Africa (for individual work)
Africa
East Africa was the cradle of our species. For millions of years, many of our hominine ancestors roamed across the land. It is ultimately the homeland of every human being spread across the planet.
A wave of domestication occurred between 6000 and 4000 BP. African forms of millet and sorghum were domesticated south of the Sahara beginning at least 4,000 years ago, and maybe considerably earlier. The different conditions, and the appearance of domesticates quite distinct from those of the Fertile Crescent, suggest that domestication in sub-Saharan Africa was little influenced by what had happened in Southwest Asia.
The transition from foraging to agriculture did not happen easily in Africa because, for one reason, humans evolved there and the environment was well suited to that mode of life. Also, because of the “trap of sedentism,” humans were reluctant to transition to a less healthy, more miserable form of life like early agriculture, if they could help it. So agriculture appeared late in West Africa some 3000 years ago. What is more, agricultural knowledge didn’t spread out from West Africa until about 2,000 years later.
The region known as the “Northern Horn” of East Africa kept up with foraging for many thousands of years after the dawn of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. But as agrarian civilizations in that region grew larger, communications to the distant land of the Northern Horn also continued to grow. Knowledge of farming filtered down from Egypt and Southwest Asia and the peoples of the Northern Horn began to adopt a mixture of foraging, plant domestication, and animal herding. They domesticated ensete, a type of banana, at a very early point, perhaps as early as 3000 BCE or more. The people of the Northern Horn foraged for animal hides, bird feathers, myrrh for use as perfume, and even obsidian rocks to trade with Egypt.
By 2000 BCE, the majority of people in the Northern Horn were semi-nomadic, making use of foraging and domesticated plants and animals. They still used stone tools. Copper and bronze were rare in the region, so they did not go through a bronze age, but instead transitioned directly to iron. Some people in the region still foraged without domesticating anything, but the knowledge transmitted from Southwest Asia and Egypt created a mixture of the two lifeways of foraging and agriculture. To the south, the rest of Africa would transition to agriculture much more slowly. But East Africa was jolted by two major hubs into the agrarian era.
By 1000 BCE, hunting and gathering was on the decline, and agriculture was becoming increasingly dominant. Southwest Asia had transmitted the knowledge of wheat and barley, and introduced them into the region. East Africans domesticated a local variant, teff, for similar use. These three formed the major East African crops. Meanwhile, the Bantu peoples of West Africa arrived, and two centers of independent agricultural learning converged in East Africa. The Bantu brought with them knowledge of sorghum and millet. It is around this time that the agricultural way of life solidified itself in East Africa, bringing the human history of foraging in the region, which stretches back hundreds of thousands of years, mostly to a close.
Around the same time, a major agrarian civilization arose in the Northern Horn, popularly known as D’mt. This mysterious kingdom flourished from the tenth to the fifth centuries BCE. They formalized and intensified their trade relations with Egypt. They began developing mass exportation of agricultural goods, along with intricate stone jewelry.
Questions for expert groups
1. What factors influenced the appearance of the first agrarian civilization in the region?
2. What plants and animals were domesticated? When and why did the domestications happen?
3. What were the main problems of the early agrarian civilizations in the region?
Questions for the mixed groups
1. Put the agrarian civilization in the sequence of their appearance.
1 agrarian civilization (the time of appearance; domesticated plants and animals) à 2 agrarian civilization (the time of appearance; domesticated plants and animals) à 3 agrarian civilization (the time of appearance; domesticated plants and animals) à 4 agrarian civilization (the time of appearance; domesticated plants and animals)
2. Find the differences between the agrarian civilizations.
3. Find the similarities between the agrarian civilizations.
4. Conclusive questions: what factors played the major role in the development of the agrarian civilizations? Which of them were more important and less important for the development of agriculture?