Agriculture: Why wasn’t Africa first?

As long as humans have existed, some have always lived in Africa. We evolved in Africa over the past 3.5 million years. Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Australopithecus are just a few of our ancestors. They existed long before our species, Homo sapiens, arose about 250,000 to 300,000 years ago.

Africa is the cradle of humanity and our first home. In fact, human beings are a very closely related family. DNA testing tells us that a disaster 74,000 years ago reduced the human population to a few thousand. (The super-eruption of a volcano in Indonesia may have been the catastrophic event.) That was 10,000 years before the biggest human migration out of Africa. As a result, humans arose from a relatively small group of ancestors.

The Fertile Crescent of the Middle East developed agriculture first, in about 9000 BCE. China and New Guinea followed in 7000 BCE. For thousands of years, the only part of Africa to farm was Egypt, a part of the Fertile Crescent. All of Africa south of the Sahara Desert continued hunting and gathering until approximately 3000 BCE. Why did sub-Saharan Africans continue to forage when societies in other parts of the world were turning to farming? Why didn’t the first farms and first cities emerge in sub-Saharan Africa? Such questions lead to deeper explorations of Africa’s history.

African “fine tuning”

Scientists generally believe that Africans turned to agriculture later precisely because their home was the cradle of our species. For millions of years, pre-humans such as Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and the Neanderthals evolved alongside native African animals. Animals need generations to adapt their instincts to humans and increase their chances of escape. African animals had a lot of time for that adaptation. They therefore were much more difficult to domesticate. Domesticating animals is one of the first key steps in becoming an agricultural society. That’s also why there is so much megafauna (large mammals) still in Africa. In Australia and the Americas, many of these larger species were wiped out when humans suddenly arrived. Unlike animals in Africa, they had not adapted to the human threat.

Humans also needed time to adapt to their environment. They evolved in Africa as foragers, and were successful at it for millions of years. Over many generations, humans adapted to their environment. They became an intricate part of the ecosystem. Thus, over long stretches of evolutionary time, human communities had learned to live as foragers with Africa, and Africa had learned to live with humans. But in other areas of the world, humans turned up suddenly. This abrupt appearance meant that they were not as good at foraging in those regions, and they caused rapid change, including the extinction of species. Therefore, the people in those regions were forced to turn to farming and pastoralism to survive.

“Gardens of Eden” and the “trap of sedentism”

Life as an early farmer was hard. Humans only stopped foraging when they became stuck in one place, sometimes called the “trap of sedentism.”

Farming required a great deal of work. One estimate is that a farmer needed to work 9.5 hours a day. In contrast a forager only needed to work 6. Early farming brought more disease, worse nutrition, and worse health. Farm communities were more vulnerable to weather and natural disasters. People chose the way of life that increased their chances for survival. For instance, we know that for a long time, foraging communities in the Kalahari Desert in Southwest Africa knew about farming but didn’t adopt it. Why would anyone adopt a way of life that was less healthy, took more work, and generally was much more miserable than foraging?

Another factor contributing to the long absence of agriculture in Africa is the lack of so-called “Gardens of Eden.” These are areas so lush and filled with life that foragers would settle there and could survive for a generation or so. Once settled, their populations would grow. They would exhaust the wild food supplies on the land and would have to learn to farm. Being forced to give up nomadic ways in order to farm is falling into the “trap of sedentism.” In Africa, there weren’t many, if any, “Gardens of Eden.” So humans roamed from region to region as foragers for hundreds of thousands of years. They entered one area, used its resources, then moved on. Meanwhile, the previously used area naturally replenished over time.

Finally, Africa is a beautiful and diverse continent, but it also contains many challenging environments. The north has the harsh Sahara, which makes farming unlikely. The desert also cut off networks of communication with earlier farming societies. In fact, sub-Saharan Africans had to come up with farming independently. Farming in this region probably began in West Africa about 3000 BCE. It started in the fairly lush savannah on the border between present-day Nigeria and Cameroon. Is it possible there actually was a “Garden of Eden” there to “trap” people into early farming? It’s not certain. The continent also holds many dense forests that would be very difficult for foragers to clear, settle, and farm. Finally, diseases also had evolved alongside humans in Africa. Under the circumstances, it was a successful strategy for humans to keep moving rather than settle down and farm.

The independent origin of African agriculture

The people of West Africa began adopting some farming practices such as domesticating cattle. However, their efforts to domesticate plants in this area were slow. Eventually, West Africans began to settle and grow their food full-time. From 3000 BCE to 1000 BCE, the practice of farming spread across West Africa. These early farmers grew millet and sorghum (plants used for grain and fodder). Later, they began planting a special strain of rice native to Africa. They cultivated tubers (root vegetables), yams, cowpeas, and oil palms. They also tended all sorts of fruits and melons.

Early West African farming methods used crops only native to Africa. It indicates that farmers in West Africa did not learn farming from elsewhere. It seems to be one of the few regions of the world that started farming independently.

The Spread of Agriculture in Sub- Saharan Africa, 1000 BCE to 500 CE

Sub-Saharan Africans enjoyed the advantages of foraging for a long time. Even after West Africans began to farm, agricultural practices were slow to spread to other parts of the continent. It wasn’t until 1000 BCE to 500 CE that people in most of sub-Saharan Africa started farming. This is considerably later than other regions of the world.

Nor is it clear that Africa’s journey into the agrarian era was entirely one of progress. On one hand, agriculture seems to be necessary for the building of large, technologically advanced societies. Because they developed agriculture later, some African societies were at a disadvantage when they encountered outside cultures in the Common Era (CE). European and Islamic traders and colonists used this advantage to their benefit. On the other hand, communities of sub-Saharan foragers were successful for thousands of years. They enjoyed healthier, more peaceful lives than agricultural societies elsewhere. Even after farming took root, large areas of Africa escaped the problems farming societies face. In short, it took longer for cruel kings and empires to establish their dominance.