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Seeking Africa's first Iron Men. Heather Pringle Science 323:200-202. 2009.
"Now controversial findings from a French team working at the site of Ôboui in the Central African Republic challenge the diffusion model. Artifacts there suggest that sub-Saharan Africans were making iron by at least 2000 B.C.E. and possibly much earlier--well before Middle Easterners, says team member Philippe Fluzin, an archaeometallurgist at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard in Belfort, France. The team unearthed a blacksmith's forge and copious iron artifacts, including pieces of iron bloom and two needles, as they describe in a recent monograph, Les Ateliers d'Ôboui, published in Paris. "Effectively, the oldest known sites for iron metallurgy are in Africa," Fluzin says."
fumes (Augustin) Holl - "People just have this conception that iron teechnology in sub-saharan Africa has to be later than 500 B.C.E., and when it is earlier than that, they start looking for [alternative] explanations."
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The author is kind'a Johnny-come-lately, lol; info to this end was out by a UNESCO publication back in 2002...unless something new was revealed here that hasn't yet come to my attention.
Clyde Winters Member # 10129
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There were some interesting results. For exaple the site of Bouboun dates back 1612-2135 BCE, while Betume dates back to 2930-3490 BCE.
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The Explorer Member # 14778
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Well, it appears that this publication is more about another host of findings that corroborate the former undertakings I was alluding to above; in other words, these findings ensure would-be hardcore Eurocentrists out there that the aforementioned first occasion of findings don't amount to a mere aberration.
Dare I ask if someone has access to the full publication.
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