When most people think of ancient history, their mind usualy goes to the Romans or the Hebrews of biblical scripture but the Ancient West African Tichitt Civilization of Mauritania and Mali is older than both the Romans and the Hebrews. Beginning 2200 BCE
"Southern Mauritania have revealed a wealth of rather spectacular stone masonry villages which were occupied by prehistoric cultivators.... It is argued that the inhabitants of these villages were Negro and very probably Soninke"
- Professor Patrick J. Munson
"Striking resemblances between the prehistoric ceramics and the present Soninke pottery manufacture, Munson concluded that the present-day Soninke are descendents of early prehistoric inhabitants of the Dhar Tichitt region"
- Professor Augustin F.C. Holl
"Architecturally, the villages of Dhar Tichitt resemble those of the modern northern Mande (Soninke), who live in the savanna 300-400 miles to the south"
- Dr. Susan J. Herlin
"Racially, the Sahara affiliates with the Sudan. It had an indigenous Negroid population at the time of the Arab invasions"
- Anthropologist George Peter Murdock
"The archeological discovery of a tall Negroid skeleton 250 miles north of Timbuktu indicates that the inhabitants had not undergone ethnic change since Paleolithic times"
- Anthropologist George Peter Murdock
"Specific oral traditions from Jenne that the earliest agriculturalists (Nono) in the Upper Delta came from Bassikounou ("gateway" from the Aoukar plains fronting Dhar Tichitt and Dhar Oualata to the Middle Niger) via Mema."
- Anthropologist Roderick J. McIntosh
"MacDonald thus believes the principle ancestral populations of modern West Africans were living in North Africa at the end of the Pleistocene...... populations were not Afro-Asiatic speakers but rather Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan speakers"
- Dr. Hamdi Abbas Ahmed Abd-El-Moneim
"The civilisation of Tichitt which comes from the Central Sahara at ca. 4000 bp (and is linked by oral tradition and archaeology to the subsequent Mande
peoples of West Africa)."
- Dr. Hamdi Abbas Ahmed Abd-El-Moneim
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Ancient Nigerians in Nsukka started smelting iron some time between 2631 - 2458 BCE, long before the arrival of Nok people
The dufuna canoe, Nok canoe art and Atlantic seashell terracotta may be evidence of Nok long distance trade with iron metallurgists, down the Niger River
"Some very early iron dates include 1895–1370 BCE at Tchire Ouma 147 in the Termit Massif region of Niger; 2631–2458 BCE at Lejja in Nsukka region, Nigeria"
- Foreman Bandama
"The beginning of iron production sometime between 750 and 550 BC"
- Louis Champion
"In Taruga he recovered terracotta fragments in context with iron-smelting furnaces. Radiocarbon measurements dated the site to the mid-first millennium BC"
- Dr. Nicole Rupp
The Saharo-Sudanese industry, ancestors of Niger-Congo speakers constructed stone foundations to huts and stone enclosures 10,000 years ago, corralling Barbary sheep in caves during the green Sahara. This taming took place 2,000 years before the spread of pastoralism.
Dr. Jitka Soukupova speaking of the stone architecture of the green Sahara
"Early Holocene sheltered sites in the Tadrart Acacus massif offer impressive evidence of sophisticated forms of wild animal management and force us to reconsider the nature of human-animal relations prior to the introduction of domesticates to the region"
- Dr. Rocco Rotunno
Diy-Gid-Biy/DGB stone ruins in the Mandara Mountains of northern Cameroon, were built between the 13th - 16th Century AD
Oral tradition, similar style stone architecture and pottery from the modern Chadic speakers of Gwoza hills, Nigeria links them to the builders of DGB sites
"archaeological considerations place the period of creation and use of the Diy-gid-biy between the 13th and 16th centuries . AD."
- Dr. Jean-Marie Datouang
"Known as Diy-Gi’d-Biy...... While varying greatly in size, they constitute the most impressive set of indigenous stone-built structures in sub-Saharan Africa out-side the Horn and the complex of ruins in Zimbabwe and Mozambique"
- Nicholas David
The Gangara Stone Ruins believed to be post neolithic, pre Islamic architecture
Built by Wangara/Soninke people called "Gangara" by medieval Arabs during the Ghana empire. The ceramics discovered are said to be similar to one's still being made by moden Black Mauritanians.
"Al-Bakrî mentions the Gangara as a group of Blacks in the neighborhood of the Senhaja town of Banklabîn.........Gangara, or Guangara, on the other hand, corresponds phonetically better to our group, whom al-Bakrî characterizes as black non-Muslims"
- Andreas W. Massing
"Traditions are agreed that
these 'post-neolithic, pre-Islamic' villages belonged to black people called 'Gangara', ancestors of the present-day Soninke (Sarracolet)"
- E. Ann McDOUGALL
Contrary to popular belief, some ancient African Women were hunters and were depicted on green Saharan rock art 9000 years ago. Not all of these hunters who migrated south adopted pastoralism, some of them only picked up agriculture in the Sahel like the Nok Culture.
Female hunters in round head rock art from the green Sahara :
"Although they are less numerous than male figures, a certain importance of women in the spiritual life of this hunting society is evident."
- Dr. Jitka Soukopova
"Their lesser incidence in rock art must not be misleading and it may simply indicate that women as mothers and housekeepers could not always afford to venture into the mountains to produce paintings."
- Dr. Jitka Soukopova
According to archeologists Martin Sterry and David Mattingly, ancient Garamantes were ethnically diverse people. Originally consisting of earlier dark skin pastoralist who intermixed with late arrival Berber pastoralists, as well as Africans south of the Sahara
"presence of individuals with features that are typically Sub-Saharan alongside individuals with features more typical of the overall al-Ajal sample is an interesting reflection on the possibilities of Garamantian social structures"
- Ronika K Power
"identifying a few individuals with features broadly characterised as typical of Sub-Saharan morphology that differ from the majority of the Garamantian sample, while also highlighting a subgroup of individuals with more typically 'Mediterranean' characteristics."