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118-576: Collections The Library collection comprises over 20,000 books published worldwide, with an additional 10,000 volumes of periodicals, including current subscriptions to 200 journals. Subject strengths include the art and material culture of West Africa , Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya ( Indonesia ), and Precolumbian Mexico and Peru , with extensive holdings in related disciplines such as anthropology, ethnology, and archaeology. The library routinely collects exhibition and auction sales catalogs, as well as academic theses and dissertations. WATSONLINE,

236-455: A bead from the 5th millennium BC found in Iran and spear tips and ornaments from ancient Egypt and Sumer around 4000 BC. These early uses appear to have been largely ceremonial or decorative. Meteoric iron is very rare, and the metal was probably very expensive, perhaps more expensive than gold . The early Hittites are known to have bartered iron (meteoric or smelted) for silver , at

354-611: A fertility statuette, created in the region of Senegambia , and may be associated with the emergence of complexly organized pastoral societies in West Africa between 4000 BCE and 1000 BCE. Though possibly developed as early as 5000 BCE, Nsibidi may have also developed in 2000 BCE, as evidenced by depictions of the West African script on Ikom monoliths at Ikom , in Nigeria . Migration of Saharan peoples south of

472-518: A Dutch writer, describing Benin in his book Description of Africa (1668) ". Its craft was the most adored and treasured bronze casting in the history of Africa. It was annexed by the British Empire in 1897 during the invasion and scramble of Africa. Portuguese traders began establishing settlements along the coast in 1445, followed by the French , English , Spanish , Danish and Dutch ;

590-522: A commercial scale, having been displaced by the functionally equivalent mild or low-carbon steel. Iron was extracted from iron–nickel alloys , which comprise about 6% of all meteorites that fall on the Earth . That source can often be identified with certainty because of the unique crystalline features ( Widmanstätten patterns ) of that material, which are preserved when the metal is worked cold or at low temperature. Those artifacts include, for example,

708-985: A complex process of "pre-heating" allowing temperatures inside a furnace to reach 1300 to 1400 °C. Iron and copper working spread southward through the continent, reaching the Cape around AD 200. The widespread use of iron revolutionized the Bantu -speaking farming communities who adopted it, driving out and absorbing the rock tool using hunter-gatherer societies they encountered as they expanded to farm wider areas of savanna . The technologically superior Bantu-speakers spread across southern Africa and became wealthy and powerful, producing iron for tools and weapons in large, industrial quantities. The earliest records of bloomery-type furnaces in East Africa are discoveries of smelted iron and carbon in Nubia that date back between

826-570: A crucible and heated until the iron melted and absorbed the carbon. Iron chain was used in Indian suspension bridges as early as the 4th century. Wootz steel was produced in India and Sri Lanka from around 300 BC. Wootz steel is famous from Classical Antiquity for its durability and ability to hold an edge. When asked by King Porus to select a gift, Alexander is said to have chosen, over gold or silver , thirty pounds of steel. Wootz steel

944-552: A few, probably ornamental, bronze weapons. During the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD), the government established ironworking as a state monopoly, repealed during the latter half of the dynasty and returned to private entrepreneurship , and built a series of large blast furnaces in Henan province, each capable of producing several tons of iron per day. By this time, Chinese metallurgists had discovered how to fine molten pig iron, stirring it in

1062-635: A fisheries regulations Act in 2010 and installed a satellite-based monitoring system and Senegal enacted a fisheries code in 2015. In Cape Verde, the fishermen communities of Palmiera and Santa Maria have organized themselves to protect fishing zones. Mozambique finally created a conservation area, including a coastline. West Africa, broadly defined to include the western portion of the Maghreb ( Western Sahara , Morocco , Algeria , and Tunisia ), occupies an area in excess of 6,140,000 km , or approximately one-fifth of Africa. The vast majority of this land

1180-421: A new era of greatly increased use of iron and steel that some contemporaries described as a new "Iron Age". In the late 1850s Henry Bessemer invented a new steelmaking process which involved blowing air through molten pig-iron to burn off carbon, and so producing mild steel. This and other 19th-century and later steel-making processes have displaced wrought iron . Today, wrought iron is no longer produced on

1298-653: A rate of 40 times the iron's weight, with Assyria in the first centuries of the second millennium BC . Meteoric iron was also fashioned into tools in the Arctic when the Thule people of Greenland began making harpoons , knives, ulus and other edged tools from pieces of the Cape York meteorite . Typically pea-size bits of metal were cold-hammered into disks and fitted to a bone handle. These artifacts were also used as trade goods with other Arctic peoples: tools made from

