Population history of West Africa
[14] The emergence and expansion of ceramics in the Sahara may be linked with the origin of Round Head and Kel Essuf rock art, which occupy rockshelters in the same regions (e.g., Djado, Acacus, Tadrart).
[20] As a result of increasing aridification of the Green Sahara, Central Saharan hunter-gatherers and cattle herders may have used seasonal waterways as the migratory route taken to the Niger River and Chad Basin of West Africa.
[37] Consequently, the human habitation in Jos Plateau, which is only composed of Middle Stone Age sites, has been distinct in terms of culture and environment in comparison to the Falémé River Valley.
[13] The emergence and expansion of ceramics in the Sahara may be linked with the origin of both the Round Head and Kel Essuf rock art, which occupy rockshelters in the same regions (e.g., Djado, Acacus, Tadrart) as well as have a common resemblance (e.g., traits, shapes).
[49][50][51] Amid the early Sahara, Round Head rock artists, who had a sophisticated culture and engaged in the activity of hunting and gathering, also developed pottery, utilized vegetation, and managed animals.
[20] Desertification may have resulted in migrations from the Central Saharan region, where the Round Head paintings are located, toward Lake Chad, the Niger Delta,[54] and the Nile Valley.
[57] Preceded by assumed earlier sites in the Eastern Sahara, tumuli with megalithic monuments developed as early as 4700 BCE in the Saharan region of Niger.
[59] Ancient Egyptian pyramids of the early dynastic period and Meroitic Kush pyramids are recognized by Faraji (2022) as part of and derived from an earlier architectural “Sudanic-Sahelian” tradition of monarchic tumuli, which are characterized as “earthen pyramids” or “proto-pyramids.”[59] Faraji (2022) characterized Nobadia as the “last pharaonic culture of the Nile Valley” and described mound tumuli as being “the first architectural symbol of the sovereign’s return and reunification with the primordial mound upon his death.”[59] Faraji (2022) indicates that there may have been a cultural expectation of “postmortem resurrection” associated with tumuli in the funerary traditions of the West African Sahel (e.g., northern Ghana, northern Nigeria, Mali) and Nile Valley (e.g., Ballana, Qustul, Kerma, Kush).
[59] According to al-Bakrī, “the construction of tumuli and the accompanying rituals was a religious endeavor that emanated from the other elements” that he described, such as “sorcerers, sacred groves, idols, offerings to the dead, and the “tombs of their kings.””[59] Faraji (2022) indicated that the early dynastic period of ancient Egypt, Kerma of Kush, and the Nobadian culture of Ballana were similar to al-Bakrī's descriptions of the Mande tumuli practices of ancient Ghana.
[59] Cultural similarities were also found with a Malinke king of Gambia, who along with his senior queen, human subjects within his kingdom, and his weapons, were buried in his home under a large mound the size of the house, as described by V.
[39] Cultural experience with the desertification of the Green Sahara may have contributed to adept adjustment to the drying of the Sahelian and West Sudanian savanna regions of Sub-Saharan Africa by agropastoralists.
[39] Amid the 1st millennium BCE, agriculture spread, not only near Lake Chad, but near the Niger Delta, Senegal Valley, Jos Plateau, and the southern region of Cameroon.
[4] Prior to initial encounter with migrating populations from further north, West African hunter-gatherers may have already engaged in basic agricultural production of tubers as well as utilizing Elaeis guineensis and Canarium schweinfurthii.
[9] In 4000 BCE, the start of sophisticated social structure (e.g., trade of cattle as valued assets) developed among herders amid the Pastoral Period of the Sahara.
[32] Nok people may have developed terracotta sculptures, through large-scale economic production,[73] as part of a complex funerary culture[74] that may have included practices such as feasting.
[90] A Ghanaian man provided the following recorded account to a European official during the Danish Gold Coast period of Ghana in 1738 CE:[91] It is you, you whites they say, who have brought all of this evil among us.
Otherwise, the punishment for ordinary misdeeds was that the culprit should carry to the offended party’s hut or house a big log of firewood for two or three consecutive days and beg him for forgiveness on his knees.
Preserved human remains can be analyzed using ancient DNA and skeletal analyses to build a biological profile for each individual (including their sex, age, stature, evidence of pathology, mobility, and ancestry).
[104] In 1990 BP, a "Negroid" agriculturalist (indicated via dental evidence from the skeletal remains) occupied Rop rock shelter, in the northern region of Nigeria.
[109] The remains of a 25-year-old woman with interproximal grooved dental modifications, which was found in the Sahelian region of Kufan Kanawa, Niger and may have been occupied by Hausa people who later settled in Kano, has been dated to the mid-2nd millennium CE.
[112][113] Long-dwelling Tuareg from the same area also recognized the Round Head rock art as a creation of black people who resided in the Tassili region long ago.
[115][116] S. O. Y. Keita (1993/1995) indicate that these Neolithic Saharan cranial patterns mentioned in the morphological study of Hiernaux (1975)[115][116] might "include some of the narrow-faced and narrow-nosed "Elongated" groups to which the label "Hamitic" was once applied.
"[115] Keita (1993) further explained: "The earliest southern predynastic culture, Badari, owes key elements to post-desiccation Saharan and also perhaps "Nubian" immigration (Hassan 1988).
There is limb ratio and craniofacial morphological and metric continuity in Upper Egypt-Nubia in a broad sense from the late paleolithic through dynastic periods, although change occurred.
"[115] Keita (1995) later clarified that, while this critique was not a denial of some Near Eastern immigration having occurred, inferring mass migrations from a single data type is problematic, and that the specifics and complexities of in-situ micro-evolutionary changes and adaptations are not allowed by typological thinking.
[137] West Africans, bearing the Benin sickle cell haplotype, may have migrated into the northern region of Iraq (69.5%), Jordan (80%), Lebanon (73%), Oman (52.1%), and Egypt (80.8%).
[150] Senufo is presumed to have diverged from Gur-Adamawa, which then developed into Ba, Kam, Fali, Ubangian, Peripheral and Central Gur, and a three different groups of Adamawa.
"[153] Dimmendaal and Storch (2016) has indicated that the continuing reassessment of Niger-Congo's "internal structure is due largely to the preliminary nature of Greenberg's classification, explicitly based as it was on a methodology that doesn't produce proofs for genetic affiliations between languages but rather aims at identifying "likely candidates.
"...The ongoing descriptive and documentary work on individual languages and their varieties, greatly expanding our knowledge on formerly little-known linguistic regions, is helping to identify clusters and units that allow for the application of the historical-comparative method.
To mention just an extreme example, Manning (2006: 139–141) speculates about the origin of most tropical language families in the Old World by practically deriving them from the equivocal Nilo-Saharan grouping in Africa.
