Archaic West Africa
(1st millenium B.C.)

1. A midden at Agorass in-Tast contains the nearly complete skeleton of a short-horn domestic cow (ca. 3810 B.C.). By 2000 B.C., the region was too dry to support pastoralism, and people moved to the southern savannah area. As a result of economic intensification, by the end of the second millenium at the edge of the forest in West Africa agriculture appeared.

2. Although little work has been done, what little evidence there is suggests the emergence of cultivation of crops such as cereals, yams and palm oil, in the 2nd millenium B.C. where savannah meets forest. This excavation at Kintampo, Ghana, dates to about middle of that era. Here were villages consisting of substantial wattle-and-daub houses, pottery, and evidence of a broad spectrum economy that probably included agriculture. Here is a sandstone query factory that suggests cereals were an important part of the diet.