8500–8000 BCE: (Africa’s Fourth-Earliest Invention of Ceramics in the World, Created by Nilo-Saharan-Speaking Peoples in the Southern Half of the Eastern Sah…

8500–8000 BCE: (Africa’s Fourth-Earliest Invention of Ceramics in the World, Created by Nilo-Saharan-Speaking Peoples in the Southern Half of the Eastern Sahara, 3,000 Kilometers East of Mali, Not Attributable to Diffusion from West Africa, with Distinct Decorative Motifs and an East-to-West Spread Pattern, and the Staggering Implication That Africa Independently Invented Ceramics Twice, Both Times Long Before the Near East or Europe): Not just the third-earliest, but also the fourth-earliest invention of ceramic technology in the world took place in Africa. People living 3,000 kilometers east of Mali, in the southern half of the eastern Sahara, began to fashion ceramic ware almost as early, during the ninth and eighth millennia BCE. And this second African creation of ceramic technology, as our knowledge now stands, is not attributable to diffusion from the West African center of invention. Everywhere, this second tradition occurs in regions where people have for millennia spoken not Niger-Congo languages but languages of a second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan. The ceramic wares of this tradition share a common set of decorative motifs whose arrangements are distinct from those of the earliest pottery of the Niger-Congo-speaking areas farther west. The overall evidence indicates that this separate Nilo-Saharan ceramic technology spread from the east westward into the regions between modern-day Sudan and Mali. So let us be very clear about what Ehret is documenting in Ancient Africa: A Global History. Africans living deep in Africa twice separately invented ceramic technology, long before the appearance of ceramics in the Middle East. In the case of the ancient peoples of Mali, we are talking about at least three millennia before the Middle East, and four millennia before this technology began to spread from the Middle East westward to the eastern parts of Europe. Two independent African inventions of a foundational technology. Both predating the civilizations that the standard curriculum treats as the origins of everything.