posted
___________ The canoe excavated at Dunfuna village in Fune local government of Yobe state dated to 8000 BCE and presently at Damaturu in Yobe State capital.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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The dream is great and when fully accomplished, will be one of the greatest historical documentations and tourist attractions in the whole of Africa. "What we are trying to do is to build a museum where the canoe will be kept. There, a lot of people from across the world will come and see it. I must tell you, this will be a major tourist attraction in the whole of Africa," says Dr. Omotoso Eluyemi, Director and Chief Executive of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments last week.
Since the Dufuna canoe was discovered by a local Fulani herdsman in 1987 archaeologists have been in a frenzy about the discovery.
The canoe which was excavated by a combined team of Nigeria and German archeologists in 1994 at Dufuna, a village along the Komodugu Gana river in Fune local government area of Yobe State has continued to amaze them for the simple reason that it has changed the course of history.
Presently undergoing conservation at Damaturu, Yobe State, it was dug out from a depth of five meters beneath the earth's surface and measured 8.4 meters in length, 0.5 meters wide and about 5 cm thick varying at certain parts of the surface. The age of the canoe has been put at about 8000 years old (6000 BC), thus, becoming the oldest boat in Africa and third oldest on earth.
The canoe belongs to the Late Stone Age period (Neolithic Age), when humans ceased to roam the face of the earth hunting to become herdsmen and cultivators and in the process becoming modifier of their environment with complex social structures in response to new problems and ways of dealing with situations.
"The discovery of this boat is an important landmark in the history of Nigeria in particular and Africa in general" says Eluyemi.
Besides proving that the Nigerian society was at par (if not earlier) than that of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoa and Phoenicia, the discovery also provides the first concrete evidence that Africans possessed the ability to reason and have been exploring technology to modify their environment to suit their needs.
But more importantly "the canoe has shown that people in the Niger area had a history of advanced technology and that they had mastered the three major items of Paleolithic culture which were the fashioning, standardization and utilization of tools according to certain set traditions," explains Eluyemi.
But beyond that, the discovery has also revealed that, Nigerians were not static people. "It gives concrete evidence of transportation by seas as well as providing evidence of some form of long distance commercial activities indicative of existing political and economic structures."
One great benefit of the discovery is that it has helped archaeologists draw a relationship between what was happening in Nigeria and else where in the world during that period. Indications are that while Nigerians were making canoes in Dufuna village in 6000 BC, the people of Catol Huyuk in Turkey were making pottery, textiles etc, like the people of Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) were forming urban communities and the Chinese were making painted pottery in the Yang Shao region. But particularly of interest to archaeologists is the proof that some form of advanced civilization existed in the Lake Chad Basin around 6000 BC.
Documentation has showed that based on the minimal available technology during this period, the making of the Dufuna canoe must have been a ponderous task which called for mastery, specialization and ingenuity. A lot of work, man hours and skill must also have been put into the production since no iron tools were in existence at the time. The tools used were probably Post Pleistocene ungrounded core axe - like and pick - axe bifacial tools of microlithic appearance. It can be assumed that the canoe must have been made near a river to eliminate the difficulty of transporting it over long distances.Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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LAGOS, Apr 18, 2001 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Nigeria has decided to set up a museum in order to ensure appropriate protection for the "oldest canoe in Africa" discovered at Dufuna village in northern Yobe State, the News Agency of Nigeria reported Wednesday.
The National Commission for Museums and Monuments has made arrangements to move the 8000-year-old canoe, which is kept intact in the swampy area of Yobe, to its own museum at Dufuna, Chief Executive of the Commission Omotosho Eluyemi was quoted as saying.
Eluyemi pointed out that the discovery of the cultural relic has given Nigerian history a new perspective.
"Eight thousand years ago, our people sat down to carve a canoe, which would carry people across rivers," he said.
The chief executive stressed that the discovery has further given substance to the argument that Africans had a creative cultural heritage and a system of civilization that was thriving.
The discovery also proved that the area covered by Lake Chad in the past had been wider than what it is today, he said.
"You cannot have a canoe where there is no river, so Lake Chad must have been bigger than what it is and people were traveling on it," he added.
According to a study issued by a U.S. scientific team recently, Lake Chad has shrunk by 95 percent in the last 40 years.
