5500–3000 BCE: (Technological Innovation in the Age of Agricultural Exchange — This Period Also Being a Global Age of Notable New Technological Developments,…

5500–3000 BCE: (Technological Innovation in the Age of Agricultural Exchange — This Period Also Being a Global Age of Notable New Technological Developments, Histories Long Tending to Give Primary Attention to Metals as Seen in Terms Like Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, but Equally Important Being a Striking Set of Parallel and Independent Inventions Around the Globe of the First Loom Technologies for Weaving Fabrics, with Africans as the Earliest Contributors): The age of agricultural exchange was also a global period of notable new technological developments. Histories have long tended to give primary attention to the use of metals, as seen in the once-favored applications of terms such as Chalcolithic and Bronze Age to successive stages in the period of the sixth through third millennia BCE. But equally important, the period between 5500 and 3000 BCE was characterized by a striking set of parallel and independent inventions around the globe of the first loom technologies for weaving fabrics, with Africans as the earliest contributors to these advances. The bias toward metallurgy in the periodization of ancient history is itself revealing. By naming entire epochs after metals — Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age — the Western academy constructed a timeline that privileges the technologies in which the Near East and Europe excelled while rendering invisible the technologies in which Africa led. Weaving is at least as consequential as smelting for the history of human civilization — cloth is as fundamental as copper to the material conditions of complex society — but there is no “Textile Age” in the standard periodization, no epoch named for the loom. If there were, Africa would be recognized as the world leader in the earliest phase of that age, and the standard narrative of technological progress would look very different.