Copper artifacts recovered from Nubia provide the earliest known evidence of metal smelting in sub-Saharan Africa, dating back sometime after 4000 B.C.E. – they were most likely imports from Egypt.
People started to cultivate yams, rather than digging up wild ones, as long as 10,000 years ago in both Africa and Asia, and some time later in the New World.
Ounjougou has yielded the earliest pottery found in Africa, and is believed to be one of the earliest regions (along with East Asia) in which the independent development of pottery occurred.
Archaeological studies have found that early human settlers arrived in West Africa around 12,000 B.C.E.
The San peoples, also known as the Bushmen, are members of various indigenous hunter-gatherer groups that are the first nations of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa.
Around 43,000 years ago, early humans carved the first tally marks into bone, inventing the earliest known numeral systems. This brilliant shift toward abstract mathematics allowed our ancestors to track lunar cycles and inventory resources. It laid the vital groundwork for modern mathematics, commerce, and advanced human societal planning.
This simple, yet revolutionary, tool required a unique combination of ingenuity: the abstract understanding of biomechanics, the planning depth to anticipate seasonal resources, and the skilled craftsmanship of complex composite tools. The earliest examples of this innovation, the Semliki harpoons, were unearthed at an archaeological site near the Semliki River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
All mitochondrial genomes today should be traceable to a single woman, a ‘Mitochondrial Eve’. This woman, the researchers concluded, probably lived in Africa around 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
Southern Africa was first reached by Homo sapiens before 130,000 years ago, possibly before 260,000 years ago.
