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The Spread of Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. Desmond Clark
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Extract

After the end of the Pleistocene, sub-Saharan Africa seems to have been more receptive of than contributory to cultural progress in the Old World as a whole. By that time favourable localities in the subcontinent—the margins of lakes and watercourses, the sea coasts, the peripheral regions of the equatorial forest—were sometimes supporting nearly, or entirely, sedentary communities of hunting-collecting peoples who were enabled to live in this way due to the permanent presence of one or more staple sources of food: freshwater fish, water animals and plants, and sea foods; and forest foods (the Dioscoreas, Elaeis guineensis, and other oil-bearing plants), either perennial or capable of being stored. Evidence of such occupation is seen in the midden accumulations in both cave and open sites at this time. Populations could thus become more concentrated and an increase in density may be inferred, the limiting factor being the maximum that any one environment could support by intensified collecting methods (fig. I).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , July 1962 , pp. 211 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

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