1000–700 BCE: (The Independent Invention of Iron Smelting in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ironworking Already Well Established by 1000 to 700 BCE at Sites Extending f…

1000–700 BCE: (The Independent Invention of Iron Smelting in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ironworking Already Well Established by 1000 to 700 BCE at Sites Extending from East to West Across the African Savannas, the Nok Culture of North-Central Nigeria Dating to the Eighth or Ninth Century BCE, the Southwestern Chad Basin, Smelting Furnaces in Rwanda Dating to the Mid-Eighth Century BCE Excavated by Marie-Claude Van Grunderbeek, and the Conclusion That Africans Living Well South in the Continent Must Have Independently Invented Ironworking): Already by 1000 to 700 BCE, even before the Phoenician settlement at Carthage, ironworking was well established not only more than 1,500 kilometers farther south in Africa, but at locales extending from east to west across the African savannas. The farthest west of these sites, dating to the eighth or ninth century BCE, were in the lands of the Nok culture of north-central Nigeria. Other sites dating as early have been found in the nearby southwestern Chad basin. And far away to the east, in Rwanda, the archaeologist Marie-Claude Van Grunderbeek and her team excavated smelting furnaces dating to as early as the mid-eighth century BCE. Think about what that means geographically. We are talking about ironworking sites spread across thousands of kilometers of sub-Saharan Africa, contemporaneous with or earlier than the supposed points of diffusion along the continent’s northern fringe. There is no plausible diffusion route that explains how ironworking could have traveled from Anatolia to north-central Nigeria or Rwanda before it reached Carthage. The chronological evidence shows conclusively, as Ehret puts it, that Africans living well south in the African continent must have independently invented ironworking. Not borrowed it. Not received it. Invented it. This is the technology that would transform African agriculture, warfare, and political organization for the next two thousand years, and the peoples of the savannas developed it on their own.