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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Early food producing societies and antecedents in Middle Africa |
| Author: | Andah, Bassey W. |
| Year: | 1987 |
| Periodical: | West African Journal of Archaeology |
| Volume: | 17 |
| Pages: | 129-170 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | East Africa Northeast Africa Sahara |
| Subjects: | subsistence economy archaeology environment agricultural history prehistory |
| Abstract: | According to the so-called 'aquatic thesis', large waterside settlements whose dwellers practised a fishing and hunting economy were scattered all over the vast region from Central Sudan through Dongola reach in southern Nubia and far beyond from 8000 to about 3000 B.P. However, this thesis does not quite do justice to a situation revealed by recent research in the Sahara to be complex and variable. The author discusses the ecological setting, faunal remains, technology and subsistence in the Nile valley region, the Sahara and East Africa, from the terminal Pleistocene onward. He concludes that the classic version of the aquatic thesis not only ignores the complexity of the ecological habitat in middle Africa, but also fails to appreciate the very dynamic character of this region's ecological situation through time. It seems also to overstretch the relationship of certain specific tools to specific subsistence modes, the link between technoeconomy and culture generally, and finally the very nature of man's response to changing environmental possibilities and constraints in this region of Africa, and in particular how this response reflected man's appraisal of his survival needs and adaptive (including technological) abilities and capacities in cultural terms. Bibliogr. |