In East Africa, archeologists have unearthed evidences of true Neolithic cultures only in western Kenya, adjacent northern Tanganyika, and central Uganda. Elsewhere the Iron Age appears to have followed Paleolithic cultures without any intervening transition. The discoveries in Uganda may engage our attention first, since we have the least information on this area. Wayland (1934) and Lanning (1953) have reported a considerable number of extremely impressive prehistoric earthworks in the vicinity of the equator in central Uganda. They include artificial reservoirs, one of which exceeds 300 feet in length; earth dams for impounding water for irrigation; deep shafts of unknown purpose; and extensive systems of trenches, averaging as much as 15 feet in width and 11 feet in depth, which seem clearly to have served as fortifications, since they are sometimes concentric. With them are associated pit dwellings and middens containing the bones of cattle and game animals.
The construction of the earthworks must have required a mass organization of labor. The fortifications remind us forcefully of the massive defense systems of the Sidamo states, the more so since the Sidamo peoples also practice irrigated agriculture. Moreover, nowhere in East Africa are Negro peoples, either Bantu or Nilotic, known to have built structures even remotely comparable to these. Cole (1954) therefore seems justified in attributing the remains to “a Hamitic tribe that arrived from the north and apparently established an empire in Uganda.” These people can only have been Western Cushites of the Sidamo group, not only for the reasons advanced above but also because of the remarkable detailed resemblances between the political system of the modern Ganda (see Chapter 45) and the Kafa state of southwestern Ethiopia (see Chapter 23). We can, therefore, safely postulate a prehistoric expansion of the Western Cushites into central Uganda, though unfortunately we as yet lack any information on its approximate date.
Much richer information on the East African Neo lithic culture comes from western Kenya. Here unmistakable evidences of agriculture and domesticated animals begin to appear in the late habitation sites of the Caucasoid bearers of the Stone Bowl culrure . The Njoro River Cave, for example, has yielded stone pestles, grindstones, and gourd fragments as evidences of agriculture, as well as stone bowls, obsidian blades, and pottery akin to those in remains of earlier date. It also contained beads of agate, chalcedony, and amazon stone allegedly resembling those found in prehistoric Egypt and Nubia. The remains of cattle and sheep appear in Gumban sites of about the same age. Archeologists have estimated the date of these deposits as about 850 B.C., but indirect evidence suggests that this estimate may be too late by several centuries.
A new group of immigrants must. have brought these innovations, for leolithic remains are no longer confined to the narrow rift valley but begin to appear throughout the mountainous region of western Kenya and adjacent Tanganyika, an area bounded by Mounts Kenya and Kilimanjaro in the east, Mount Elgon and Lake Vicroria in the west, and Lakes Eyasi and Manyara in the south. Prominent among these remains are stone-walled habitation enclosures, pit dwellings, menhirs, stone-faced cultivation terraces, irrigation ditches, and graded r oads with a predominantly north-south orientation. They give evidence of a relatively dense population practicing an intensive form of agriculture coupled with animal husbandry. In the main, however, the sites are confined to elevated locations with substantial precipitation. The semiarid intervening country continued to be occupied, apparently, only by Bushmanoid hunters and gatherers with cultures of the Stillbay complex.
The construction of the earthworks must have required a mass organization of labor. The fortifications remind us forcefully of the massive defense systems of the Sidamo states, the more so since the Sidamo peoples also practice irrigated agriculture. Moreover, nowhere in East Africa are Negro peoples, either Bantu or Nilotic, known to have built structures even remotely comparable to these. Cole (1954) therefore seems justified in attributing the remains to “a Hamitic tribe that arrived from the north and apparently established an empire in Uganda.” These people can only have been Western Cushites of the Sidamo group, not only for the reasons advanced above but also because of the remarkable detailed resemblances between the political system of the modern Ganda (see Chapter 45) and the Kafa state of southwestern Ethiopia (see Chapter 23). We can, therefore, safely postulate a prehistoric expansion of the Western Cushites into central Uganda, though unfortunately we as yet lack any information on its approximate date.
Much richer information on the East African Neo lithic culture comes from western Kenya. Here unmistakable evidences of agriculture and domesticated animals begin to appear in the late habitation sites of the Caucasoid bearers of the Stone Bowl culrure . The Njoro River Cave, for example, has yielded stone pestles, grindstones, and gourd fragments as evidences of agriculture, as well as stone bowls, obsidian blades, and pottery akin to those in remains of earlier date. It also contained beads of agate, chalcedony, and amazon stone allegedly resembling those found in prehistoric Egypt and Nubia. The remains of cattle and sheep appear in Gumban sites of about the same age. Archeologists have estimated the date of these deposits as about 850 B.C., but indirect evidence suggests that this estimate may be too late by several centuries.
A new group of immigrants must. have brought these innovations, for leolithic remains are no longer confined to the narrow rift valley but begin to appear throughout the mountainous region of western Kenya and adjacent Tanganyika, an area bounded by Mounts Kenya and Kilimanjaro in the east, Mount Elgon and Lake Vicroria in the west, and Lakes Eyasi and Manyara in the south. Prominent among these remains are stone-walled habitation enclosures, pit dwellings, menhirs, stone-faced cultivation terraces, irrigation ditches, and graded r oads with a predominantly north-south orientation. They give evidence of a relatively dense population practicing an intensive form of agriculture coupled with animal husbandry. In the main, however, the sites are confined to elevated locations with substantial precipitation. The semiarid intervening country continued to be occupied, apparently, only by Bushmanoid hunters and gatherers with cultures of the Stillbay complex.