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1416-609: A reduction furnace and blacksmith workshop; with earliest dates of 896–773 BC and 907–796 BC respectively. Similarly, smelting in bloomery-type furnaces appear in the Nok culture of central Nigeria by about 550 BC and possibly a few centuries earlier. There is also evidence that carbon steel was made in Western Tanzania by the ancestors of the Haya people as early as 2,300 to 2,000 years ago (about 300 BC or soon after) by

1534-693: A renowned scholar in both modern and African art. His Primitivism in Modern Art , initially published in 1938, was the pioneering study of the subject. Hours and Access The Goldwater Library's collections are available to researchers by request in the Watson Library. Materials will be paged from the Goldwater Library twice a day, Monday through Friday, for use in Watson during Watson Library hours. Museum visitors intending only to use

1652-612: A result of increasing aridification of the Green Sahara , Central Saharan hunter-gatherers and cattle herders may have used seasonal waterways as the migratory route taken to the Niger River and Chad Basin of West Africa. In 2000 BCE, " Thiaroye Woman", also known as the " Venus of Thiaroye", may have been the earliest statuette created in Sub-Saharan West Africa; it may have particularly been

1770-511: A result of the forging process. There was no fundamental change in the technology of iron production in Europe for many centuries. European metal workers continued to produce iron in bloomeries. However, the Medieval period brought two developments—the use of water power in the bloomery process in various places (outlined above), and the first European production in cast iron. Sometime in

1888-617: A rich array of biomes , from biodiversity-rich tropical forests to drylands supporting rare and endangered fauna such as pangolins , rhinoceros , and elephants . Because of the pressure for economic development, many of these ecologies are threatened by processes like deforestation , biodiversity loss , overfishing , pollution from mining , plastics and other industries, and extreme changes resulting from climate change in West Africa . The history of West Africa can be divided into five major periods: first, its prehistory, in which

2006-601: A shortage of bronze or tin in the Early Iron Age. Bronze objects remained abundant, and these objects have the same percentage of tin as those from the Late Bronze Age. The history of ferrous metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent began in the 2nd millennium BC. Archaeological sites in the Gangetic plains have yielded iron implements dated between 1800 and 1200 BC. By the early 13th century BC, iron smelting

2124-554: A subgroup of the Igbo people. The Kingdom of Nri was unusual in the history of world government in that its leader exercised no military power over his subjects. The kingdom existed as a sphere of religious and political influence over a third of Igboland and was administered by a priest-king called an Eze Nri . The Eze Nri managed trade and diplomacy on behalf of the Nri people and possessed divine authority in religious matters. The Oyo Empire

2242-572: Is a knife blade from the Catacomb culture in present-day Ukraine, dated to c. 2500 BC. During most of the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Europe, iron was present, though scarce. It was used for personal ornaments and small knives, for repairs on bronzes, and for bimetallic items. Early smelted iron finds from central Europe include an iron knife or sickle from Ganovce in Slovakia, possibly dating from

2360-497: Is a transnational highway project to link 12 West African coastal states, from Mauritania in the north-west of the region to Nigeria in the east, with feeder roads already existing to two landlocked countries, Mali and Burkina Faso . The eastern end of the highway terminates at Lagos , Nigeria . Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) consider its western end to be Nouakchott , Mauritania , or to be Dakar , Senegal , giving rise to these alternative names for

2478-458: Is estimated at 419 million people as of 2021, and at 381,981,000 as of 2017, of which 189,672,000 were female and 192,309,000 male. The region is demographically and economically one of the fastest growing on the African continent. Early history in West Africa includes a number of prominent regional powers that dominated different parts of both the coastal and internal trade networks, such as

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2596-579: Is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores in the region from Greece to India, The use of wrought iron (worked iron) was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread defined the Iron Age . During the medieval period, smiths in Europe found a way of producing wrought iron from cast iron , in this context known as pig iron , using finery forges . All these processes required charcoal as fuel . By

2714-660: Is not known, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing metal extracted from nickel-containing ores from hot-worked meteoritic iron. The archaeological evidence seems to point to the Middle East area, during the Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. However, wrought iron artifacts remained a rarity until the 12th century BC. The Iron Age is conventionally defined by the widespread replacement of bronze weapons and tools with those of iron and steel. That transition happened at different times in different places, as

