5000–3000 BCE onward: (Africa’s Agricultural Exports to Eurasia — A Large Number of Crops and One Animal of Northeastern African Origin Spreading in the Oppo…

5000–3000 BCE onward: (Africa’s Agricultural Exports to Eurasia — A Large Number of Crops and One Animal of Northeastern African Origin Spreading in the Opposite Direction Across Eurasia from 3000 BCE Onward, the Most Important Contribution Being the Donkey Because It Made Possible for the First Time the Long-Distance Overland Transport of Trade Goods and People and Because It May Have Served as the Model for the Similar Employment of the Horse and the Camel, Mesoamerican Crops Including Maize Beans and New Squash Varieties Reaching the Eastern Agricultural Complex of the Present-Day Eastern Central United States During the First Millennium BCE): The spread in the opposite direction of a large number of crops, and one animal — the donkey — of northeastern African origin, although beginning somewhat later between 5000 and 3000 BCE, extended more and more widely across Eurasia from 3000 BCE onward. The most important of those African contributions may have been the donkey, not only because it made possible, for the first time, the long-distance overland transport of trade goods and people, but because this animal may have served as the model for the similar employment of two other animals of major long-term historical significance: the horse and the camel. In the Americas, the spread of crops from Mesoamerica — notably maize, beans, and new varieties of squash — to the old independent Native American center of domestication, the Eastern Agricultural Complex of the present-day eastern central United States, took place rather later, during the first millennium BCE. The donkey is perhaps the most underappreciated animal in the history of civilization. Domesticated in Africa along the Red Sea Hills, this animal did not merely carry goods. It made trade possible across distances that human porters could not sustain. It made possible the caravan routes that would link Egypt to Mesopotamia, the Saharan trade routes that would connect West Africa to the Mediterranean. And if Ehret’s suggestion is correct — that the donkey served as the conceptual model for the similar employment of the horse and the camel — then Africa’s contribution to Eurasian transportation history is even more profound than the animal itself. The idea of using a domesticated animal as a beast of burden, of loading it with goods and sending it across long distances, may have been an African innovation that was then applied to other species in other regions. Africa did not merely domesticate the donkey. Africa may have invented the very concept of overland transport.