The canoe has been regarded as a very important symbol to the long years of civilization and geographical change in the west African sub-region, so it is necessary to establish the museum "where Nigerians and foreigners can go and relate with ancient history", Eluyemi said.
Eluyemi, who described the canoe as "a marvel", disclosed that the museum will be ready within the next three months, after which the canoe will be exhibited for at least four years before being moved for itinerant exhibition outside the country.
quote: Pirogues are still made just out of town, by Bozo craftsman ... designs identical to that noted by Arab travelers in the 12th century ... up to 20 meters (22 yards) long, very stable, roofed with arching boughs covered with thatch ...
Marq de Villers, Sheila Hirtle Into Africa: A Journey Through the Ancient Empires Key Porter Books,1999 p. 257
quote: The term canoe is somewhat misleading for these African boats. Westeners know that a dugout canoe is limited to the size of the tree from which it is made; but, as they have their own trees in mind, their mental picture of a dugout is of something very narrow and not very long. However,the tropical equatorial forests of West Africa produce trees of monumental proportions. Dugouts made form these trees often longer than medieval European ships.
In the 1500s, Pacheco Pereira wrote: "In this country are to be found the largest canoes, made of a single trunk, that are known in the whole Ethiopia of Guinea; some are so large they hold 80 men. They travel distances of 100 leagues [300 miles]." One hundred years later, Pieter de Marees saw one "cut out of a tree which was five and thirty foot long and five foot broad and three feet high, which was big as a shallop."
The longest West African dugout canoes would probably be about eighty feet in length and ten feet in beam with a height from "keel" to gunwale of five to six feet. Such a canoe would be the same size as the largest Viking "long ships" and twice the size of Severin's traditional Irish leather boats in which he crossed the North Atlantic.
A canoe "as big as a shallop" would be much larger, for instance, than Davidson's Felicity Anne and comparable in size to the famous "Virtue" class of five-ton wooden yachts which have numerous transatlantic voyages as well as one circumnavigation of the earth to their credit.
The important point is that the canoes would have been much stronger than modern wooden yachts. The strenght of a wooden boat is in it's fastenings, which hold the planks to the ribs and the ribs to the keel. A dugout has no fastenings as it is one piece of wood. It is therfore inherently stronger than a modern wooden yacht of the same plank thickness and incomparably stronger than a Viking long ship of similar size.
Yet, western historians take pride in the naval architecture of the medieval North Europeans, consider Viking boats to be the ancestors of "real" ships, and denigrate canoes of comparable size and much great strength. While we accept the voyages of the Norse as historical fact, we smile at the thought of people undertaking passage to America in giant canoes -- even though these canoes were superior in evey basic respect to any vessel pocessed by Lief Ericsson.
Michael bradley The Black African Discovery of America Toronto: Personal Library Publishers, 1981 pp 96-97
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Though it backwardsly uses Europe as the yardstick of measure to look up to this article still contains valuable information on the Dufuna canoe.
quote: Voyage of discovery The discovery of an 8,000-year-old dugout canoe in northern Nigeria is shedding new light on Africa’s distant past. Story and photographs by Femi Macaulay
The Dufuna canoe: a palm tree trunk lies above it
The iron gate of the low-walled compound is embossed with two identical images of a canoe paddled by a figure wearing a wide-brimmed hat common in the sultry northern weather. Africa’s oldest known boat lies here, in a formalin-treated pool within a concrete house.
A notice on the building’s circular outer wall points out that the Dufuna canoe is “Under conservation”, while skulls and crossbones add emphasis to two warnings, “Keep off”; “Beware of corrosive chemicals”. A solitary weather-beaten tree stands like a sentry beside the striking structure in a sandy field. The conservation site, flanked by a mountainous sand dune, is tucked away behind the Ben Kalio Estate made up of one-bedroom bungalows on Maiduguri Road in Damaturu, capital of Nigeria’s Yobe state.
The prehistoric canoe will be on view in due course. “Not this year,” says Abubakar Garba. “We intend to finally remove it next year, do all the refitting of broken parts and make a plastic cast of the canoe for exhibition overseas.”Garba is an associate professor of archaeology at the Centre for Trans-Saharan Studies, University of Maiduguri in Borno state. “We are planning a second application of chemicals,” he says, adding that the exercise “will take one week”. The German Maritime Museum is reportedly involved in the conservation of the canoe.
