Reading Practice Set 1
Agriculture, Iron, and the Bantu Peoples
1. There is evidence of agriculture in Africa prior to 3000 B.C. It may have developed
independently, but many scholars believe that the spread of agriculture and iron throughout
Africa linked it to the major centers of the Near East and Mediterranean world. The drying up
of what is now the Sahara desert had pushed many peoples to the south into sub-Saharan
Africa. These peoples settled at first in scattered hunting-and-gathering bands, although in
some places near lakes and rivers, people who fished, with a more secure food supply, lived
in larger population concentrations. Agriculture seems to have reached these people from the
Near East, since the first domesticated crops were millets and sorghums whose origins are not
African but West Asian. Once the idea of planting diffused, Africans began to develop their
own crops, such as certain varieties of rice, and they demonstrated a continued receptiveness
to new imports. The proposed areas of the domestication of African crops lie in a band that
extends from Ethiopia across southern Sudan to West Africa. Subsequently, other crops, such
as bananas, were introduced from Southeast Asia.
2. Livestock also came from outside Africa. Cattle were introduced from Asia, as probably were
domestic sheep and goats. Horses were apparently introduced by the Hyksos invaders of
Egypt (1780–1560 B.C.) and then spread across the Sudan to West Africa. Rock paintings in
the Sahara indicate that horses and chariots were used to traverse the desert and that by 300–
200 B.C., there were trade routes across the Sahara. Horses were adopted by peoples of the
West African savannah, and later their powerful cavalry forces allowed them to carve out
large empires. Finally, the camel was introduced around the first century A.D. This was an
important innovation, because the camel’s ability to thrive in harsh desert conditions and to
carry large loads cheaply made it an effective and efficient means of transportation. The
camel transformed the desert from a barrier into a still difficult, but more accessible, route of
trade and communication.
3. Iron came from West Asia, although its routes of diffusion were somewhat different than
those of agriculture. Most of Africa presents a curious case in which societies moved directly
from a technology of stone to iron without passing through the intermediate stage of copper
or bronze metallurgy, although some early copper-working sites have been found in West
Africa. Knowledge of iron making penetrated into the forests and savannahs of West Africa at
roughly the same time that iron making was reaching Europe. Evidence of iron making has
been found in Nigeria, Ghana, and Mali.
4. This technological shift caused profound changes in the complexity of African societies. Iron
represented power. In West Africa the blacksmith who made tools and weapons had an
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