

For whatever reason, West Africa was only populated extremely sparsely until the end of the Pleistocene, some 12,000 years ago (Muzzolini 1993).

This is in fact the most important aspect as before 12000kya, West Africa was sparsely populated.

Adding:

One feature of the Niger-Congo region is the virtual absence of residual languages. What languages the MSA hunter-gatherers spoke must remain unknown. Only in Southern Africa, where the expanding Bantu-speakers encountered the Khoesan, does a real mosaic of farmers and hunter-gatherers still exist. But within much of the core Niger-Congo area, only Jalaa in Nigeria and Laal in Chad (see Table 8.1 and Map 8.1) seem to be true remnants of an earlier diversity that must have characterised the continent. These fragments both hint at a more ancient stratum of hunting-gathering populations in West Africa, present at the time of the Niger-Congo expansion but almost completely absorbed by them. Niger-Congo must have expanded and assimilated all the resident groups and must therefore have had highly convincing technological or societal tools to bring this about.

Then we got a more precision from this book:

Agricultural Invention: West African Planting Agriculture, 9000-5500 BCE

To the south of the Sahara, African peoples found other innovative ways to respond to climatic shifts that emerged by 11,000 BCE. None of these at first entailed the adoption of agriculture but were instead approaches that enhanced the productivity of the wild environment.

In West Africa a variety of consequences was set in motion by the increased rainfall between 11,500 and 8000 BCE. All across a 300- to 400-kilometer-side zone extending inland from the Atlantic coast, from Senegambia in the west to Cameroon in the east, woodland savanna was replaced by expanding rainforests. In Cameroon the spread of the West African forest zone connected up with the newly expanding equatorial rainforest of central Africa. The woodland savanna belt shifted nortward into the previously open savanna areas of the southern Djouf Basin. In addition, stream flow increased, and more rivers than before ran year round.

The shift to still wetter climate in West Africa during and after the ninth millennium BCE had different effects in different areas. Increased river flow enhanced the possibilities for fishing, and the nortward advance of woodland savanna opened up new areas favorable to yams. At the same time, however, many areas nearer the coast that were previously covered by moist woodland savanna began to be swallowed up by the expanding rainforest, in which there was too little direct sunlight to support the particular yam species favored by the Niger-Congo peoples.

But it was also the period in West African history in which a new African agriculture was invented. We do not know yet when some of the Niger-Congo communities commenced the shift to deliberate cultivation of yams, not exactly where. The most probably answer is that the changeover began sometime around 8000 BCE and that the locales of the first yam agriculture lay in the intermediate parts of the West African woodland savana zone -in areas where the abundance of wild yams had declined with the spread of woodland conditions, but where a farmer's efforts in preparing the ground and planting and protecting the growing plants could effectivly reverse that decline.

We can this new and independent invention "West African planting agriculture," from the fact that the farmers reproduced their staple (most important) crops, the different types of West African yam, not by sowing seed, but by planting a part of the yam itself back in the ground. These early West African farmers by no means restricted their agricultural experimentation, however, to just yams. They domesticated one animal, the guineafowl, at probably an early stage in their development of food production. From an early period they also tended to two tree crops, the oil palm and the raffia palm. The oil palm provided cooking oil for its nuts as well as palm wine from its sap; the raffia palm was another source of palm wine, and by the fourth or third millennium BCE its fibers and become highly valued by West Africans for the weaving of raffia cloth. In the woodland savannas of modern-day Nigeria and Cameroon. Niger-Congo communities brought under cultivation two major food plants grown from seed, black-eyes peas and voandzeia (and African groundnut), probably as early as the sixth and fifth millennia. Okra was still another quite early crop of Niger-Congo farmers, while the kola nut, a tree crop of the West African rainforest, became important later, in the last 3000 years BCE. The inventors of this agriculture, by the way, were women, who in pre-agricultural eras and borne the chief responsibility for collecting of wild yams and other wild plant foods.

Gradually an important new development in technology took hold along with the new economy. Niger-Congo peoples began to make polished stone axes, in this way becoming able to effectively clear patches of woodlands and grow their sunlight-requiring yams and oil palms in more and more areas.

[zarahan]

AmunraTheUltimate says:
West Africans and Niger-Congo speakers all have the major part of their origin from East Africa, probably around Sudan, at a time probably preceding the Green Sahara period (but after the main ooa migration). The Green Sahara period could relate to the period of expansion of Niger-Congo speakers toward the then green sahara to eventually reach West Africa like Mali, Senegambia, etc

So the info you have shows its more a Niger-Congo expansion
rather than Nilo-Saharan? Are there Nilo-Saharans in the mix as
regards movement West? Are they a later coming crew compared
to the Niger-Congo speakers?


