9 - The origins of indigenous African agriculture

Summary

NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE

This chapter can only open with a warning that evidences for the origin of indigenous African agriculture are very weak and inadequate, and that we can only sketch the development in the most general and tenuous terms at the present time. An indigenous agriculture did emerge. African plants were domesticated by Africans in Africa and a complete system with a village-farming pattern evolved. The list of crop plants is impressive and includes all the usual categories of cereals, pulses, root and tuber crops, fruits, vegetables, oil and fibre plants, drugs, narcotics, magic and ritual plants. The system spread over much of the continent and was adequate to support the high cultures of Nok, Benin, Ghana, Mali and a variety of other Sudanic and East African kingdoms.

A great deal of our theory about plant domestication and agricultural origins is based on generalized models. We devise models to account for the transition from wild to cultivated plants and from hunting and gathering economies to an agricultural way of life. It has gradually become apparent that we are more often than not misled by such devices. Models are useful in the sense of a diagram, a chart or a map, in presenting an idea graphically, but they should never be confused with the truth. A model can be devised for each cultivated plant independently of the others and a model can be devised for each instance of agriculture successfully emerging out of a non-agricultural society, but we find no model that has universal or even very general applications.