2832-625: Is plains lying less than 300 meters above sea level, though isolated high points exist in numerous states along the southern shore of West Africa. Benin Burkina Faso The Gambia Ghana Guinea-Bissau Guinea Ivory Coast Liberia Mali Mauritania Nigeria Niger Senegal Sierra Leone Togo The northern section of West Africa (narrowly defined to exclude

2950-636: Is rather brittle and unsuitable for striking implements. It can be decarburized to steel or wrought iron by heating it in air for several days. In China, these iron working methods spread northward, and by 300 BC, iron was the material of choice throughout China for most tools and weapons. A mass grave in Hebei province, dated to the early 3rd century BC, contains several soldiers buried with their weapons and other equipment. The artifacts recovered from this grave are variously made of wrought iron, cast iron, malleabilized cast iron, and quench-hardened steel, with only

3068-463: Is rather majestic and looks like a huge phallus and a deformed animal or thing is protruding from it. It is said to be the dwelling place of a pangool . Ngoye njuli is protected by the Senegalese authorities and attracts visitors. In West Africa, as in other parts of Africa where the baobab tree is found, the leaves are mixed with couscous and eaten, the bark of the tree is used to make ropes, and

3186-586: Is some uncertainty, some archaeologists believe that iron metallurgy was developed independently in sub-Saharan Africa (possibly in West Africa). Inhabitants of Termit, in eastern Niger , smelted iron around 1500 BC. In the region of the Aïr Mountains in Niger there are also signs of independent copper smelting between 2500 and 1500 BC. The process was not in a developed state, indicating smelting

3304-430: Is the westernmost region of Africa . The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin , Burkina Faso , Cape Verde , The Gambia , Ghana , Guinea , Guinea-Bissau , Ivory Coast , Liberia , Mali , Mauritania , Niger , Nigeria , Senegal , Sierra Leone , and Togo , as well as Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha ( United Kingdom Overseas Territory ). The population of West Africa

3422-633: The African slave trade began not long after, which over the following centuries would debilitate the region's economy and population. The slave trade also encouraged the formation of states such as the Bono State , Bambara Empire and Dahomey , whose economic activities include but not limited to exchanging slaves for European firearms . In the early 19th century, a series of Fulani reformist jihads swept across Western Africa. The most notable include Usman dan Fodio 's Fulani Empire , which replaced

3540-560: The Benue Trough , and others on a line running from Mount Cameroon to Lake Chad . Colonial boundaries are reflected in the modern boundaries between contemporary West African states, cutting across ethnic and cultural lines, often dividing single ethnic groups between two or more states. In contrast to most of Central, Southern, and Southeast Africa, West Africa is not populated by Bantu -speaking peoples. The West African region can be divided into four climatic sub-regions namely

3658-510: The Furness district of England, powered bloomeries were in use into the beginning of the 18th century, and near Garstang until about 1770. The Catalan Forge was a variety of powered bloomery. Bloomeries with hot blast were used in upstate New York in the mid-19th century. The preferred method of iron production in Europe until the development of the puddling process in 1783–84. Cast iron development lagged in Europe because wrought iron

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3776-727: The Hausa city-states, Seku Amadu 's Massina Empire , which defeated the Bambara, and El Hadj Umar Tall 's Toucouleur Empire , which briefly conquered much of modern-day Mali. However, the French and British continued to advance in the Scramble for Africa , subjugating kingdom after kingdom. With the fall of Samory Ture's established Wassoulou Empire in 1898 and the Ashanti queen Yaa Asantewaa in 1902, most West African military resistance to colonial rule resulted in failure. Part of

3894-651: The La Tène culture saw a significant increase in iron production, with iron metallurgy also becoming common in southern Scandinavia. North of Sweden saw steel manufacturing dating back to around 0 AD through the eastern-western migration of hunter-gatherers in the Cap of the North . The spread of ironworking in Central and Western Europe is associated with Celtic expansion. Celtic smiths produced steel from circa 800 BC as part of

4012-522: The Mali and Gao Empires . West Africa sat at the intersection of trade routes between Arab -dominated North Africa and further south on the continent, the source of specialized goods such as gold , advanced iron-working , and ivory . After European exploration encountered rich local economies and kingdoms, the Atlantic slave trade built on already existing slave systems to provide labor for colonies in

