1000–800 BCE: (The Spread of Ironworking Eastward and Southward from the Central African Origin Zone, Iron-Smelting Knowledge Reaching Central Sudanic-Speaki…

1000–800 BCE: (The Spread of Ironworking Eastward and Southward from the Central African Origin Zone, Iron-Smelting Knowledge Reaching Central Sudanic-Speaking Peoples Near the Western Borders of Modern South Sudan, Then Spreading Eastward to Ancestral Nilotic-Speaking Societies Including the Bari, Nuer, and Dinka, and Southward to Bantu Peoples Newly Arriving at the Northwestern Edges of East Africa, with Historical Linguistic Evidence from Iron Terminology Proving That South Sudan Received the Technology from the West and Not from Meroë to the North): By no later than 1000 to 800 BCE, the knowledge and methods of iron smelting had reached as far east across today’s Central African Republic as the communities speaking languages of the Central Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan family, who resided in the lands around the western borders of modern-day South Sudan. Detailed mapping of the spread of the relevant terminologies, not just for iron and the forging process but for early iron tools and implements, reveals that this technology spread in the very early first millennium BCE from the Central Sudanic-speaking peoples both eastward to the ancestral Nilotic-speaking societies of South Sudan and southward to the Bantu peoples newly arriving during this period at the northwestern edges of East Africa. Here is where historical linguistics does work that archaeology alone cannot. The spread of words relating to iron and ironworking from the Central Sudanic peoples to the ancestors of such modern-day Nilotic peoples as the Bari, Nuer, and Dinka of South Sudan, including a word for the smith’s anvil and two terms for the bellows for heating the forge, make it clear that this technology reached South Sudan from the Central African Republic to the west, and not from Meroë to the north. The direction of technological diffusion, traced through the words people borrowed to describe it, runs west to east, not north to south. The old Meroë-as-source theory, already weakened by chronology, is here demolished by linguistics. This is exactly the kind of correlative evidence, combining archaeology with historical linguistic reconstruction, that Ehret has been building his case on throughout Ancient Africa: A Global History.