1000 BCE–1200 CE: (The Double Bell as Political Regalia — Commerce Generating Chiefdoms and Small States Along the Main Lines and Juncture Points of Congo Ba…

1000 BCE–1200 CE: (The Double Bell as Political Regalia — Commerce Generating Chiefdoms and Small States Along the Main Lines and Juncture Points of Congo Basin Trade Routes, Smiths Producing the Double Bell as Regalia for Rulers, Each Bell Emitting a Different Pitch Allowing the Carrier to Play the Tonal Sequence of Standard Political or Ritual Phrases in Bantu Two-Tone Languages, the Bells Spreading Across the Congo Basin in the First Millennium CE and by the Early Second Millennium as Far South as the Lands That Would Become Great Zimbabwe): Above and beyond its technological implications, the flange-welded double bell is historically significant for an additional reason: the spread of this implement reveals a political consequence of the rise of the Congo basin commercial links — namely, the emergence of chiefdoms and very small states along the main lines, and especially at juncture points, of the commercial connections of the first millennium BCE and first millennium CE. The smiths produced this item to serve as part of the regalia of the ruler of such a polity. Each bell of the pair had a different pitch, with one bell emitting a higher-pitched sound than the other. Because the Bantu languages are generally two-tone languages, any phrase or saying will present a particular sequence of high and low tones in its words. The carrier of the bells for a king or chief could therefore strike them so as to play the tonal sequence of the words in a standard saying or phrase that invoked political or ritual authority. The hearers, knowing the phrase well, would know from the pitch sequence of the striking of the bells just which phrase was being conveyed. As Jan Vansina has shown, the combined linguistic and archaeological evidence reveals that the double bells had already spread widely across the Congo basin during the first millennium CE and, by the very early second millennium, across the Zambezi basin as far south as the lands that were, in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, to become the empire of Great Zimbabwe. From the equatorial forest to the stone walls of Zimbabwe — the double bell traces a line of political authority that runs the entire length of central and southern Africa, carried along networks of trade that the standard narrative does not acknowledge exist.