S6E2: The World's Oldest Trade Route?

Wavy Line Pottery Sherds (D. Wright)

The early history of Tanzania and Kenya is defined by its environment. During the "aqualithic period", the region's hunting and gathering population relied heavily on the exploitation of marine life from the freshwater swamps that covered much of East Africa during a period of especially high humidity and rainfall. 

Coastal Tanzania and Kenya began to shift to an agrarian lifestyle around 3,000 BC, which can be observed in the form of abandoned irrigation canals and grinding bowls from the period.

Kuumbi Cave, an important neolithic site in Tanzania

Kuumbi Cave is one example of a neolithic settlement site on Zanzibar island. These neolithic settlements often consisted of a series of small dwellings surrounding a natural shelter like a cave, used as a community shelter, with these caves also often being used by their paleolithic ancestors. Kuumbi Cave might also contain evidence for the world's oldest transoceanic trade route, as a series of poultry remains, resembling those of domestic chickens, were discovered in the cave during recent archaeological excavations and dated to roughly 4,000 BC.

Red junglefowl, often identified as the earliest wild ancestors of domestic chickens, may have made their way to Kuumbi cave through international trade with South Asia

If Kuumbi Cave features chicken bones from chickens, it would be evidence of a transoceanic trade route, since, by 4,000 BC, chickens were still only known in their home regions of South and Southeast Asia. As a result, the Kuumbi bones might be evidence of an early trade route between East Africa and South Asia.

Helmeted guineafowl, a more likely candidate for the source of the Kuumbi bones

On the other hand, it seems more likely that these bones originated from helmeted guineafowl, a local species that closely resembles chickens anatomically, and are still widely consumed around the world today.

While 4,000 BC might be an excessively old date for the origin of international trade in East Africa, it would soon become better established, as ancient sources record the region as a crucial trade route by the turn of the first millennium. Our next episode will analyze the appearance of East Africa in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. 

Season 6 Episode 1: The Swahili Coast

The Swahili Language (properly KiSwahili) has become synonymous with Africa writ large, a symbol of anti-imperialism, and far and away the most popular African language for non-Africans to learn.

It might surprise you to learn that such an iconic language can trace its origins back to an ethnic group that composes only a tiny fraction of modern KiSwahili people. The WaSwahili (Swahili people) are a testament to the idea that number and influence are not always synonymous. This season will focus on the most influential state to arise from the Swahili civilization of East Africa: the Sultanate of Kilwa.

Vague map of the area traditionally considered the "Swahili Coast". Not everyone within this area were ethnically WaSwahili, but this is the area where we can confidently say Swahili culture would eventually become dominant.

Saadani National Park: A decent representation of the natural geography of much of the Swahili Coast

Most of the Swahili Coast is considered "tropical savanna", but doesn't resemble the stereotypical idea of an African savanna, as in the tall, semi-arid grasslands. Rather, if you'd like to imagine the natural state of most of the "Swahili Coast", imagine something like Saadani national park, a low-lying forest peripheral to white, sandy beaches.

The area is also subject to the system of Indian ocean currents and monsoons, which will eventually come to have an enormous impact on the region's history

Indian Ocean currents and monsoons

Season 5 Episode 3: Trans-Saharan Trade in the Garamantian Age

A piece of Roman jewelry embedded with carbuncle, one of the key goods traded in Germa.

Horses, carbuncles, gold, salt, and more. What do all these things have in common? They were first traded across the Sahara by the Garamantes. Today's episode discusses the earliest rise of Garamantian trans-Saharan trade, the first documented example of trade across the vast desert.

Season 5 Episode 2: Fossil Water Farming

 

An image of a farm irritated by a qanat/fouggara

Brought to the Sahara following the Persian conquest of Egypt, the spread of a new irrigation technology allowed Garamantian civilization to expand dramatically

An archaeological map of Zinkekra

The earliest evidence of a unique Garamantian culture comes from the settlement of Zinkekra, located at the top of a rocky plateau near the Wadi al Ajal. However, settlements gradually drifted further down the valley.

