Africa - The Earliest Inhabitants
by
W.F. Conton
by
W.F. Conton
This book tells a story. It is a true story, and I hope that you will also find it an exciting one. It is the story of how the way of life of men and women in West Africa has changed gradually since man first began to live here about 500,000 years ago. As we shall see, these changes were slow at first, and were not even continuous. Today, however, they are both continuous and rapid.
Five hundred thousand years is a very long time, even in the history of a people. So the changes you will read about are very great. At the beginning of our story, our people were probably hardly able even to speak. They lived lives very much like those of animals. They did not belong to groups such as tribes and families, or live in communities such as towns and villages. They led solitary lives for most of the time; that was why speech as we know it was unnecessary to them. Food and drink were their main need.
At the end of our story, we shall find our people able to talk about and ask for complicated things like self-government — so much more difficult to win than mere food and drink. And we have learned today the greatest lesson of all — the art of living together in tribes and nations. If asked what we are, none of us today would think of replying, ‘a human being’. We should answer at once, and with pride, ‘I am an Ibo’, or, ‘I am a Nigerian’; ‘I am a Twi’, or ‘I am a Ghanaian’; ‘I am a Mandingo’ or ‘I am a Sierra Leonean’. Unlike those first men and women of our land, we have learnt how to work with and for each other within our communities. We can claim to have developed our own civilization.
Those distant ancestors of ours did not know it, but they had brothers in other parts of our continent, and indeed of our world, who had lived there even longer than our ancestors had lived here. In South and East Africa, for example, men were making stone tools 750,000 years ago. You will probably be curious about two things by now; firstly, how man first ‘came into existence’ — where he came from in the first place; and secondly, how historians can possibly have discovered these facts about a people who could hardly even speak, let alone write.
I cannot answer your first question, but can stress that all men are brothers, wherever they may live on this earth, sharing the same earliest ancestors. You and I, as students of history, are concerned only with the story of man after his appearance on earth. So I must leave it to those who teach you your religion to answer your first question.
Your second question, however, is a true historian’s question. To understand the answer to it, stop and think for a minute or two of all the things you lost during last term. People have always dropped things accidentally, or left things lying about carelessly, or hidden things somewhere and then forgotten where. Some of these things, like food and clothing, very soon disappear, because some other creature finds them and eats them. But others, like tools, pottery, and coins, which are made of lasting materials, may lie where they have been lost for many centuries. So it is that whilst the story of modern man, as we shall see, is learnt mainly from words he has written down, the story of early man is learnt mainly from objects he has left about carelessly, or secreted away deliberately, and then forgotten all about.
So we find ourselves in the position of detectives searching for clues. We dig carefully in a site where some of these ‘relics’, as they are called, have already been found. By making a careful note of everything we find, and of exactly where we find it, we can slowly piece together man’s story from the very earliest days. And, as you will perhaps realize by now, this kind of historical research (called ‘archaeology’) can be intensely fascinating at times. At others, of course, it does require a very great deal of laborious, unexciting work...
...During wet periods, the forest became very dense, and spread
northwards from the coast towards the desert. During the dry periods,
it thinned and shrank away again towards the coast. You will notice
that 500,000 years ago, West Africans were living through the end of
the first wet period. They were using as tools large pebbles, which
they sharpened by breaking flakes off along one edge. These primitive
tools were useful only for grubbing up wild roots, and perhaps for
self-defence.
One hundred thousand years later, at the beginning of the next wet
period, we find a different type of tool in use. These stone ‘Chellean’
tools as you see they were called, were rather more carefully shaped
than had been the pebble tools. Instead of having only one cutting
edge, some now had two, meeting at a sharp point...
...But trouble was on the way for the Chelleans. The continuous heavy rain of the second wet period was making the forest in which they lived ever denser and bigger. Life was becoming more and more difficult as a result. You will realize that the tools I have described left our ancestor of this period very dependent on the weather, on wild plants, and on animals. He could only survive in fairly open country. After all, he hunted, not for fun, but for very life; and even today the hunter, with all his modern weapons, goes to the grasslands and savannah country.
So, as the second wet period dragged on, man was gradually driven northwards from the coast by an advancing green wall of forest. In fact for about 250,000 years he seems to have been forced to leave West Africa altogether, except perhaps near river estuaries and on offshore islands such as the Isles de Los, Plantains, and Sherbro. This period, from about 400,000 to 150,000 years ago, is our ‘Dark Ages’. Our culture, built up slowly over a hundred thousand years, was completely destroyed in silent forests dripping under low clouds.
This was not so everywhere in Africa. In the East African Lake district, for example, a less unfriendly climate allowed the Chellean culture to develop into the more advanced ‘Acheulian’ culture, which produced fine axes.