For whatever reason, West Africa was only populated extremely sparsely until the end of the Pleistocene, some 12,000 years ago (Muzzolini 1993).

Hmm. good link.. I wonder if climate change might have something to
do with it, or whether the green Sahara or parts thereof were so productive
that peoples saw little need to expand into less hospitable regions.




We can this new and independent invention "West African planting agriculture," from the fact that the farmers reproduced their staple (most important) crops, the different types of West African yam, not by sowing seed, but by planting a part of the yam itself back in the ground. These early West African farmers by no means restricted their agricultural experimentation, however, to just yams. They domesticated one animal, the guineafowl, at probably an early stage in their development of food production. .. Niger-Congo communities brought under cultivation two major food plants grown from seed, black-eyes peas and voandzeia (and African groundnut), probably as early as the sixth and fifth millennia. Okra was still another quite early crop of Niger-Congo farmers, while the kola nut, a tree crop of the West African rainforest, became important later, in the last 3000 years BCE. The inventors of this agriculture, by the way, were women, who in pre-agricultural eras and borne the chief responsibility for collecting of wild yams and other wild plant foods. Gradually an important new development in technology took hold along with the new economy. Niger-Congo peoples began to make polished stone axes, in this way becoming able to effectively clear patches of woodlands and grow their sunlight-requiring yams and oil palms in more and more areas.

Man I like this kind of detail. Knew of yams, but did not know about the yam culture and
that independent invention specifically. Sorry to backtrack, but do you have anything
on the beginnings of the Niger-Congo expansion from the east

[zarahan]

Truthseeker says:
I'm not familiar with this. Could you provide more detailed information? Did they have olive pit stuffed noses? No seriously, I really do want to know, about the Sahelian culture that is.

Hmmm... dont know about the olives but as AmunRa says its the hunter-gatherer
cultures in the region back then. But I ran across the term in a web search
-same author AmunRa shows in the book he references. Archaeology and Language:
Correlating archaeological and linguistic hypotheses-- ed by R. Blench, Matthew Spriggs-1998.
See page 34-45. The author of the article in the book- Kevin Macdonald, note that
West Africa has a language mix- Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Afrasan with the big
majority being the diverse Niger Congo. Thus term 'Deep Culture'
coined by a linguist/anthrolologist-quote:

"to describe the myraid ritual, economic and social links existing between the ethnic groups
of the West African Sahel. The word 'deep' here implies the unknown time-depth which has
allowed the accretion of so many cultural themes among the Middle Niger ethnicities that
they begin to resemble a single, symbiotic organism."


He splits the Sahelian Deep into 3 phases- Early Holocene 12000-9000BC, Mid 8000-4000BC
and 2000-4000BC Recent Holocene. This would be dry, obscure detail but
what is interesting is how he criticizes various models of West African peopling,
including early Ehret, and argues that using only language is not sufficent to trace
West afrca peopling.

HE also talks about "language overprinting" - or overlaps that make clear replacement
scenarios difficult. He criticizes "mobile monoliths" - convenient culture or language packages
suddenly flung by scholars into West Africa to explain the region. I agree partially,
as to EXTREME models of movement from say only one direction. If there are 3 phases as
he claims then you can have movement of varying intensities, from different directions,
in one era or another. I would say there could be significant Saharan/Nile Basin
movement depending on the era, without the need for an extreme model excluding all
other alternatives, or depending only in language data.

Its more than dry detail but tackles the bigger picture. Maybe you guys can take a look here
and see what you think.=, if you haven't already run across it.
books.google.com/books?id=DWMHhfXxLaIC&pg=PA429&dq=Sahelian+Deep+Culture&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cJo1U7itGY6osATm7YHQBg&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Sahelian%20Deep%20&f=false

[amunratheultimate]

Mar 28, 2014 10:53:16 GMT -5 zarahan said:

AmunraTheUltimate says:
West Africans and Niger-Congo speakers all have the major part of their origin from East Africa, probably around Sudan, at a time probably preceding the Green Sahara period (but after the main ooa migration). The Green Sahara period could relate to the period of expansion of Niger-Congo speakers toward the then green sahara to eventually reach West Africa like Mali, Senegambia, etc

So the info you have shows its more a Niger-Congo expansion
rather than Nilo-Saharan? Are there Nilo-Saharans in the mix as
regards movement West? Are they a later coming crew compared
to the Niger-Congo speakers?

