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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge History of Africa
  • Cited by 13
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
1982
Online ISBN:
9781139054553
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521222150
Subjects:
History, Regional History Before 1500, African History
Series:
The Cambridge History of Africa
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Middle East & African Studies
Information

Book description

Volume I of The Cambridge History of Africa provides the first relatively complete and authoritative survey of African prehistory from the time of the first hominids in the Plio-Pleistone up to the spread of iron technology after c.500 BC. The volume therefore sets the stage for the history of the continent contained in the subsequent volumes. The material remains of past human life recovered by excavation are described and interpreted in the light of palaeo-ecological evidence, primate studies and ethnographic observation, to provide a record of the evolving skills and adaptive behaviour of the prehistoric populations. The unique discoveries in East and South Africa of early hominid fossils, stone tools and other surviving evidence are discussed with full documentation, leading on to the coming of Modern Man and the beginning of regional patterning. The volume provides a survey of the now considerable material showing the different ways of life in the forests, savannas and arid zones during the 'Later Stone Age'.

Reviews

‘All concerned with the prehistory of Africa must be grateful to the Cambridge University Press for having produced it, to Desmond Clark for his editing, and to all the contributors. Printing, reproduction of figures and plates, binding and index are all good.’

Source: The Journal of African History

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Contents

Contents
  • 1 - The palaeo-ecology of the African continent: the physical environment of Africa from earliest geological to Later Stone Age times
    pp 1-69
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The continent of Africa has an unusual combination of features and environments, including many extreme contrasts. By the late Precambrian, almost the whole Africa had become effectively a large stable craton and most of the central area was never invaded by the sea. However, Palaeozoic marine sediments occur in various parts of North Africa, bounded by a line from Ghana to the Sinai peninsula, and also in the Cape folded belt at the extreme southern end of the continent. At the end of the cycle of deposition of the Cape Supergroup, southern Africa was affected by an intense glaciation that ushered in the long period of sedimentation of the Karroo Supergroup. The Karroo Supergroup spans the period from later Carboniferous to early Jurassic, ignoring the usual break between the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic eras. The Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age are concepts originally devised in southern Africa to describe the range of archaeological materials clearly younger than the Acheulian.
  • 2 - Origins and evolution of African Hominidae
    pp 70-156
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter presents the primary evidence for the evolution of Hominidae in Africa since the upper Miocene. The oldest occurrences of Hominidae are restricted to sub-Saharan Africa. In eastern Africa all known occurrences are related to the Rift Valley System, in Ethiopia, in Kenya and in Tanzania. The type specimens of most Pliocene-Pleistocene Hominidae derive from cemented infillings of fissures, sinkholes and caves of the South African Highveld and the Transvaal plateau basin. The chapter presents an overview of the documentation in Africa of the fossil record of the family Hominidae, which is not always either straightforward or well defined, so that it is necessary to stress the tentative and even uncertain nature of interpretations and inferences. Fragments of hominoid fossils of Upper Miocene age from Kenya have been considered by several workers to be attributable to Hominidae. The small species (africanus) of Australopithecus occurs in deposits of Pliocene age in southern and in eastern Africa.
  • 3 - The earliest archaeological traces
    pp 157-247
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter deals with archaeological studies of developing technology and culture from the earliest traces to the end of the Middle Pleistocene. The African sequence of archaeological documents is the longest known Pleistocene record. The energies of Palaeolithic archaeologists were formerly devoted primarily to the detailed study of stone artifacts but, as indicated, emphasis is steadily changing. The chapter reflects contemporary endeavour in African Palaeolithic prehistory by being more concerned with what is known of long-term developments in human ecology, technology and social grouping than with such versions of culture history as those expounded in the classics of African Palaeolithic literature. The excavation of undisturbed archaeological sites provides the crucial evidence for attempts to understand early prehistory in socio-economic and ecological terms. In Africa, prehistoric archaeology has provided an important opportunity for investigating the long-term record of the stages by which the contrast arose.
  • 4 - The cultures of the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age
