Discovery ‘shatters Iron Age theories’

Press, 11 October 1978, Page 4

Discovery ‘shatters Iron Age theories’

KUSAI KAMISA

By

Dar £s Salaam

The site of an advanced prehistoric culture, the oldest yet discovered in Africa south of the Sahara, has been uncovered in Tanzania’s West Lake Region at Lake Victoria.

Dr Peter Schmidt, pro» fessor of archaeology at Brown University in the United States, who confirmed the discovery, has said life in the area has been dated to as early as 500 8.C., making it one of the earliest Iron Age habitations in Africa.

The site is near a new port being built at Kemondo Bay on Lake Victoria. It was discovered by a Tanzanian worker while a road was being built.

“If it had not been for this man’s keen eyes, the priceless knowledge contained in this site about early Iron Age technology would have been lost forever to the bulldozers,” Dr Schmidt said.

Much of the site had already been destroyed by the road construction, but archaeologists were still able to excavate at least 13 early smelting furnaces,

several large refuse pits filled with industrial debris and an early Iron Age house made of mud and poles.

Professor Schmidt said that these finds make the site one of the major early Iron Age industrial sites known on the African continent. He said that the numerous industrial sites which had so far been spotted and the apparent high density of settlements suggested that the area had one of the biggest and most prosperous populations anywhere in the world, 1000 to 2500 years ago. He has been doing prehistoric research in the West Lake Region for the last three years with Tanzanian and American stu» dents. But it was not until last year that extensive industrial remains dating to the early Iron Age — which spans 1000 to 2500 years ago — were discovered.

Earlier finds several places in Tanzania had indicated that early Iron Age communities with iron technology and agriculture lived there in the first century A.D. and from 300 to 500 A.D. The assumption by pre-histo-rians that these and sev-

eral other sites were the earliest Iron Age technological activities in Africa south of the Sahara tended to support the “diffusion theory” that the Menroe culture of the Sudan and the North culture of Nigeria were the origins of this technology. The Tanzania National Scientific Research Coui> cil and the Ministry of National Culture and Youth have given Dr Schmidt’s work full support, with an offer of any possible Government aid towards the continuing West Lake project.

Mr Amniel Mturi, the director of Antiquities in Tanzania and an active ar« chaeologist, has said that Dr Schmidt’s West Lake discovery has international implications. “It puts the whole question of African pre-history back to square one, because it has shattered virtually all the theories about African cultural development.

“It shatters theories that Africa south of the Sahara was stagnant culturally after the Stone Age.”

Mr Mturi said there was also need to reconsider the “diffusion model” that the early Iron Age Menroe

culture of the Sudan and the North culture of Nigeria were “springingpoints" for any such later cultures in eastern and southern Africa.

“The theory is no longer tenable, because the West Lake discovery is broadly contemporary with both Menroe and the North cultures. I think we will have to look for another explanation, because independent development cannot be ruled out,” he said.

Theorists had also asscm ciated the early Iron Age technology in this part of Africa with the first appearance on the scene of the Bantu-speaking tribes.

Linguistic evidence indicates that these people, who now form the majority in the region, have a common origin between Zaire and the Camerocms, Mr Mturi challenges this too becauss apparently there is no evidence that the Bantu’s original ancestors had early Iron Age technology. They could have picked it up along their migratory routes, he said.

Meanwhile, Dr Schmidt and his team continue to excavate the earth of the West Lake Region for mure startling evidence.