It has taken more than a decade to reach this stage. It was in May 1987 that Fulani herdsman Mallam Yau struck the dugout canoe buried in the earth while digging a well on the outskirts of Dufuna village. News of this event travelled fast. Describing the site of the find, Peter Breunig of the University of Frankfurt, Germany, an archaeologist involved in the project, says it lies “between Potiskum and Gashua on the Komadugu Gana, a large river system in northern Nigeria”.
According to him, “In the dry season the water course vanishes almost completely but for a few small pools, while during the rainy season countless streams flow through the valley, which is several kilometres wide and lined by gallery forest. Parts of this landscape become extensively flooded, as is the case at this site, situated beside a branch of the Komadugu Gana.” Word of the discovery reached the government of the old Borno state, which at the time included Dufuna, now part of Yobe.
“Then I came in,” Garba recalls. “I was contacted to make a full investigation as an archeologist. I knew at the time that I was making a breakthrough in my field. I got a chip sample from the canoe, which I sent to a laboratory in Germany. They were fascinated by the first date.”Radiocarbon dating put the age of the chip at over 8,000 years. The level of residual Carbon 14 (C-14) in an object determines its age, as C-14 is known to decrease at a fixed rate in non-living organic matter. Garba describes the canoe’s “almost black wood”, said to be African mahogany, as “entirely an organic material”.
Two separate tests on chips taken from different parts of the canoe, carried out on different occasions at Kiel and Cologne universities in Germany, gave similar dates of over 8,000 years. “There is no reason to doubt the broad date of the boat,” says Breunig. He explains that, although little is known of the period to which the boat belongs, “in archaeological terms it is described as an early phase of the Later Stone Age, which began rather more than 12,000 years ago and ended with the appearance of pottery, probably more than 7,000 years ago.” An initial trial excavation sponsored by the University of Maiduguri led to collaboration on the canoe project with the University of Frankfurt.
The lab results redefined the prehistory of African water transport, ranking the Dufuna canoe as the world’s third oldest known dugout. Older than it are the dugouts from Pesse, Netherlands, and Noyen-sur-Seine, France. But evidence of an 8,000-year-old tradition of boat building in Africa throws cold water on the assumption that maritime transport developed much later there in comparison with Europe. Breunig says the canoe’s age “forces a reconsideration of Africa’s role in the history of water transport”. It shows, he adds, “that the cultural history of Africa was not determined by Near Eastern and European influences but took its own, in many cases parallel, course”.
Lifting the canoe out of the ground finally happened in March 1998. Garba recalls his excavation experience. “To uncover the canoe involved up to 50 labourers, who took about two weeks to accomplish this task. About five metres down inside the museum, the archaeologists had to use mechanical means to evacuate the water, which kept oozing back continuously.” The Dufuna canoe was found, he says, “water-logged, on a sandy base with intermittent intervals of clay, and inaccessible to oxygen; circumstances most favourable for most organic materials”.
Other objects that surfaced at the excavation site are of little archaeological value. Breunig lists them: “A few shards and charcoal fragments were found in the layers above the boat. In a layer of grey clay directly above the coarse sand in which the boat lies, a small, complete, undecorated pot was found. A tree trunk is embedded in the same layer, transverse to the axis of the boat.” This palm tree trunk, lying above the canoe in the soil, remains a curiosity as both objects are separated by an interval of around 5,000 years. “We had to cut the tree to remove the canoe,” Garba recounts, adding, “the canoe was intact”. Or, as Breunig says, it was “fully preserved apart from a few missing fragments from the tops of the sides”. Garba blames the missing parts on “human interference by the village community” that first had access to the site.
“It has a length of 8.40 metres and maximum breadth and height of around 0.5 metres. The sides are barely more than 5 centimetres thick,” says Breunig, adding that it even outranks in style European finds of similar age. According to him, “The bow and stern are both carefully worked to points, giving the boat a notably more elegant form”, compared to “the dugout made of conifer wood from Pesse in the Netherlands, whose blunt ends and thick sides seem crude”. To go by its stylistic sophistication, he reasons, “It is highly probable that the Dufuna boat does not represent the beginning of a tradition, but had already undergone a long development, and that the origins of water transport in Africa lie even further back in time.”