4130-751: The Senegambia region (Senegal and the Gambia) used to have a diverse wildlife including lions , hippopotamus , elephants , antelopes , leopards etc. However, during colonization, the European colonizers such as the French and British killed most of the wildlife particularly the lions, using their body parts as trophies. By the turn of the 20th century, the Senegambia region had lost most of its lion population and other exotic animals due to poaching . By

4248-459: The forest-savanna region, were ultimately acculturated and admixed into the larger groups of West African agriculturalists , akin to the migratory Bantu -speaking agriculturalists and their encounters with Central African hunter-gatherers . The development of the region's economy allowed more centralized states and civilizations to form, beginning with Dhar Tichitt that began in 1600 B.C. followed by Djenné-Djenno beginning in 300 B.C. This

4366-417: The iron oxide from the ore to metallic iron. The bloomery, however, was not hot enough to melt the iron, so the metal collected in the bottom of the furnace as a spongy mass, or bloom . Workers then repeatedly beat and folded it to force out the molten slag . This laborious, time-consuming process produced wrought iron , a malleable but fairly soft alloy. Concurrent with the transition from bronze to iron

4484-593: The 10th century BC iron became the prevailing metal in use. In the Carpathian Basin there is a significant increase in iron finds dating from the 10th century BC onwards, with some finds possibly dating as early as the 12th century BC. Iron swords have been found in central Europe dating from the 10th century BC; however, the Iron Age began in earnest with the Hallstatt culture from 800 BC. From 500 BC

4602-576: The 10th-century Kingdom of Nri , which helped birth the arts and customs of the Igbo people , Bono State in the 11th century, which gave birth to the numerous Akan States, while Ife rose to prominence around the 12th century. Further east, Oyo arose as the dominant Yoruba state and the Aro Confederacy as a dominant Igbo state in modern-day Nigeria. The Kingdom of Nri was a West African medieval state in present-day southeastern Nigeria and

4720-637: The 18th century BC, an iron ring from Vorwohlde in Germany dating from circa the 15th century BC, and an iron chisel from Heegermühle in Germany dating from circa 1000 BC. Iron metallurgy began to be practised in Scandinavia during the later Bronze Age from at least the 9th century BC. In the 11th century BC iron swords replaced bronze swords in Southern Europe, especially in Greece, and in

4838-494: The 1930s, the Gambian elephant population became extinct. That phenomenon was not only limited to the Senegambia region but affected much of West Africa as the region lost much of its "natural resources once tied so closely to its cultural identity. Poaching has stolen most of its wildlife." The British issued poaching licenses, and although they would later try to reverse the damage that had been done by attempting to preserve what

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4956-418: The 1950s. Some have identified the two recent decades as a recovery period. Others refer to this as a period of "hydrological intensification" with much of the annual rainfall increase coming from more severe rain events and sometimes flooding rather than more frequent rainfall, or similarly other works underline the continuity of the drought even though the rainfall has increased. Since 1985, 54 percent of

5074-629: The 4th century BC southern India had started exporting wootz steel , with a carbon content between pig iron and wrought iron, to ancient China, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Archaeological evidence of cast iron appears in 5th-century BC China. New methods of producing it by carburizing bars of iron in the cementation process were devised in the 17th century. During the Industrial Revolution , new methods of producing bar iron by substituting coke for charcoal emerged, and these were later applied to produce steel , ushering in

5192-696: The 7th and 6th centuries BC, particularly in Meroe where there are known to have been ancient bloomeries that produced metal tools for the Nubians and Kushites and produced surplus for their economy. Iron technology was further advanced by several inventions in medieval Islam , during the Islamic Golden Age . By the 11th century, every province throughout the Muslim world had these industrial mills in operation, from Islamic Spain and North Africa in

5310-407: The 9th century BC. Cast iron was used in ancient China for warfare, agriculture and architecture. Around 500 BC, metalworkers in the southern state of Wu achieved a temperature of 1130 °C. At this temperature, iron combines with 4.3% carbon and melts. The liquid iron can be cast into molds , a method far less laborious than individually forging each piece of iron from a bloom. Cast iron

5428-603: The Americas and to those art objects related to the early civilizations of Asia and Europe. The museum closed in 1975. The library's holdings were transferred, with other holdings of that institution, to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1978. In January 1982 the library reopened to the public as the Robert Goldwater Library. Robert Goldwater (1907–1973) was the first director of the Museum of Primitive Art and

