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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From Ounjougou to Amekni and Tessalit, tracing the origin of ancient West African agriculture
10th millennium BCE - 4th Millennium BCE
(Thread)
Since the African paleolithic (200,000 -100,000 ka) plants had been collected and used for food, medicinal purposes, anti pest control, as well as bedding, etc.
By the 10th millennium BCE, foragers in Ounjougou, Mali were manufacturing ceramics and pots to store and cook collected wild grains.
By the 9th millennium BCE, they had spread North into the southern - central green Sahara, associated with the emergence of round head rock art.
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
Saharo-Sudanese culture in Morocco and the ivory trade with ancient Iberia, during the Late Holocene, 4th-2nd Millennium BCE
(THREAD)
The oldest grass seed collection in the world was found in ancient South East Africa, dating back 100,000 years, long pre-dating some of the first signs of early Saharan farming in Mali and Takarkori, Libya. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
West African ceramics associated with proto-farming originated in Mali, 9,400 BCE and spread as far North as Morocco, where SSA roulette cord ceramics were found, along with Mediterranean derived ceramics from Iberia, 7,000 ka.
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