Not just a piece of wood, the Dufuna dugout opens a thought-stimulating window on Africa’s past. Contemplating the discovery is like sailing on a sea of puzzles. Garba wonders, for instance, “What could have been the Dufuna environment and adjacent areas at the time the canoe was in use? If the vegetation was more luxuriant and denser, what might have led to its deterioration? What types of prehistoric populations were present at the settlement? Could they have any link with the present population or adjacent groups? Could it have been possible that the mega-Chad extended up to this area or could it have been transported from elsewhere to this area? What was it for?”
With a view to gaining an insight into the construction techniques that produce the canoe, Garba commissioned a local carver to make a look-alike of sorts. “We saw all the processes,” he says, “right from selecting a tree trunk to cutting, carving, preservation and sailing.” The outcome of this “ethno-archaeological experiment” lies unsung in the compound of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Maiduguri. It lacks the aura of history, unlike the Dufuna canoe, which Garba describes as “a national heritage and a world heritage”.
The discovery of Africa’s oldest known boat was celebrated in a photo exhibition in Damaturu in 1996. Mallam Yau, the discoverer, had his picture on display. For the tourism value of his find, reports say he got N50,000 (about $500) from the government. Sensing his own attraction, Yau has reportedly requested the government to put up a building for him beside the museum where the canoe is eventually exhibited. He reckons visitors would wish to see the man who discovered the boat as well. *
quote: A Pirogue is a wooden canoe used on the rivers of West Africa. Where trees are alrge enough, they are fabricated out of a single tree trunk, but in the Middle Niger Valey, they are made by sewing together planks of wood and packing the seams with rope and tar. Niger River pirogues are some times quite large and may displace as much as ten tons.
From the research of Saidi_Aswan_Egy, source otherwise unknown.
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...has continued to amaze them for the simple reason that it has changed the course of history.
Not surpising. As Max Dashu says, scholars are continuously having to pick up and place the markers of African history farther back in time, the more discoveries archaeologists make.
And still archaeology in "Sub-Sahara" has been pretty scanty compared to other parts of the world.
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Besides proving that the Nigerian society was at par (if not earlier) than that of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoa and Phoenicia, the discovery also provides the first concrete evidence that Africans possessed the ability to reason and have been exploring technology to modify their environment to suit their needs.
Notwithstanding the author's African-sounding name, the words above are just pure jibberish.
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African people, at home and abroad, largely remain bedazzled by colonial European light, one reason I couched my introduction for a later article as I did.
LSA reasoning originated in Africa as long ago as 90,000 BCE which is one factor adducing the inadequacy of applying the term "neolithic" to prehistoric African cultures.
The Dufuna canoe is hardly "the first concrete evidence that Africans possessed the ability to reason".
That researcher's opinion should not pose a reason to downplay the importance of the find and the breakthrough in African archaeology and others' perception of Africans it signifies.
quote:Originally posted by Supercar:
quote:
Besides proving that the Nigerian society was at par (if not earlier) than that of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoa and Phoenicia, the discovery also provides the first concrete evidence that Africans possessed the ability to reason and have been exploring technology to modify their environment to suit their needs.
Notwithstanding the author's African-sounding name, the words above are just pure jibberish.
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Europeans encountered no "neolithic" when they arrived in the Africa of the region of the Dafuna canoe. They had to apply for trading and land rental rights from the states along the Atlantic from Senegal all the way to Ngola, often exchanging diplomats including Africans establishing embassies in European trade capitals.
But start another thread on Europeans meeting stone age Africans because if posts here go off topic I'll ask the moderator to delete them.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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That researcher's opinion should not pose a reason to downplay the importance of the find and the breakthrough in African archaeology and others' perception of Africans it signifies.
Of course not, and nobody here did so. However, when a "researcher" uses such language, in light of every new piece of evidence that naturally marks the absurdity of such nonsense, it has to be called out; it simply serves against the purpose of the evidence that the article presumably used that evidence for in the first place. The boat itself, if anything, should instill the basic understanding that humans long had the "intent" to not allow water bodies to stand in the way of their getting to places.
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And, looking back I see it was the reporter not the researcher who made that inaccurate and super silly statement. My bad.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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No need to be the fish caught in the distractor's trolling line.
