CHAPTER 2: LATER PREHISTORY: FARMING AND PASTORALISM IN TROPICAL AFRICA AND ANCIENT EGYPT

KEY POINTS

  • Crop cultivation, domestication and the origins of farming

The impact of agriculture

Pastoralism

The ‘agricultural revolution’

  • The origins of farming and pastoralism in tropical Africa

Nilo-Saharan beginnings

Importance of tsetse fly

Pastoralists of the Sahara

Pastoralism and cultivation in north-east Africa

Khoesan pastoralism in southern Africa

Farming in west Africa

  • Ancient Egypt

Origins

Writing and mathematics

Pharaohs, dynasties and kingdoms

Agriculture and the organisation of Egyptian society

Government

Art, architecture and religion

The Kingdoms of Ancient Egypt

Crop cultivation, domestication and the origins of farming

  • Favourably wet climate from 8000 BCE allowed intensive collection of grains (‘cereals’) and root crops
  • Human protection and sowing of these crops, led to levels of interdependence, and thus their domestication
  • Similarly, favoured animals were protected and herded, leading to their domestication

Impact of agriculture

  • Larger settlements
  • Increase in population
  • More permanent housing, mud and stone
  • More possessions and more sophisticated tools
  • Need for seasonal planning led to more complex society
  • Food surpluses led to trade for raw materials and luxuries
  • Divisions in wealth within society

Pastoralism

  • Domestic animals were a source of food, especially milk
  • Settlements less permanent than cultivators
  • Movement in search of seasonal pastures

The ‘agricultural revolution’

  • Huge potential changes, but not complete or sudden
  • Farming left large populations dependent upon the weather
  • Hunting, gathering and fishing remained important
  • Change in world view:
  • Religion linked to origins of farming and cattle domestication

Origins of farming and pastoralism in tropical Africa

Climate change

  • 11,000 – 9000 BCE very dry period
  • 9000 – 6000 BCE new ‘wet phase’:
  • Rainforest expansion
  • Sahara became grassland savannah
  • Rivers and wetland expansion: Chad, Sudd, Upper Niger
  • This wet phase: origins of farming in Africa

Nilo-Saharan beginnings

  • Nilo-Saharans began grain collecting tropical sorghum and millet
  • Independent invention of pottery by 8000 BCE
  • Crops domesticated and spread through north Africa and Sahara
  • Possible domestication of wild cattle of Red Sea hills

Tsetse fly

  • Spread sleeping sickness to cattle and humans
  • Pastoralists avoided tsetse areas: low-lying, thickly wooded, moist valleys
  • Pastoral specialists therefore favoured open grasslands

Pastoralists of the Sahara

  • High point: end of wet phase, 4000 – 2500 BCE
  • Probably Nilo-Saharans
  • Rock paintings are important source of evidence for pastoralist lifestyle

Pastoralism and cultivation in north-east Africa

  • Afro-Asiatic Cushites took pastoralism through Horn of Africa to east African plateau
  • They learned cultivating practices from Nilo-Saharans in Lake Turkana region
  • Stone bowl culture spread through east Africa 3000 – 1500 BCE
  • Ethiopians developed unique cereals and plant crops

Khoesan pastoralism in southern Africa

  • East African Khoe-speakers probably learned pastoralism from Cushites
  • Spread to northern Kalahari (Botswana) by 500 BCE
  • Reached southern Cape by end of millennium
  • Other Khoesan retained reliance upon hunting and gathering
  • Saw no great need to change to farming, with all its economic and social implications

Farming in west Africa

  • Niger-Congo peoples developed plant agriculture during wet phase
  • Polished stone axes used for clearing woodland
  • Root and other forest plants grown
  • Rice domesticated in Niger’s ‘Inland Delta’
  • Women prominent in yam planting: become socially prominent - probable origins of matrilineal descent system
  • Bantu-speakers enter rain forest of Congo Basin
  • Used canoe to travel along rivers through forest, settling in clearings
  • They reached woodland savannah south and east of forest by 1000 BCE

Ancient Egypt

Origins

  • Based on local grain-cultivating developments combined with importations of wheat and barley and sheep and goats from western Asia
  • Early cultivation, before encroachment of desert, in oases west of Nile
  • Nile floodplane: fertility renewed each year by Blue Nile bringing ferttile silt from Ethiopian highlands
  • 5000 – 4000 BCE, cultivation of floodplain, ‘Badarian’ period
  • Kingship developed southern Egypt/northern Nubia (as far as 3rd cataract: extent of floodplain)
  • River transport carried minerals from 1st cataract (Upper Egypt) to Nile Delta and western Asia
  • Elites controlling trade developed political power as well as art, craft and manufacturing
  • Elite burials in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia
  • From 3500 BCE Egyptians north of 1st cataract part of wheat/barley/bread culture, Nubians more emphasis on cattle and hunting (less extensive floodplain)
  • Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt: united 3100 BCE

Writing and mathematics

  • Development of writing: hieroglyphics
  • Recording seasons and floods,
  • Estimating and recording taxation of peasantry
  • Recording king-lists and history
  • Astronomy, calendar
  • Mathematics, architecture

Pharaohs, dynasties and kingdoms

  • Pharaohs, based on ideas of religious kingship from ‘inner Africa’
  • The dynasties of Egypt: a device invented by historians to make chronological sense out of the many reigns recorded in Egyptian king-lists
  • Dates and duration of dynasties not always accurate
  • The Kingdoms: ‘Old’ (c.3100 – 2200 BCE), ‘Middle’ (c.2040 – 1670 BCE) and ‘New’ (c.1570 – 1100 BCE) were periods of enhanced centralised power

Agriculture and the organisation of Egyptian society

  • Peasant agriculture formed the basis of Ancient Egyptian civilisation
  • Main crops: wheat, barley and flax
  • Herded cattle, goats, fished and hunted
  • Mainly vegetarian diet – meat was for the elites
  • All surplus to their immediate food needs went to the state in taxation
  • Scribes and tax-collectors controlled labour of peasantry
  • Outside the agricultural season peasant labour employed in large-scale projects, including building palaces and pyramids

Government

  • Produce of taxation kept pharaoh in luxury
  • Also paid for large civil service and religious elite
  • Further surplus used for trade
  • Government run by well-educated bureaucracy
  • Highly centralised state
  • Maintained by ease of communication along 1000 klm of Nile
  • Population largely rural, no large cities
  • No foreign invasion until 1600 BCE, so no need for standing army

Art, architecture and religion

  • Art and architecture closely connected to religion
  • Spiritual life continued after death so need to be provided for in tomb
  • Peasants had humble burials dug into the ground
  • Pharaohs and others of elite had elaborate tombs full of objects for the afterlife
  • Tombs of pharaohs in pyramids, at their greatest in Old Kingdom period
  • Great pyramids of Giza built by labourers as a form of national service, not by slaves as previously thought
  • Arts, crafts and stone carving at its height in New Kingdom period
  • New Kingdom capital at Thebes (Luxor) in Upper Egypt:
  • Pharaohs buried in tombs carved out of the mountains in the Valley of the Kings

The Kingdoms of Ancient Egypt:

  • See CHART for chapter 2 in following section of website: Additional debate and information to accompany in-text website pointers

© Kevin Shillington, 2012