1–1500 CE: (Throwing Knives as a Second Product of Advanced Iron-Forging Technology — Complex Weapons Composed of Several Forged Blades Welded Together, Poss…

1–1500 CE: (Throwing Knives as a Second Product of Advanced Iron-Forging Technology — Complex Weapons Composed of Several Forged Blades Welded Together, Possibly Originating in the Darfur Region of Sudan, Achieving an Even Wider Distribution Than the Double Bells Over the Course of the First and Second Millennia CE, Spreading to Peoples Along the Ubangi River and Far Beyond): An additional new set of items representative of this particular technological advance was throwing knives, composed often of several forged blades welded together into one complex weapon. The earliest throwing knives may have been made in the Darfur region of the modern-day country of Sudan, but over the course of the first and second millennia CE this kind of implement came to have a much wider distribution than even the double bells, spreading to peoples along the Ubangi River and far beyond. Like the double bell, the throwing knife is a product that could only be made by a smith who had mastered the advanced techniques of the second iron age — sheet forging, welding, and the joining of multiple components into a single functional object. And like the double bell, its distribution maps the reach of the Congo basin commercial networks, tracing in metal the same routes that were carrying goods, animals, words, and political ideas across the heart of the continent. These were not isolated artifacts. They were products of a connected world, manufactured for markets that stretched across thousands of kilometers of equatorial and southern Africa, and their spread is material proof of the commercial revolution that Ehret has been documenting throughout this chapter.