Please take it to another thread and honour my intention of discussing West African watercraft on this thread, thank you.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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^^You're right. Hore is just desperate to cling on to his Hegelian fantasies of Africa. He is frustrated by all the evidence we cite of Africans not only developing the Neolithic stage much earlier than Europeans but also involved in introducing it to Europe, so now he tries to say they just somehow "stayed" in the Neolithic with no more development! LOL
So what are the chances of archaeologists finding more boats contemporary with this Dunfuna one?? I understand how rare such a find is considering how perishable wooden objects are especially in climates like Nigeria. And what about reed boats? Is there any reed material around the Niger as there is in the Nile?
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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And, looking back I see it was the reporter not the researcher who made that inaccurate and super silly statement. My bad.
Don't get me wrong; you are on point about not being distracted from the "real" significance, while not letting people get away with seemingly trifling claims like this. I suspect that a finding of this magnitude, will be immediately ceased by those who advocate prehistoric or very early historic African migrations into the Americas - perhaps that these were organized explorations out of curiousity, and these boats serve as a tool for such explorations.
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posted
Yes, when Africans first displayed LSA culture there were no people in Europe and very few, if any, anywhere else further than the African extension ("SW Asia").
The canoe was a chance finding. A Pullo making a well found it. Archaeologist only got involved later when he realized the material gain of alerting them to his find.
We see that archaeological treasures are screaming to be stumbled upon but interest and money are missing motivators in the quest to uncover Africa's past.
I don't know if reed boats diffused or were independently invented and used further from the Nile than Lake Tschad. There is some evidence or rather plausibility that in the western arm of the Niger, and other rivers west of it, that palm frond extensions were applied to wooden plank pirogues.
The thing about reed boats and Kmtyw travel to MesoAmerica is 1). - where is the evidence of Kmtyw expeditions into the Great Green even as close as to Khart Haddast and 2). - why would they use little reed boats instead of the big wood ships they used in the Red Sea to get to Pwanit?
I mean as far back as the Old Kingdom they were exporting material from and employing the engineering and technology of the Nhsyw for wood ships. But everybody gets bedazzled by Heyderdahl's European light instead of basking in the Occam Razor practical and historic Sun of African reality.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^^You're right. Hore is just desperate to cling on to his Hegelian fantasies of Africa. He is frustrated by all the evidence we cite of Africans not only developing the Neolithic stage much earlier than Europeans but also involved in introducing it to Europe, so now he tries to say they just somehow "stayed" in the Neolithic with no more development! LOL
So what are the chances of archaeologists finding more boats contemporary with this Dunfuna one?? I understand how rare such a find is considering how perishable wooden objects are especially in climates like Nigeria. And what about reed boats? Is there any reed material around the Niger as there is in the Nile?
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ... what are the chances of archaeologists find[s ... in]... Nigeria ... ?
Here's a little about that. Rather than reproduce everything at this site in a new thread here, it's perhaps best to go there, click on their map's red dots, and surf.
Of course there's other stuff been going on unrelated to these guys. I don't think they had anything to do with that earthen wall that was in the news a couple of years ago.
quote: Archaeological research in Northeastern Nigeria
Far right: Anthropomorphic clay figurine from settlement mound of Mege, Ngala LGA, Borno State, Nigeria
Since 1991 the Africa section of the Prehistory Departement of the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University at Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is engaged in research in Northeastern Nigeria, specifically Borno and Yobe States.
During various fieldtrips a large number of sites have been sampled. Research concentrated on three areas:
* First, excavations started around the present town of Gajiganna, NE of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. Here various Later Stone Age and Early Iron Age sites were discovered.
* The second region are vast clay plains (locally called firki), south of Lake Chad, were four extensive mound sites have been trenched. Research here concentrated on the Later Stone Age layers in those mounds but also on Iron Age and Medieval periods up to the onset of Colonial times. Additionally, considerable attention was given to the social and political structures of the present societies, as various cultural influences both from the islamic empire of Borno as well as the local indigenious traditions merge in this area.
* The third area is the region around River Yobe, where the Dufuna Canoe - "Africas oldest boat" - has been discovered.
Work in Nigeria is in close cooperation with the University of Maiduguri and the National Commission of Museums and Monuments.
