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- West Africa is one of the most complex regions of the world,
linguistically speaking
- Three unrelated language phyla meet and interact there and there are
also traces of language isolates, i.e. languages of prior populations
- The geographical fragmentation of these language groups suggests
considerable movement and ‘layering’ in prehistory
- In principle it should be possible to correlate these with archaeology
- In practice, the density of archaeological sites is far too low to put
forward more than speculations
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- However, it is reasonable to map out the sequence of movements that have
resulted in the current ethnolinguistic map and to suggest their likely
historical layering
- It is also possible to link historical reconstructions of subsistence
items with, for example, to
establish whether a particular group was practising agriculture,
pastoralism and fisheries
- Ecological reconstruction makes it possible to draw up hypotheses about
the homeland of a particular group
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- Genetics has so far made little or no contribution to West African
prehistory but this may change in the future
- The presentation will focus on Nigeria, since it is already extremely
complex ethnolinguistically
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- Nigeria is one of the regions of Africa where three of its four language
phyla overlap and interact
- These are;
- Nilo-Saharan (Songhay, Saharan)
- Afroasiatic (Chadic, Semitic, Berber)
- Niger-Congo (Mande, Gur, Atlantic, Volta-Niger, Ijoid, Benue-Congo,
Adamawa, Ubangian)
- The Benue-Congo languages (which include Bantu) are the richest and most
numerous family, including Plateau, East and West Kainji, Cross River,
Dakoid, Mambiloid and other Bantoid, as well as Bantu proper (Jarawan
and Ekoid)
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- Nigeria has a single language isolate, the Jalaa or Cen Tuum language
spoken among the Cham in the Gombe area.
- Analysis so far suggests that it is unrelated to any other language in
the world and thus is probably a survival from the foraging period when
West Africa would have been occupied by small bands speaking a diverse
range of now disappeared languages
- Other language isolates are Laal (Chad) and Bangi Me (Mali)
- Evidence from Mali (Onjougou), Birimi (Ghana) and Shum Laka (Cameroun)
puts the settlement of West Africa by modern humans at least ca. 40,000
BP
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- The earliest occupation of what is now North-Central Nigeria must have
been that of Pleistocene foragers, and the only trace of these is the
Jalaa
- Nilo-Saharan speakers, probably fishing people, to judge by their
harpoon points, expanded across the ‘green Sahara’ ca. 10-8000 years ago
in pursuit of fish and other aquatic fauna
- Possibly cooking ‘fish soup’ in their newly acquired pottery
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- Gur-Adamawa speakers stretch from Burkina Faso to central Chad
- The extension of Ubangian languages reaches into southern Sudan
- Gur-Adamawa is highly internally divided and there are no convincing
proposals for reconstructions of agriculture
- These languages are not distributed along rivers, so this is an open
savannah-based expansion of foragers perhaps 6-8000 years ago
- They are likely to have bows and arrows and an array of microlithic
technology
- A continuous band of settlement was broken up by the northwards
expansion of Benue-Congo and then later Chadic languages
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- The Benue-Congo languages, including Plateau, Cross River, Kainji,
Jukunoid and other smaller groups predominate in the centre and east of
Nigeria
- They also gave rise to Bantoid and Bantu
- To account for their present distribution, the most likely initial point
of dispersal was the Niger-Benue confluence
- Reading back into the past from the probably dates of the Bantu expansion this must have been 6-7000
kya
- As with Gur-Adamawa, this is primarily a land-based expansion, although
on reaching Cross River, fisheries began to play a major role in
subsistence
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- The Chadic languages are spread between the Sudan border and western
Nigeria.
- The two branches in Nigeria are West and Central
- The expansion of West Chadic was probably 2-3000 years ago, but
certainly later than Benue-Congo
- Hausa underwent a secondary expansion of (? 1000 years ago) further
breaking up the Kainji and Plateau populations and pressing Adamawa languages southwards
- At the similar era there would have been a secondary expansion of Kanuri
cluster languages from north of Lake Chad
- Shuwa Arabs are likely to begin incursions into NE Nigeria in the 13th
century
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- The Ijo languages of the Niger Delta constitute a puzzle
- They are very close to one another but very different from the
surrounding languages
- They show links with languages up the Niger in Mali, and given their
fishing specialisation they probably migrated down the river some 3-4000
years ago
- They probably displaced Cross River speakers, since these are now
encapsulated with Ijo languages
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- The language subgroup known as ‘Volta-Niger’ or formerly ‘Eastern Kwa’
or ‘West Benue-Congo’ consists of Yoruboid, Nupoid, Igboid, Ewe etc.
- Its likely homeland was west of the Niger-Benue confluence
- Why it broke up and when remain unanswered questions, but it is
observable that all these languages have words for ‘market’, trade’,
‘profit’ etc. suggesting that the evolution of long-distance trade may
have played a role
- The Nupoid languages expanded northwards and have broken apart the two
branches of Kainji
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- The Bantu expansion is outside the general area of this paper.
- However, Bantoid and Bantu languages are part of the pattern of
Benue-Congo
- The Bantoid languages, which occupy the Grassfields of Cameroon and
areas along the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland are highly internally
diversified compared with Bantu and must thus be older
- The Bantu expansion is probably to be dated around 3500 BP, to judge by
the early appearance of pottery along rivers in Cameroun/Gabon
- Recent excavations (and finds of millet etc.) in Southern Cameroun
suggest we do not understand this environment as well as we had imagined
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- The Jarawan Bantu languages form a closely related cluster, stretching
from Northern Cameroun, into Adamawa and across into Plateau and Bauchi
- They are very closely related to Bantu, indeed to the A60 languages and
they have only not been treated as Bantu because their nominal prefixes
are now ‘frozen’ possibly due to contact with Chadic.
- However, on lexical grounds they should be treated as Bantu proper.
Their exclusion is typological rather than genetic
- But of course this does not explain the motivation for their
extraordinary migrations..
- Ekoid in SE Nigeria represents another early movement westwards from the
Bantu heartland
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- Mysterious middens some 3 km from Ibadan University were initially
thought to be comparable to the East African Oldowan, created by unknown
populations
- These have recently been investigated by archaeologists (Allsworth-Jones
2008)
- Acheulian hand-axes have now been re-identified as chocks for lorries to
stop them rolling down the hill
- MSA ‘choppers’ are now known to be ‘Flying Wheel’ knife blades imported
from China
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- To the organisers for inviting me to speak
- To the Kay Williamson Educational Foundation for partly sponsoring my
travel and expenses
- To all the many colleagues and villagers in Nigeria and elsewhere who
have helped me over the years
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