    pp 248-341
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The 'Middle Palaeolithic', or the 'Middle Stone Age', is part of the prehistoric cultural record that follows the Lower Palaeolithic or Earlier Stone Age, and precedes the Upper Palaeolithic or Later Stone Age. The Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age makes its first appearance more than 100000 years ago during the Last Interglacial, in Africa a time of somewhat increased rainfall, warmer climate, and transgressive sea level. The Middle Palaeolithic of the Maghrib and Sahara is usually divided into two broad complexes, the Mousterian and the Aterian, though at many sites it is not always possible to be certain which of the two is represented. The Middle Stone Age in Ethiopia and the Horn resembles in general, therefore, the typical Mousterian of Levallois facies of Europe though there are, in addition to the Levallois cores, an important percentage of core forms for the production of non-Levallois flakes.
  • 5 - The Late Palaeolithic and Epi-Palaeolithic of northern Africa
    pp 342-409
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses the cultural features during the Late Palaeolithic and Epi-Palaeolithic of northern Africa. Chronologically, the cultural manifestations included under the terms Late Palaeolithic and Epi-Palaeolithic correspond to what are usually called Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in Europe. The most important Palaeolithic discoveries from Libya have been made in the north-eastern province of Cyrenaica, but a few finds have also been made further west along the coast in Sirtica and Tripolitania. In late Pleistocene times, the Nile was the central fact of human occupation in Egypt and the northern Sudan. The Jeziret el-Maghrib or 'Island of the West' extends for about 3000 km from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Gabes, and includes the northern parts of the states of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The climate in the Maghrib was cool and relatively dry during the late Pleistocene and there are no indications of true pluvial conditions during the time of the Last or Wiirm Glaciation of Europe.
  • 6 - The Later Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa
    pp 410-477
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In sub-Saharan Africa, more especially in the eastern and central areas, the study of Stone Age archaeology was largely inspired by pioneer researchers in South Africa. South Africa was the first, and only major, part of the sub-continent where European colonizers and settlers came into contact with indigenous people who regularly used stone tools. By the end of the century a great deal of artifactual material, most of it poorly documented, had been amassed in museum and private collections. This chapter provides the archaeological evidence for the inception and progress of the Later Stone Age cultures in each region of sub-Saharan Africa up to the time of the first appearance of techniques of food production. West Africa is separated from the rest of sub-Saharan Africa on the one side by the densely forested Congo basin and on the other by the vast northern area, stretching between Cameroun and the southern part of the Sudan Republic.
  • 7 - The rise of civilization in Egypt
    pp 478-547
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Through Pharaonic Egypt, Africa lays claim to being the cradle of one of the earliest and most spectacular civilizations of antiquity. This chapter traces the development of this civilization from the introduction of a south-west Asian-style subsistence economy into the Nile Valley to its florescence at the beginning of the Old Kingdom, conventionally dated about 2700 BC. Unlike in south-western Asia, few stratified sites have been discovered in the Nile Valley that could serve as a basis for working out a cultural chronology for Predynastic Egypt. Numerous similarities have long been apparent in the grammar, lexicon and phonology of ancient Egyptian and the Semitic languages. The most recent use of physical anthropological findings to advance culture-historical arguments has been Emery's acceptance of Derry's theory of a 'Dynastic Race' as proof that the Early Dynastic civilization was brought into Egypt by a 'civilized aristocracy or master race'.
  • 8 - Beginnings of pastoralism and cultivation in north-west Africa and the Sahara: origins of the Berbers
    pp 548-623
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Africa is truly Mediterranean only along its northern coastal fringe. During Palaeolithic times, similar or comparable lithic industries are found throughout both the countries of the Maghrib and the regions which today are desert. In North Africa and the immediately adjacent peripheral zone of the Sahara two great cultural traditions, namely Iberomaurusian and Capsian, succeeded one another without, however, occupying identical areas. The oldest phases of the Saharan-Sudanese Neolithic has led to an examination of the origins of agriculture, so that of the pastoral phase, chiefly known from the rock-art style referred to as Bovidian should begin with an analysis of the origins of animal domestication in the Sahara. There are a considerable number of paintings of the pastoral or Bovidian phase in the Tassili n'Ajjer and also in Ennedi, Tibesti and Tefedest in the northern Ahaggar.
  • 9 - The origins of indigenous African agriculture