No,yes, I don't know (I wouldn't think so). Here we're talking about the people of West Africa which is now largely inhabited by Niger-Congo speakers that's why I'm only talking about the progression of Niger-Congo speakers in history. But during the Green Sahara period, it lasted like 3000 years or something, which is a long time. There probably was a melting pot of people in the Sahara including Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Chadic and Cushitic speakers. Like it is mentioned by Blench the current demographic and geographic dominance of Niger-Congo speakers was probably accompanied by a very convincing set of technological/social tools (like Agriculture). So, I would think, Niger-Congo speakers (at least a sub-group of them) were people who used agriculture to expand both geographically and demographically, absorbing pre-existing diversity in that region (and other Niger-Congo speakers).

For whatever reason, West Africa was only populated extremely sparsely until the end of the Pleistocene, some 12,000 years ago (Muzzolini 1993).

Hmm. good link.. I wonder if climate change might have something to
do with it, or whether the green Sahara or parts thereof were so productive
that peoples saw little need to expand into less hospitable regions.

Personally, I think climate change has everything to do with it. I think the drying of the Sahara led many populations to migrate toward the south where the seasons and rains are better. Before migrating toward the south those people were cattle herders. But when migrating south they encountered a big problem. Their cattles could not survive the tsetse fly belt.   So something needed to be done to maintain the lifestyle. This is what lead to a group of Niger-Congo speakers toward the invention of Agriculture so they could sustain themselves in a new environment.

We can this new and independent invention "West African planting agriculture," from the fact that the farmers reproduced their staple (most important) crops, the different types of West African yam, not by sowing seed, but by planting a part of the yam itself back in the ground. These early West African farmers by no means restricted their agricultural experimentation, however, to just yams. They domesticated one animal, the guineafowl, at probably an early stage in their development of food production. .. Niger-Congo communities brought under cultivation two major food plants grown from seed, black-eyes peas and voandzeia (and African groundnut), probably as early as the sixth and fifth millennia. Okra was still another quite early crop of Niger-Congo farmers, while the kola nut, a tree crop of the West African rainforest, became important later, in the last 3000 years BCE. The inventors of this agriculture, by the way, were women, who in pre-agricultural eras and borne the chief responsibility for collecting of wild yams and other wild plant foods. Gradually an important new development in technology took hold along with the new economy. Niger-Congo peoples began to make polished stone axes, in this way becoming able to effectively clear patches of woodlands and grow their sunlight-requiring yams and oil palms in more and more areas.

Man I like this kind of detail. Knew of yams, but did not know about the yam culture and
that independent invention specifically. Sorry to backtrack, but do you have anything
on the beginnings of the Niger-Congo expansion from the east

I don't think so. I may be wrong but I vaguely remember Niger-Kordofanian speakers were probably hunter-gatherers at that time. 

[rivertemz]

Wow, brilliant research zarahan.

And thanks for that clip truthteacher2007 I've watched that documentary several times before, but I end up missing the Mali episode at the end, now that explains a lot !

[amunratheultimate]

The following quotes are from the book: The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology edited by Peter Mitchell, Paul Lane (2013)

Basically, it tells us people now living in West Africa (Akan, Igbo, Yoruba, etc) come from the Sahara during its desertification.

In West Africa, there is very little evidence for people south of the Sahara prior to the mid-Holocene, and such evidence as does exist is primarily of small scattered groups of mobile hunter-gatherers, some of whom returned frequently, possibly even seasonally, to the same places.

Davies(1967) and Shaw (1978) both argued that before the desiccation of the Sahara, not only were Saharan inhabitants not compelled to move southward, but it was virtually impossible for them to do so. Postulated barriers to human occupation in southern West Africa include the difficulty of making a living in the dense rainforest prior to the advent of iron tools, and potentially lethal diseases such as malaria, onchocerciasis, and trypanosomiasis, the latter an added problem to herders because it can be devastating to cattle (Smith 1992). Only when climate zones contracted could people, and especially herders, move south.

The artefacts found at many early sites support a northern origin for SMA people in southern West Africa. Projectile points are often in a 'Saharan Style' with concave or convex bases, and pottery often bears comb and roulette impressions very similar to types known from the Sahara and the Nile Valley as early as the tenth millennium B.P.

It's written black on white. People in Southern West Africa (Yoruba, Igbo, African-Americans, etc) have a northern origin. A green Sahara origins. They brought with them archaeological artefacts from the Green Sahara period including pottery and else.

[truthteacher2007]

Jun 24, 2014 1:39:22 GMT -5 amunratheultimate said:

The following quotes are from the book: The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology edited by Peter Mitchell, Paul Lane (2013)

Basically, it tells us people now living in West Africa (Akan, Igbo, Yoruba, etc) come from the Sahara during its desertification.