5546-545: The Americas. After the end of the slave trade in the early 19th century , European nations, especially France and Britain , continued to exploit the region through colonial relationships . For example, they continued exporting a number of extractive goods , including labor-intensive agricultural crops like cocoa and coffee , forestry products like tropical timber , and mineral resources like gold. Since independence, many West African countries, like Ivory Coast , Ghana , Nigeria and Senegal , have played important roles in

5664-668: The Atlantic. Due to Mauritania's increasingly close ties to the Arab World and its 1999 withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in modern times it is often considered, especially in Africa, as now part of western North Africa . Major and principal cities in West Africa include, geographically eastward: Before European colonisation , West African countries such as those from

5782-723: The Cape York meteorite have been found in archaeological sites more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) distant. When the American polar explorer Robert Peary shipped the largest piece of the meteorite to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1897, it still weighed over 33  tons . Another example of a late use of meteoric iron is an adze from around 1000 AD found in Sweden . Native iron in

5900-615: The Eastern Mediterranean and destroyed the Hittite empire at the end of the Late Bronze Age, were responsible for spreading the knowledge through that region. This theory is no longer held in the mainstream of scholarship, since there is no archaeological evidence of the alleged Hittite monopoly. While there are some iron objects from Bronze Age Anatolia, the number is comparable to iron objects found in Egypt and other places of

6018-464: The Guinea Coast associated with a reduction of the wet spells under both 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming level. A Trans-ECOWAS project, established in 2007, plans to upgrade railways in this zone. One of the goals of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is the development of an integrated railroad network. Aims include the extension of railways in member countries,

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6136-488: The Guinea Coast, Soudano-Sahel, Sahel (extending eastward to the Ethiopian border) and the Sahara, each with different climatic conditions. The seasonal cycle of rainfall is mainly driven by the south-north movement of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) which is characterised by the confluence between moist southwesterly monsoon winds and the dry northeasterly Harmattan. Based on the inter-annual rainfall variability, three main climatic periods have been observed over

6254-451: The Ivory Coast, have lost large areas of their rainforest . In 2005, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ranked Nigeria as the state with the worst deforestation rate in the entire world. Causes include logging, subsistence agriculture , and the collection of fuelwoods. According to a ThoughtCo publication authored Steve Nix (2018), almost 90 percent of West Africa's original rainforest has been destroyed, and

6372-449: The Middle East. One theory suggests that metallurgy was introduced through Central Asia. In 2008, two iron fragments were excavated at the Mogou site , in Gansu . They have been dated to the 14th century BC, belonging to the period of Siwa culture , suggesting an independent Chinese origin. One of the fragments was made of bloomery iron rather than meteoritic iron. The earliest iron artifacts made from bloomeries in China date to end of

6490-429: The Museum's online library catalog, provides access to the Goldwater Library's holdings, with searching available by author, title, subject, keyword, or call number. History The library of the Museum of Primitive Art , located on West 54th Street in Manhattan, opened to the public in 1957. The Museum, founded by Nelson Rockefeller , was devoted entirely to the arts of the indigenous cultures of Africa, Oceania, and

6608-404: The Niger River basin between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria (northern Benin), rice ( oryza glaberrima ) in the Inner Niger Delta region of Mali, pearl millet ( cenchrus americanus ) in northern Mali and Mauritania, and cowpeas in northern Ghana. After having persisted as late as 1000 BP, or some period of time after 1500 CE, remaining West African hunter-gatherers, many of whom dwelt in

6726-493: The Sahel: the wet period from 1950 to the early 1960s followed by a dry period from 1972 to 1990 and then the period from 1991 onwards which has seen a partial rainfall recovery. During the dry period, the Sahel experienced a number of particularly severe drought events, with devastating effects. The recent decades, have also witnessed a moderate increment in annual rainfall since the beginning of 1990s. However, total annual rainfall remains significantly below that observed during

6844-511: The Sahelian region resulted in seasonal interaction with and gradual absorption of West African hunter-gatherers, who primarily dwelt in the savannas and forests of West Africa. In West Africa, which may have been a major regional cradle in Africa for the domestication of crops and animals, Niger-Congo speakers domesticated the helmeted guineafowl between 5500 BP and 1300 BP; domestication of field crops occurred throughout various locations in West Africa, such as yams (d. praehensilis) in