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"the canoe has shown that people in the Niger area had a history of advanced technology and that they had mastered the three major items of Paleolithic culture which were the fashioning, standardization and utilization of tools according to certain set traditions," explains Eluyemi.
But beyond that, the discovery has also revealed that, Nigerians were not static people.
^^Putting aside the use of the term "Nigerians", a misnomer [since no geopolitical entity named "Nigeria" existed then], and reflective of segregationist attitude of dissecting west Africa, the article gets to the crux of the implications of the finding:
"It gives concrete evidence of transportation by seas as well as providing evidence of some form of long distance commercial activities indicative of existing political and economic structures."
Documentation has showed that based on the minimal available technology during this period, the making of the Dufuna canoe must have been a ponderous task which called for mastery, specialization and ingenuity. A lot of work, man hours and skill must also have been put into the production since no iron tools were in existence at the time. The tools used were probably Post Pleistocene ungrounded core axe - like and pick - axe bifacial tools of microlithic appearance. It can be assumed that the canoe must have been made near a river to eliminate the difficulty of transporting it over long distances.
-------------------- Truth - a liar penetrating device! Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Is there any evidence tying the boat and other contemporary cultures to the Nok Culture of later times??
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Coming in late, I don't know what has been said about early maritime traditions. Southeast Asia and Melanesia were Negro lands populated from Africa and had very early maritime traditions. Here is a post I received today from another discussion group.
Marc W.
Circa 41700 +/-650a,BCE [Cal'05]seafaring migrants from northern Sahul [modern New Guinea] colonized the Buang Merak cave in central New Ireland,Matenkupkum cave on the southern New Ireland seaboard [M Leaveslay,2004] and a number of open sites in the vicinity of Yambon,which is located inland from the southern coast of New Britain.About 30640 +/-785a,BCE [cal] mariners from New Ireland or possibly from New Britain made the 180km open sea voyage to Buka Island,where they occupied the Kilu cave,[S Wickler, 2001].
B Minol [2000] contends that Manus Island was colonized by 21955 +/- 275a,BCE [cal].This entailed a 200 km open sea voyage from northern Sahul or an island "hopping" venture from New Ireland.Obsidian in the Matenbuck cave,New Ireland, and from the central north coast sites of New Britain have been tentatively dated to the 19th millennium BCE.The obsidian came from Talasea Island,which is about 350 away in a straight line distance.Resources had begun to move between islands,[C Gosden,1991].This occurred,when sea level was substantially lower than it is today.
The Melanesian people had an ancient maritime tradition long before the seafarers from Formosa are deemed to have reached the Bismark Archipelago.
-------------------- The nature of homelife is the fate of the nation. Posts: 2334 | Registered: May 2006
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The focus is on West African watercraft. Please respect my intents by restricting your contributions to the subject of this thread, thanks.
I suspect that with the wide range and depth of your research you can help us out with some pics of West African watercraft that you must have in your vast image collection. Don't hold out, give 'em up.
Here's a link to the discovery of the Dufuna boat in Nigeria (Dufuna), relatively close to Niger and Lake Chad. The oldest boat in Africa, third in the world. Again, this may be one of the technology of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile civilization used during the early Holocene to populate the green Sahara, moving along rivers.
quote: The bow and stern are both carefully worked to points, giving the boat a notably more elegant form than finds of similar age from Mesolithic Europe, such as the aforementioned dugout made of conifer wood from Pesse in the Netherlands (Van Zeist 1957), whose blunt ends and thick sides seem crude in comparison with Dufuna. It is highly probable that the Dufuna boat does not represent the beginning of a tradition, but had already undergone a long development, and that the origins of water transport in Africa lie even further back in time.
quote: If these assumptions are correct, the makers of the dugout belonged to a population which spread along the southern edge of the Sahara , from north Kenya through the central Sudanese Nile Valley to the western Sahara , and adapted to the resources of the lakes of the early and mid- Holocene wet phase .
Again linking the Sahara-Sahel-Nile civilization.
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posted
^ While I don't doubt the use of boat technology that far back in time (In fact I've heard the theory that water-crafts were in use since OOA) especially since North Africa during its green period had many rivers and lakes, I do question the existence of a single culture or civilization that encompassed the Sahara-Sahel and Nile region.
