Prehistory of Nigeria

Dating back to the last post on "prehistory of niggerians ". A clear picture has be drawn to tell where the ancient creatures the homo-erectus and the rest make their tents and settled. Today we shall be taking it forward from the actual point where the curtain has been close. You can read the first series here.

Today we will be starting with The Middle stone Age.

The Middle Stone Age

The term 'middle stone age ' first of all evolved from southern Africa, is used to describe a group of industrial complex covering roughly the time span of about 35,000 B. C - 12,000 B.C. This industries show a greater localization and specialization than before, there are more regional variants. It is more possible that some of the industries in particular the called Lupenban located in the woodenland areas surrounding the equatorial forest, may have evolved out. In the areas of south of the Zaire forest true axes appear for the first time, made by detaching flakes from both side of a parent core, and sometimes called the axes-core.

In West Africa, industries belonging to Middle Stone Age have been identified with much less certainty. Rare specimen of Lupemban types have been claimed from Ghana and some found on the surface near Afikpo in eastern Nigeria appear to belong to this Catrina, but non have been found which give satisfactory indication of their date. In jos plateau and in Lirue Hills to the north collections of materials characterized by 'facetted buts' of the prepared core techniques have been found in gravels work for tin and have been classified to belonging to the Middle Stone Age.

Whereas we do not know anything about the physical characteristics of the sangoan man, but it has been discovered that the Middle Stone Age man was either qualified as Homo sapiens or was far off it. The subspecies known as Homo sapiens rhodensiesis from Broken Hill, in Zambia was associated with the Middle Stone Age industry, but there are know record no skeletal remains dated to this period in West Africa.

The Late Stone Age

over the years in most African, late stone Age is characterized by the development of very small stone tools, called the 'microliths'. These are tiny pieces trimmed to be slotted into arrowshafts to form points and barbs and also used to make some other kinds of composite implement. It was believed that the creature in the Late Stone Age were the possessor of bow and haunting implement to form an important part of the economy

Along the northern margins of West Africa, in the sshel zone immediately south of the Sahara Desert, there was a somewhat different situations in the later part of the Late Stone Age, with ecological adaptation evidence in the material culture.

On the edge forest of the southern -eastern Nigerian Afikpo,a stratified deposit excavated from a rock -shelter contain pottery, ground stone axes and stone industry without microliths;a series of radicarbon dates gives their occupation as beginning about 3,000 B. C and lasting three thousand years. The waisted form of axes shows affinities with similar ones from south-eastern Nigeria.

The Late Stone Age Population

The skeletal remains have to be reasonably preserved,in order to determine their racial characteristics and because of range variation that occurs within any ethics group. It's desirable to have a series of skeletons rather than isolated specimen upon which to make judgement.

The remains of 58 individuals from the 30 Late Stone Age site in the Sahara, where bones tend to be better preserved. Only 8 sufficiently were well preserved for their racial characteristics to be pronounced upon; 5 were negroids, 1 was Mediterranean type, 2 were mixed typed. It does seem that the south cattle pastorslists were predominantly negroid. At about 3rd millennium B. C one skeleton of the group from Iwo Eleru in ondo state, and it was dated back to the beginning of the 9th millennium B. C. It was definitely negroid in character, although showing certain different from the modern Negro groups.

unfortunately, neither stone tools or skeletons tell us what language was spoken by their original owners. This is one of the difficulties of Archeology when dealing with pre-literate population; and it can be very dangerous to jump to conclusions about racial stocks and linguistic group on the basis of material remains alone, or to identify language or ethnic groups with certain assemblages of artifacts.

The Late Stone Age (Neolithic) population of the Sahara and the Nile Valley spoke language either of the Afro-Asiatic group (which include Egyptian,Berber,and Chadic language such as Hausa, Angas and Tera) or of the Nile-sahara group (which include Songhai, Kanuri, Nubian, and the Nilotic language). While the microlithic hunters/gatherers of the Nigerian savanna spoke language of the Niger-congo group (which include the majority of Nigerians language).

oral traditions do not have sufficient time-depth to help much with questions. The origin of the Fulani is instructive; they were the first instance a fairly typical negroid people in the valley of the middle Senegal practicing agriculture. They were infiltrated from the north by cattle keeping Berber group whose ancestors have been identified by some authority with pastoralistic shown on rocks painting in the Sahara. Although the infiltration was a gradual process which lasted for many centuries, as a result of which patorslists established a valuable relationship with the politically more advanced Fulani whose language (belonging to the West Atlantic section of Niger-Congo). The cattle Fulani spread over the whole savanna strip of the West Africa occupying as nomadic pastoralists.

**It is known that some occupants of some certain areas have probably occupied it approximately over two thousand years and in some cases longer. A little more than two thousand years ago there seems to be an explosive movement of Bantoid people from Cameron and eastern savanna area of Nigeria into the present Bantu-speaking area of Africa. The movement of Tiv in the opposite direction into the present territory may be a last ripple of the great movement which is still going on in the South Africa well into the nineteenth century.

Authored by @olusolaemmanuel

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