6962-453: The West African regions underwent an increase in the numeracy level throughout the 19th century. The reason for such a growth was predetermined by a number of factors. Namely, the peanut production and trade, which was boosted by the demand of the colonial states . Importantly, the rise of numeracy was higher in the regions which were less hierarchical and had less dependence on the slavery trade (e.g. Sine and Salum). Whereas areas with

7080-435: The archaeology of the city of Kumbi Saleh in modern-day Mauritania, the Mali empire came to dominate much of the region until its defeat by Almoravid invaders in 1052. Three great kingdoms were identified in Bilad al-Sudan by the ninth century. They included Ghana, Gao and Kanem . The Sosso Empire sought to fill the void but was defeated ( c.  1240 ) by the Mandinka forces of Sundiata Keita , founder of

7198-495: The centers of origin were located in West Africa , Central Africa , and East Africa ; consequently, as these origin centers are located within inner Africa, these archaeometallurgical developments are thus native African technologies. Iron metallurgical development occurred 2631 BCE – 2458 BCE at Lejja, in Nigeria, 2136 BCE – 1921 BCE at Obui, in Central Africa Republic, 1895 BCE – 1370 BCE at Tchire Ouma 147, in Niger, and 1297 BCE – 1051 BCE at Dekpassanware, in Togo. Though there

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7316-463: The colony of Guinea-Bissau , while Germany claimed Togoland , but was forced to divide it between France and Britain following First World War due to the Treaty of Versailles . Only Liberia retained its independence, at the price of major territorial concessions. Following World War II , nationalist movements arose across West Africa. In 1957, Ghana, under Kwame Nkrumah , became the first West African colony to achieve its independence, followed

7434-401: The earliest pottery in Africa – by at least 9400 BCE, and along with their pottery, as well as wielding independently invented bows and arrows , migrated into the Central Sahara, which became their primary region of residence by 10,000 BP. The emergence and expansion of ceramics in the Sahara may be linked with the origin of Round Head and Kel Essuf rock art, which occupy rockshelters in

7552-423: The earliest smelted iron artifacts, a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia , dated from 2500 BC. About 1500 BC, increasing numbers of non-meteoritic, smelted iron objects appeared in Mesopotamia , Anatolia and Egypt. Nineteen meteoric iron objects were found in the tomb of Egyptian ruler Tutankhamun , who died in 1323 BC, including an iron dagger with a golden hilt, an Eye of Horus ,

7670-456: The end of colonialism, the region has been the stage for some brutal conflicts, including: Geopolitically , the United Nations definition of subregion Western Africa includes the preceding states with the addition of Mauritania (which withdrew from ECOWAS in 1999), comprising an area of approximately 6.1 million square km. The UN region also includes the United Kingdom Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha in

7788-695: The entire region; and fifth, the post-independence era, in which the current nations were formed. West African populations were considerably mobile and interacted with one another throughout the population history of West Africa . Acheulean tool-using archaic humans may have dwelled throughout West Africa since at least between 780,000 BP and 126,000 BP ( Middle Pleistocene ). During the Pleistocene , Middle Stone Age peoples (e.g., Iwo Eleru people , possibly Aterians ), who dwelled throughout West Africa between MIS 4 and MIS 2 , were gradually replaced by incoming Late Stone Age peoples , who migrated into West Africa as an increase in humid conditions resulted in

7906-422: The first human settlers arrived, developed agriculture , and made contact with peoples to the north; the second, the Iron Age empires that consolidated both intra-Africa, and extra-Africa trade, and developed centralized states; third, major polities flourished, which would undergo an extensive history of contact with non-Africans; fourth, the colonial period, in which Great Britain and France controlled nearly

8024-485: The first western account of the use of iron in India. The Indian mythological texts, the Upanishads , have mentions of weaving, pottery and metallurgy, as well. The Romans had high regard for the excellence of steel from India in the time of the Gupta Empire . Perhaps as early as 500 BC, although certainly by 200 AD, high-quality steel was produced in southern India by the crucible technique . In this system, high-purity wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed in

8142-579: The fruit and seeds are used for drinks and oils. West Africa is greatly affected by deforestation and has one of the worst deforestation rate. Even "the beloved baobab tree" which is viewed as sacred by some West African cultures are under threat due to climate change , urbanization and population growth. "Huge swaths of forest are being razed to clear space for palm oil and cocoa plantations. Mangroves are being killed off by pollution. Even wispy acacias are hacked away for use in cooking fires to feed growing families." Nigeria, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and