Then, between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago, the sun came out again here in the West. The forest thinned, and human beings came south and west once more.
Amongst the first to return were a people called the ‘Sangoans’...Our forefathers had now become so skilful that they no longer needed to work with bulky tools. So we find in this Late Middle Stone Age ‘microliths’ being used. This word means very small stone tools. They were made of a hard stone called quartz, and could be delicately shaped exactly as required. They could be stuck into arrow heads, or into the ends of sticks used for cutting or scraping.
A still finer way of life developed next, which
we call the ‘Neolithic’ or New Stone Age. The Neolithic West African
had become master of the materials he was using to make his tools and
weapons. But in addition he was making pottery. This is always a sign
that a community is leading a fairly settled life, since pottery is
both too fragile and too heavy to carry long distances. It is also a
sign that permanent huts were now being built here for the first time,
perhaps of clay or mud, perhaps of sticks.
If we stop for a moment to see when our brothers elsewhere reached a similar stage of development, we find that Egyptians were making pottery about 6,000 years ago, the Europeans and Asians about 1,000 years later. Our first pottery in West Africa dates from about 4,000 years ago...
...Historians used to think that early West Africans did not know how to make beautiful objects. But recently some very old and very beautiful pottery work in the shape of human heads has been discovered in the valleys of the Niger and the Benue just above their confluence, i.e. the point where the rivers meet. The first of these was found near Nok, a village in the Zaria province of Northern Nigeria; so they are called the Nok figurines. The people who made them we now believe to have lived in that region between 900 B.C. and A.D. 200. It is also almost certain that the people living in Central Nigeria today are the direct descendants of those distant artists...
...I have had to use words like ‘probably’, ‘about’, and ‘we believe’ rather often in this first chapter, because when we are talking about the very distant past we can never be absolutely certain of our facts and dates. But if you possibly can, do visit a museum and see for yourself actual examples of the tools, pottery, weapons and ornaments of which I have been writing
...But trouble was on the way for the Chelleans. The continuous heavy rain of the second wet period was making the forest in which they lived ever denser and bigger. Life was becoming more and more difficult as a result. You will realize that the tools I have described left our ancestor of this period very dependent on the weather, on wild plants, and on animals. He could only survive in fairly open country. After all, he hunted, not for fun, but for very life; and even today the hunter, with all his modern weapons, goes to the grasslands and savannah country.
So, as the second wet period dragged on, man was gradually driven northwards from the coast by an advancing green wall of forest. In fact for about 250,000 years he seems to have been forced to leave West Africa altogether, except perhaps near river estuaries and on offshore islands such as the Isles de Los, Plantains, and Sherbro. This period, from about 400,000 to 150,000 years ago, is our ‘Dark Ages’. Our culture, built up slowly over a hundred thousand years, was completely destroyed in silent forests dripping under low clouds.
This was not so everywhere in Africa. In the East African Lake district, for example, a less unfriendly climate allowed the Chellean culture to develop into the more advanced ‘Acheulian’ culture, which produced fine axes.
Then, between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago, the sun came out again here in the West. The forest thinned, and human beings came south and west once more.
Amongst the first to return were a people called the ‘Sangoans’...Our forefathers had now become so skilful that they no longer needed to work with bulky tools. So we find in this Late Middle Stone Age ‘microliths’ being used. This word means very small stone tools. They were made of a hard stone called quartz, and could be delicately shaped exactly as required. They could be stuck into arrow heads, or into the ends of sticks used for cutting or scraping.
If we stop for a moment to see when our brothers elsewhere reached a similar stage of development, we find that Egyptians were making pottery about 6,000 years ago, the Europeans and Asians about 1,000 years later. Our first pottery in West Africa dates from about 4,000 years ago...
...Historians used to think that early West Africans did not know how to make beautiful objects. But recently some very old and very beautiful pottery work in the shape of human heads has been discovered in the valleys of the Niger and the Benue just above their confluence, i.e. the point where the rivers meet. The first of these was found near Nok, a village in the Zaria province of Northern Nigeria; so they are called the Nok figurines. The people who made them we now believe to have lived in that region between 900 B.C. and A.D. 200. It is also almost certain that the people living in Central Nigeria today are the direct descendants of those distant artists...
...I have had to use words like ‘probably’, ‘about’, and ‘we believe’ rather often in this first chapter, because when we are talking about the very distant past we can never be absolutely certain of our facts and dates. But if you possibly can, do visit a museum and see for yourself actual examples of the tools, pottery, weapons and ornaments of which I have been writing
NEXT(Africa in Classical Times)