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2	Background 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
3	Background 2 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
4	Background 3 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
5	Nigeria: meeting place of three of Africa’s language phyla 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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7	Jalaa 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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9	Historical schema I 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
10	Harpoon points and Nilo-Saharan
11	Early Nilo-Saharans in Nigeria
12	Historical schema II 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
13	The Gur-Adamawa expansion
14	Historical schema III 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
15	The Benue-Congo expansion
16	Historical schema IV 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 13^th century
17	Chadic and later expansions
18	Historical schema V 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
19	Ijo movement from the northern Niger
20	Historical schema VI 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
21	The Volta-Niger expansion
22	The Bantu expansion 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
23	Jarawan Bantu 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
24	Migrations of the Jarawan Bantu
25	Historical schema VII 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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27	THANKS 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