Not a hunter-gatherer civilization but a civilization developed from hunter-gatherers. Say it takes 4,000 years to reach early Mesopotamia/Egypt levels and the process began in 3000 BC, you've got a civilization developing in South Africa.
Right, it can take awhile, obviously. That's why you get them started early.
Bantu not only had a good mix of crops, but also iron working. Thus they have better tools and weapons. If the Khoisan can give Bautu blacksmiths to work for them they can offset that advantage. Given that the herders amongst them were reputed to ride cattle could cow cavalry with say stone tipped javelins impose their will on an agrarian society limited to fighting on foot? If they could then they could upgrade their weapons to iron.
Quite a leap forward and probably not realistic.
Or you know... they could just domesticate their own livestock.
Most click speakers in Southern Africa by the time of Arab/Malagasy/Portuguese contacts were herders: their herding was such that in southern Africa all Bantu tribes words for sheep, cow, sour milk derive from khoekhoe terms.
In these terms *dubi ‘to milk’, *!hada or *kada ‘cattle-kraal’, *n//gubu ‘to churn’, *//ãũ ‘to fence in’, *gude ‘to herd’, *ts’ao or */x’ao ‘to milk into container’, *tsxôm ‘to milk into mouth’ there is a lexical unknown but Roger Blench a specialist in african linguistics suggests the terms arose from the Cushitic and/or "Nilo-Saharan" pastoralist origins of Khoekhoe-Sandawe speakers (I'm one to believe it derives from an extinct click language that was an isolate from far further north but what are you gonna do).
Suffice to say that the history of pastoralists is such that cultural complexes and "civilization" can come about.
This is all very interesting, but has your research led you to the conclusion that cattle and sheep were domesticated separately in Africa? Because I knew that there was some archaeological evidence for an independent North African domestication of cattle, but I've never heard anything of the like for sheep.
Honestly though, I was a lot more interested in this civilization developing its own domesticates independent of North Africa, perhaps beginning around the start of the Holocene.
Though I'm forever eye-rolling the attempts with which people try to use Eurasian frameworks and irksome models of "Age of Empire" like stages for Africa: I believe the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic that spawned most of pre-Bantu littoral East Africa from Kenya down to Cape Town is a civilization complex.
Biggest example the Sirikwa People: Elaborate irrigation systems, cattle pens, money exchanged on the coast from India or intermediaries, with cattle not like the Zebu hybrid Sanga but the Longhorn variety that Khoekhoe were recognized for.
Bring the donkey down as well and you'll have a beast of burden that will make earth moving easier.
Right, well I've already specified that I was interested in the development of a sedentary, complex urban civilization, one that would develop independent of influence from North Africa... at least for awhile.
"Wild" Grains of historic importance or potential uses in Southern Africa:
- Sporobolus fimbriatus (matolo-a-maholo)
- Brachiaria brizantha (bread grass, long-seed millet)
- Echinochloa stagnina (bourgou)
- Panicum subalbidum (manna grass)
- Stenotaphrum dimidiatum (dogtooth grass)
- Eragrostis paradoxa. Zimbabwe, this relatively low-growing grass with very fine leaves has remarkable resilience and has survived growing on soils only 1 cm deep.
- Eragrostis hispida. This species, too, was from Zimbabwe and is taller and has broad, hair-covered leaves.
- Eragrostis nindensis. Widely distributed in Namibia and other arid areas of southern Africa, this wild tef is locally valued as sheep fodder.
and finally y'all need to read about the inter-relationship of pastoralists and tended or "semi-cultivated" stands of grains that led to the domestication of fonio and teff
http://www.fao.org/3/y5118e/y5118e04a.pdf
This is pretty cool stuff. I'll give this a look. What about perennials? Are there any tubers that might be suitable that come to mind?
Let's be nice in here, alright? The entire purpose of posting a question is to get answers and start a conversation
Finally I made a TL about a Ocean facing cultural complex in Namibia but fell off it because there was no one who really knew what the fuck I was talking about and got bored with it
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...tion-civilization-on-the-namib-fringe.414742/
Sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out. I sometimes feel the same way about my own timeline in the Bronze Age...
When making ATLs in Africa don't copy patterns found in Eurasia, its a false equivalency and makes for low quality writing.
I've seen you say this kind of stuff before... what are you referring to?
I was wanting more conversation though. Whenever people post about Vikings or China/Japan there is a ton of conversation being had, African TLs not so much. Especially when its African TLs that aren't engaging with North Africans, Arabs, Indians, etc...
Well, the demographics of the forum to some degree or other determine what is going to be talked about in here. It's overwhelmingly young White guys from the Anglosphere, and so it stands to reason that the primary focus is going to be Europe going back to Classical Antiquity because this is what the majority of the users are familiar with. The further you journey out of these bounds in both space and time, the less traction your timeline is apt to pick up. As I said, I'm writing a timeline in the Bronze Age that has focused largely on developments in the Middle East thus far and... well, it seems to me that it's read by about 15 people, not all of whom comment very often. I know the timeline has more views than that of course, but it's mostly those same 15 people liking and occasionally commenting with a question here and there.
