Pre-1000 BCE: (Locating the Origin Zone of African Ironworking, the Geographical Spread of Early Sites Making It Highly Probable That the Originators Lived S…

Pre-1000 BCE: (Locating the Origin Zone of African Ironworking, the Geographical Spread of Early Sites Making It Highly Probable That the Originators Lived Somewhere in the 1,500 Kilometers of Woodland Savanna Stretching Between Central Nigeria and the Farthest Northwestern Fringe of East Africa, the Vast Spread by Three Thousand Years Ago Indicating That Foundational Sites Likely Date Centuries Before 1000 BCE, and Two New Archaeological Finds at Ôboui in the Western Central African Republic Confirming These Expectations): The distribution of these early iron-smelting sites leads to two further salient expectations. First, the geographical spread makes it highly probable that the lands of the African originators of ironworking lay somewhere in the 1,500 kilometers of woodland savanna stretching between central Nigeria and the farthest northwestern fringe of East Africa. Second, the vast spread of these sites that had already occurred by nearly three thousand years ago indicates that the foundational earlier sites are likely to date centuries before 1000 BCE. The technology had to have been around long enough to spread that far. And in the past two decades, two new archaeological finds of even earlier African ironworking have come to light. Not at all surprisingly, their locations and dates fit squarely with these expectations about the likeliest areas of African ironworking invention. One of these sites is Ôboui, located in the western Central African Republic, sitting right in the predicted origin zone. What the archaeological record keeps doing, every time someone digs in the right place, is confirming what Ehret has been arguing in Ancient Africa: A Global History all along. The deeper you look, the earlier the dates become, and the more clearly the evidence points to independent African invention rather than diffusion from the north or east. The Anatolian-origin story for African iron is not just incomplete. It is contradicted by the evidence on the ground.