UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Ancient Civilizations of Africa
is comparatively fertile and well watered. Although the mean annual rainfall
is low (655 m m at Maiduguri) and the dry season sufficiently long and
intense (up to 43°C) to dry most of the rivers, the area is flooded and
impassable during the rains, primarily because of the impermeability of
the absolutely level plains. On the other hand, the soil is very retentive
of moisture once it has absorbed it; and this retentiveness is now artificially
increased by the construction of low banks round the fields. Seasonal
inundation rendered this area attractive for settlement by both farmers
and herders, while seasonal extremes considerably restricted habitable sites
and the constant use of such areas in the past resulted in the accretion
of occupation mounds and tells.
Excavation of some of these mounds in northern Nigeria, Cameroon
and Chad has so far revealed successive occupations over periods of time
known in some cases to approach and exceed 2000 years. Lebeuf, 22 working
principally in Chad, is convinced that the mounds are connected with the
Sao of oral traditions. Even if this term has much cultural or ethnic value,
this writer shares Connah's 23 reluctance to use oral tradition to identify
peoples some of whom lived 2500 years ago.
Connah 24 also carried out a systematic study of one of the most
impressive of these mounds, that at Daima (14 o 30' E, and 12 o 12-5' N).
The Daima evidence suggests that by the early sixth century before our era
there were late stone age herdsmen living in this area, keeping cattle and
sheep or goats, using polished stone axes the material for which had to be
carried many miles into this completely stoneless region, and making tools
and weapons of polished bone. Among the outstanding finds at this level
were large quantities of animal bones which reflect the strong pastoral
element, and many small clay figurinesapparently representing domestic
animals. These earliest occupants of the site probably built only in grass and
wood, and lacked metals of any kind.
Findings from sites like Rop 2S and Dutsen Kongba 26 strongly suggest
that a fully stone-using Neolithic level also immediately preceded the
famous Nok iron age culture (i.e. before —2500) of the savannah mosaic
of the Jos Plateau. If so, such a level probably also contained a microlithic
industry apart from the polished and ground stone equipment also found
in the late iron age levels. The Nok people may well have traded such
tools to peoples occupying the stoneless regions to the north, and perhaps
also the pottery, which often decorated at Daima is best represented by
a fine ware with burnished red surfaces with toothed comb or roulette.
22. J.-P. Lebeuf, 1962.
23. G. Connah, 1969b, p. 55.
24. G. Connah, 1967a, pp. 146-7.
25. E. Eyo, 1964-5, p. s-13; 1972, pp. 13-16.
26. R. York et al.
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