8260-408: The human population relies. West Africa is west of an imagined north-south axis lying close to 10° east longitude . The Atlantic Ocean forms the western as well as the southern borders of the West African region. The northern border is the Sahara Desert , with the Ranishanu Bend generally considered the northernmost part of the region. The eastern border is less precise, with some placing it at

8378-649: The interconnection of previously isolated railways and the standardization of gauge, brakes, couplings, and other parameters. The first line would connect the cities and ports of Lagos , Cotonou , Lomé and Accra and would allow the largest container ships to focus on a smaller number of large ports, while efficiently serving a larger hinterland . This line connects 3 ft 6 in ( 1,067 mm ) gauge and 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) metre gauge systems, which would require four rail dual gauge , which can also provide standard gauge . The Trans–West African Coastal Highway

8496-413: The kilns used for pottery ) and cast into molds, smelted iron requires hot-working and can be melted only in specially designed furnaces. Iron is a common impurity in copper ores and iron ore was sometimes used as a flux , thus it is not surprising that humans mastered the technology of smelted iron only after several millennia of bronze metallurgy . The place and time for the discovery of iron smelting

8614-458: The libraries do not pay Museum admission. Located on the mezzanine level of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the library is accessible by advance appointment on Tuesdays and Thursday, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. 40°46′41″N 73°57′47″W  /  40.778°N 73.963°W  / 40.778; -73.963 West Africa West Africa , also called Western Africa ,

8732-544: The medieval period, water power was applied to the bloomery process. It is possible that this was at the Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux as early as 1135, but it was certainly in use in early 13th century France and Sweden. In England , the first clear documentary evidence for this is the accounts of a forge of the Bishop of Durham , near Bedburn in 1408, but that was certainly not the first such ironworks. In

8850-459: The metallic state occurs rarely as small inclusions in certain basalt rocks. Besides meteoritic iron, Thule people of Greenland have used native iron from the Disko region. Iron smelting—the extraction of usable metal from oxidized iron ores—is more difficult than tin and copper smelting. While these metals and their alloys can be cold-worked or melted in relatively simple furnaces (such as

8968-629: The mid-17th to the late 18th century, holding sway not only over most of the other kingdoms in Yorubaland , but also over nearby African states, notably the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey in the modern Republic of Benin to the west. The Benin Empire was a post-classical empire located in what is now southern Nigeria . Its capital was Edo, now known as Benin City , Edo . It should not be confused with

9086-563: The modern Bessemer process that utilized partial decarbonization via repeated forging under a cold blast. By the 11th century, there was a large amount of deforestation in China due to the iron industry's demands for charcoal. By this time however, the Chinese had learned to use bituminous coke to replace charcoal, and with this switch in resources many acres of prime timberland in China were spared. The earliest smelted iron object from Europe

9204-474: The modern-day country called Benin , formerly called Dahomey . The Benin Empire was "one of the oldest and most highly developed states in the coastal hinterland of West Africa, dating perhaps to the eleventh century CE". The Benin Empire was governed by a sovereign Emperor with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and a powerful council rich in resources, wealth, ancient science and technology with cities described as beautiful and large as Haarlem . " Olfert Dapper ,

9322-431: The mummy's head-stand and sixteen models of an artisan's tools. An Ancient Egyptian sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah as well as a battle axe with an iron blade and gold-decorated bronze shaft were both found in the excavation of Ugarit . Although iron objects dating from the Bronze Age have been found across the Eastern Mediterranean, bronzework appears to have greatly predominated during this period. As

9440-655: The new Mali Empire. The Mali Empire continued to flourish for several centuries, most particularly under Sundiata's grandnephew Musa I , before a succession of weak rulers led to its collapse under Mossi , Tuareg and Songhai invaders. In the 15th century, the Songhai would form a new dominant state based on Gao , in the Songhai Empire , under the leadership of Sonni Ali and Askia Mohammed . Meanwhile, south of Sudan, strong city-states arose in Igboland , such as

9558-514: The next year by France's colonies (Guinea in 1958 under the leadership of President Ahmed Sekou Touré); by 1974, West Africa's nations were entirely autonomous. Since independence, many West African nations have been submerged under political instability, with notable civil wars in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast, and a succession of military coups in Ghana and Burkina Faso . Since