In West Africa, there is very little evidence for people south of the Sahara prior to the mid-Holocene, and such evidence as does exist is primarily of small scattered groups of mobile hunter-gatherers, some of whom returned frequently, possibly even seasonally, to the same places.

Davies(1967) and Shaw (1978) both argued that before the desiccation of the Sahara, not only were Saharan inhabitants not compelled to move southward, but it was virtually impossible for them to do so. Postulated barriers to human occupation in southern West Africa include the difficulty of making a living in the dense rainforest prior to the advent of iron tools, and potentially lethal diseases such as malaria, onchocerciasis, and trypanosomiasis, the latter an added problem to herders because it can be devastating to cattle (Smith 1992). Only when climate zones contracted could people, and especially herders, move south.

The artefacts found at many early sites support a northern origin for SMA people in southern West Africa. Projectile points are often in a 'Saharan Style' with concave or convex bases, and pottery often bears comb and roulette impressions very similar to types known from the Sahara and the Nile Valley as early as the tenth millennium B.P.

It's written black on white. People in Southern West Africa (Yoruba, Igbo, African-Americans, etc) have a northern origin. A green Sahara origins. They brought with them archaeological artefacts from the Green Sahara period including pottery and else.

So to all those who said I was talking nonsense when I said it, here are findings written in a scholarly source. I find the information about the importance of iron in settling the forest belt very interesting. It woul explain why in cultures of that region like the Yoruba, the deity associated with iron is also asscoiated with technology and civilization. I also found it interesting that the same insect bearing diseases that prevented European settlement prevented their initial settlement as well. It would be interesting to know exactly how they overcame that obstacle. I know Native Americans avioded settling by marshlands. Could it be that the problems many Africans face today with malaria could be down to having traditional settlement patterns disrupted as Europeans uprooted people from their traditional lands and forcebly resettled them in inhospitable areas?

[amunratheultimate]

Jun 24, 2014 8:53:27 GMT -5 truthteacher2007 said:

So to all those who said I was talking nonsense

I wouldn't blame them, since you only post nonsense in this forum.

[truthteacher2007]

Jun 24, 2014 11:31:36 GMT -5 amunratheultimate said:

Jun 24, 2014 8:53:27 GMT -5 truthteacher2007 said:

So to all those who said I was talking nonsense

I wouldn't blame them, since you only post nonsense in this forum.

Dear Amunrass:

Yes, the exact same kind of nonsense you've posted above from a mainstream academic source. Your opinion of me is personal and petty and in no way a reflection of my intelect. But since there seems to be this tension on your part, perhaps we can work together to lighten the mood. Might I suggest that you give my donkey a heart felt expression of affection. I'm sure you'll feel much better.

Warmest regards
Truthteacher2007

[amunratheultimate]

Jun 24, 2014 15:07:34 GMT -5 truthteacher2007 said:

Jun 24, 2014 11:31:36 GMT -5 amunratheultimate said:

I wouldn't blame them, since you only post nonsense in this forum.

Dear Amunrass:

Yes, the exact same kind of nonsense you've posted above from a mainstream academic source. Your opinion of me is personal and petty and in no way a reflection of my intelect. But since there seems to be this tension on your part, perhaps we can work together to lighten the mood. Might I suggest that you give my donkey a heart felt expression of affection. I'm sure you'll feel much better.

Warmest regards
Truthteacher2007

LOL, you're so lame.

Don't worry nothing personal here, I don't even know you. I only judge you by your stupid posts.

[anansi]

Sigh!! will you guys pls cut with the sniping.

[truthteacher2007]

Jun 24, 2014 15:44:19 GMT -5 anansi said:

Sigh!! will you guys pls cut with the sniping.

I'll be the bigger man and extend a peace offering.

Dear Amun:

Have one on me.

Okay, back to serious conversation. This is pretty much what I and others were saying a while back when the issue of West African origins came up. The fact that there are many cultural similarities between West African cultures and Nile Valley cultures is not indicative of Egyptian colonization in the late dynastic era due to foreign conquest. Rather, it is indicative of the fact that certain West African cultures share a common ancestor with those found in the Nile Valley and that is the green Saharan culture.

We already know that there were more settlement sights in the Sahara when it was green than there were in the Nile Valley. This culture was very wide spread stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. It only stands to reason that as the Sahara dried up people would have sought refuge in the areas south in West Africa that still received rainfall as well as the Nile. Now scholarship is proving what for many of us was an educated guess. It's very interesting how each day seems to turn up scholarly findings supporting the assertions that many people have made on this forum.