    pp 624-657
    • By Jack R. Harlan, University of Illinois College of Agriculture, Urbana, Illinois
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses ethnographic, archaeological and linguistic evidences for the origin of indigenous African agriculture, and also the development of indigenous African agriculture in the most general and tenuous terms at the present time. The direct evidence from actual plant remains to date has been very disappointing and contributes little to a solution of the problem. Indirect archaeological evidence is more abundant but always subject to errors or interpretation. The chapter focuses on a theory about plant domestication and agricultural origins, which is based on generalized models. The most characteristic feature of indigenous African agriculture is its adaptation to the savanna. Even the plants grown in the forest are largely of savanna origin, and by far the most important contribution of African crops to the world are plants adapted to the savanna zones. A small group of crops, essentially endemic to Ethiopia, was domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands.
  • 10 - Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period in Egypt
    pp 658-769
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Old and Middle Kingdoms together represent an important unitary phase in Egypt's political and cultural development. Divine kingship is the most striking feature of Egypt in these periods. In the form of great religious complexes centred on the pyramid tombs its cult was given monumental expression of a grandeur unsurpassed anywhere in the ancient Near East. Kerma in the Second Intermediate Period came to be an African counterpart of Byblos: an independent state beyond Egypt's political frontiers, with a court looking to Egypt as a source of sophisticated court fashion. If one considers the historical developments in Nubia in the Second Intermediate Period and the possibility that the position of Kush in the lists is a tribute to its political importance, then one might conclude that Kush was, from the outset, centred at Kerma. The implication is that Kush had emerged as a kingdom of considerable strength and importance, a counterpart to the Hyksos kingdom of the north.
  • 11 - Early food production in sub-Saharan Africa
    pp 770-829
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter focuses on the cultural evidence of food production and animal domestication in sub-Saharan Africa. Archaeological evidence for the practice of food production in the context of the Nok culture is limited to two sculptures apparently representing fluted pumpkins. Food-producing societies practising the manufacture of pottery and ground stone implements were present in more northerly regions for at least two millennia before these traits became prevalent in West Africa itself. The chapter summarizes the spread of food-production techniques through the milieu of the Early Iron Age, together with an evaluation of the economy of the final Later Stone Age peoples during the time of their contact with the immigrant Iron Age farmers. The early Urewe ware makers were certainly workers of iron, but there is as yet only indirect evidence for pastoralism or agriculture in this group of the Early Iron Age.
  • 12 - Egypt, 1552–664 BC
    pp 830-940
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The history of Egypt between 1552 and 664 BC, as for earlier periods, is conventionally divided up into usually sequential, numbered dynasties. These are derived from later Epitomes of Manetho's history of Egypt and usually do in fact coincide with real breaks, alterations or divisions in the line of dynastic succession. Several major factors contributed to the shaping, sustaining, and social pervasiveness of the Egyptian world-view. Tradition was an extremely important one. The governmental system enjoyed great authority because of its antiquity and supernatural implications. It was adequate to meet the perennial social and economic needs of the population and it was adept at reinforcing and enhancing its own political power. The period between 1552 and 664 BC is conventionally divided into two main phases, the New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period. New Kingdom and later relations with Libya, the other main African contact area, are one of the most intriguing and least studied aspects of Egyptian foreign relations.
  • Bibliographical essays
    pp 941-970
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This bibliography presents a list of titles that help the reader to understand the African prehistory from the time of the first hominids in the Plio-Pleistone up to the spread of iron technology after c.500 BC. The Greek school at Alexandria gathered important records and it was there that Eratosthenes, about 2000 BC, made the first scientific measurement of the circumference of the earth. Neolithic man has left behind him fewer skeletal remains than did his predecessors whose large Epi-Palaeolithic cemeteries at Afalou bou Rhumel, Taforalt and Columnata have each been the subject of important research. The sole work concerned with the physical anthropology of the Neolithic peoples deals only with the Saharan regions and, in addition, devotes considerable space to the protohistoric populations. Both in the Atlas and the massifs of the Sahara, the Neolithic saw an extraordinary flowering of rock art.

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