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:The ancient Egyptians belonged, that is, not to any specific Egyptian region or Near Eastern heritage but to that vast community of peoples who lived between the Nile and the Atlantic Ocean , shared a common ' Saharan-Sudanese culture '.
-Basil Davidson (Africa: History of a Continent)
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quote: Research conducted in central Sahara, at Ti-Hanakaten (Aumassip, 1978), Amekni (Camps 1969, 1974, 1980), and Meniet (Hugot 1963), also documented the presence of "wavy-line" and "dotted wavy-line" pottery. Radiocarbon dating of these sites started to show that some of the central Saharan sites were older than those from the Nile Valley. As a result, the expression "Neolithic of Sudanese Tradition" became problematic. According to Camps,
"this Neolithic has been called the Neolithic of Sudanese Tradition because its origin had been arbitrarily fixed as the banks of the Nile in the region of Kharthoum in the Sudan. ...At the present time, the oldest manifestations recongnized occur to the west of the great strip of territory (the Ahaggar) occupied by this group of industries which we shall, therefore, henceforth refer to as the Saharan-Sudanese Neolithic (Camps 1980:557)"
By the mid-1970s, there was considerable evidence for a widespread distribution of spherically shaped pottery, some decorated with wavy-line, dotted wavy-line, and rocker-stamping, as well as mat impression. Fishing gear was also widespread, particularly in archaeological sites found near ancient water bodies, including lakes, rivers, and streams. These shared characteristics were implicitly assumed to signal a commonality in culture [edit:cultural complex] , but scholars before Sutton were preoccupied with documenting the distribution rather than explaining it. Sutton's (1974, 1977) [edit:Aquatic civilization] bold move consisted in generating a model to account for the distributional patterns of Early Holocene archaeological sites.
- African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction by Ann Brower Stahl (2004)
quote:The ancient Egyptians belonged, that is, not to any specific Egyptian region or Near Eastern heritage but to that vast community of peoples who lived between the Nile and the Atlantic Ocean , shared a common ' Saharan-Sudanese culture '.
-Basil Davidson (Africa: History of a Continent)
A commonality yes, but to say a single culture seems far fetched and ignores the variations in archaeology and no doubt language as well.
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:The ancient Egyptians belonged, that is, not to any specific Egyptian region or Near Eastern heritage but to that vast community of peoples who lived between the Nile and the Atlantic Ocean , shared a common ' Saharan-Sudanese culture '.
-Basil Davidson (Africa: History of a Continent)
A commonality yes, but to say a single culture seems far fetched and ignores the variations in archaeology and no doubt language as well.
You have the right to your opinion but Basil Davidson refer to a common "Saharan-Sudanese culture". In the book, African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction by Ann Brower Stahl, it refer it to Sutton's "Aqualithic civilization" ("Aquatic civilization"). In Cattle Before Crops: The Beginnings of Food Production in Africa, they refer to it as a "cultural complex". Civilizations are usually composed of many ethnic groups and languages even more so in Africa. Others have come up with other names for it.
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^ Well in that clarification I agree. A complex would be more accurate than a single homogeneous culture. I just hate it when some folks over-emphasize the commonalities in African cultures to the point where they deny cultural diversity in place of a single culture or civilization responsible for the cultures today found in both sides of the Sahara.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Well in that clarification I agree. A complex would be more accurate than a single homogeneous culture. I just hate it when some folks over-emphasize the commonalities in African cultures to the point where they deny cultural diversity in place of a single culture or civilization responsible for the cultures today found in both sides of the Sahara.
Ok, but under-emphasizing the commonalities is not good either. Here the goal is to truly identity an archaeological culture. That is: a recurring assemblage of artifacts from a specific time and place, which are thought to constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The Saharan-Sahel-Nile culture did indeed share a recurring assemblage of artifacts from a specific time and place (see the thread The peopling of the Sahara during the Holocene/Green Sahara).
Does that map bother you?
Wow, even today, the Fulani culture share the same "type" of territory than the Sahara-Sahel-Nile civilization a bit further south.
Sure it was not directly linked with the southern tip of Africa at the time but it existed across the Saharan-Sahel-Nile belt during the early-mid Holocene when the Sahara was green.
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The Dufuna canoe: a palm tree trunk lies above it
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If that is so Hore, then how do you explain those Europeans' records of metalurgy among most Africans when they first arrived??
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