Cultivation and herding

Previous chapters of this book have discussed the stages of human development during which people relied for their livelihood on the plants and animals that were present in their natural environment, feeding on wild vegetable foods, as well as on the meat of wild animals, birds, fish and insects. In Africa, as in other parts of the world, people have been exclusively foragers for more than 99 per cent of their existence. Here, attention will be drawn to the processes by which greater control over animals and plants gradually gave rise to domestic forms (Bower 1995). In the northern half of Africa (Fig. 77), these developments were achieved by people who had not yet learned metallurgical skills; in many more southerly areas, the first use of domestic plants and animals was made by people who also worked metals, as will be discussed in chapter 7.

It has been shown in chapter 5 how, from as early as 18,000 years ago, some Nile Valley communities in Upper Egypt were making intensive use of vegetable foods in the form of tubers. It is likely that this practice has, in fact, a far greater antiquity, although its earlier manifestations have not yet been revealed by archaeology. By 15,000–11,000 years ago, people in this area had begun to utilise wild cereals in a similar way, as their successors in many Saharan regions have continued to do into recent times (Harlan 1989; Wasylikowa 1992).