The location at the bottom of these valleys allowed new Garamantian settlements to better take advantage of a technology recently brought to North Africa with the Persian conquest of Egypt. Known as Qanats, or Fouggaras in North Africa, this advanced irrigation technology allowed Garamantian settlements to tap into groundwater reserves without the labor intensive practice of extracting water from wells with buckets. Instead, gravity brought water through the slightly inclined channel and delivered it to the irrigated outlet.

A fouggara seen from the surface, visible in the form of the round access tunnels created for construction and maintainence

Fouggaras were very labor intensive to produce, indicating that Garamantian cities were combined in some form of larger state, which allowed them to leverage a more robust labor pool. Additionally, the newly abundant sources of groundwater allowed the population of Garamantian settlements to expand dramatically.

Season 5 Episode 1: Paintings in the Libyan Desert

Roundhead Rock Art from the Akakus Mountains - Libya

Our newest episode of the podcast focuses on the geography and prehistory of Saharan Libya, including the transformation of the Sahara from a vast grassland into an endless desert, and the effect that this had on the culture's that persisted within this harsh world.

Map of Libya, highlighting the Idehan Ubari and Wadi al Ajal

Special Episode: What Does Bantu Truly Mean - Part 2

 

In this episode, we will examine some of the shortcomings of Harry Johnston's original Bantu expansion hypothesis, as well as which of its strengths have allowed it to persist in modern academic study of African history.

Special episode: What does Bantu Truly Mean?

 

Map approximating the extent of Bantu languages. Source: Khan Academy

Bantu is a term which has become one of the most contentious in the study of African history. The name of a language family stretching across much of the southern half of the African continent, the term has been used in many distinct ways. In anthropology, it has often extended beyond mere linguistics into an idea of a larger shared culture and history across southern and central Africa. In apartheid South Africa, "Bantu" was used as a euphemism for "black" in many of the country's most oppressive apartheid laws. Furthermore, debates around the origins of the original Bantu speaking peoples and their purported spread throughout the southern half of the continent are a historiographical point of contention. In this episode, we examine the origins of the idea of Bantu languages, as well as different theories on Bantu origins and how they were so successful in spreading across such a vast geographic area.

Due to the rarity of written sources in the Bantu speaking regions of Africa prior to colonialism, and the fact that almost all of the written sources focus on more "important" things like theology or records, we have little idea of what Bantu speakers thought about the similarities between their languages and those of their neighbors. However, it seems likely that Bantu speakers were aware of the similarity between different Bantu languages, they likely postulated about why and how these similarities had come to be, and theorized as to why certain people they encountered like the Nilotic or Khoisan speaking groups in Africa, or European and Arab foreigners spoke languages which were noticably more distinct.

Sadly, though, due to a lack of pre-colonial sources on the continent on the topic, the history of studying the linguistics of South and Central Africa is a somewhat Eurocentric one. The idea of a unified Bantu linguistics family is first proposed in writing by James Prichard, a British ethnologist. Decades later, Wilhelm Bleik, a German anthropologist would give the family a name, borrowing the term "Aba-ntu" from the Zulu language of South Africa.

Beyond the recognition of the language family, however, a British colonial administration named Harry Johnston would cement the earliest iteration of the modern theory of Bantu Expansion, claiming that all Bantu speaking groups shared a common linguistic ancestor group which migrated and expanded outwards from an original homeland in Cameroon or Nigeria. 

Harry Johnston

Johnston would also provide a key new idea to the studies of Bantu linguistics. Notably, he would argue against the then-widespread idea that Bantu grammatical structures and vocabulary were too complex for "primitive Africans", and that therefore Bantu languages must have originated from an outside "civilizing" race of Babylonians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks, or Hebrews. Rather, Johnston argued that Bantu languages were a firmly African phenomenon, originating in western or central Africa before expanding elsewhere.

Johnston's ideas were as controversial as they were influential. While modern linguistics and archaeological studies have confirmed some of his ideas, they have challenged others. We will examine some of these challenges in our next episode on Bantu linguistics.