9676-490: The number of registered trawlers operating in African waters, increase the monitoring and control and set up regional fisheries organizations. Some steps have already been taken in the form of WARFP (the World Bank's West Africa Regional Fisheries Program which empowers west-African countries (i.e. Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, and Senegal) with information, training and monitoring systems. Furthermore, Liberia enacted

9794-443: The open air until it lost its carbon and could be hammered (wrought). In modern Mandarin- Chinese , this process is now called chao , literally stir frying . Pig iron is known as 'raw iron', while wrought iron is known as 'cooked iron'. By the 1st century BC, Chinese metallurgists had found that wrought iron and cast iron could be melted together to yield an alloy of intermediate carbon content, that is, steel. According to legend,

9912-453: The opposite trends illustrated opposite tendencies (e.g. central and northern Senegal). Those patterns were further even more stimulated by the French colonial campaign. Britain controlled the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria throughout the colonial era, while France unified Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ivory Coast, and Niger into French West Africa . Portugal founded

10030-483: The period from 900 to 1750. This was produced using the crucible steel method, based on the earlier Indian wootz steel . This process was adopted in the Middle East using locally produced steels. The exact process remains unknown, but it allowed carbides to precipitate out as micro particles arranged in sheets or bands within the body of a blade. Carbides are far harder than the surrounding low carbon steel, so swordsmiths could produce an edge that cut hard materials with

10148-529: The piece into steel , an alloy of iron and iron carbides , with an inner core of less brittle iron. The development of iron smelting was traditionally attributed to the Hittites of Anatolia of the Late Bronze Age . It was believed that they maintained a monopoly on iron working, and that their empire had been based on that advantage. According to that theory, the ancient Sea Peoples , who invaded

10266-452: The population has been affected by five or more floods in the 17 Sahel region countries. In 2012, severe drought conditions in the Sahel were reported. Governments in the region responded quickly, launching strategies to address the issue. The region is projected to experience changes in rainfall regime, with climate models suggesting that decreases in wet season rainfall are more likely in

10384-455: The practice followed the Mongols across Russia to these sites, but there is no clear proof of this hypothesis, and it would certainly not explain the pre-Mongol datings of many of these iron-production centres. In any event, by the late 14th century, a market for cast iron goods began to form, as a demand developed for cast iron cannonballs. An alternative method of decarburising pig iron

10502-587: The precipitated carbides, while the bands of softer steel let the sword as a whole remain tough and flexible. A team of researchers based at the Technical University of Dresden that uses X-rays and electron microscopy to examine Damascus steel discovered the presence of cementite nanowires and carbon nanotubes . Peter Paufler, a member of the Dresden team, says that these nanostructures give Damascus steel its distinctive properties and are

10620-462: The production methods of creating Wootz steel, an idea imported from India to China by the 5th century AD. During the Han dynasty, the Chinese were also the first to apply hydraulic power (i.e. a waterwheel ) in working the bellows of the blast furnace. This was recorded in the year 31 AD, as an innovation by the Chinese mechanical engineer and politician Du Shi , Prefect of Nanyang. Although Du Shi

10738-612: The production of swords, and evidence for the production of high-carbon steel is found in Britain at Broxmouth Hillfort after circa 490 BC. By the 1st century BC, Noric steel was famous for its quality and sought-after by the Roman military . The annual iron output of the Roman Empire is estimated at 84,750 t . Archaeometallurgical scientific knowledge and technological development originated in numerous centers of Africa;

10856-521: The region's wildlife populations, there are still some protected nature reserves within the region. Some of these include: West Africa is also home to several baobab trees and other plant life . Some baobab trees are several centuries old and form part of the local folklore, for example, a mythical baobab tree named Ngoye njuli in Senegal which is regarded as a sacred site by the Serer . The tree itself

10974-524: The regional and global economies. West Africa has a rich ecology , with strong biodiversity and several distinct regions. The area's climate and ecology are heavily influenced by the dry Sahara to the north and east, which provides dry winds during the Harmattan , as well as the Atlantic Ocean to the south and west, which provides seasonal monsoons. This mixture of climates gives West Africa

11092-453: The rest is "heavily fragmented and in a degraded state, being poorly used." Overfishing is a major issue in West Africa. Besides reducing fish stocks in the region, it also threatens food security and the livelihoods of many coastal communities that largely depend on artisanal fishing . The overfishing generally comes from foreign trawlers operating in the region. To combat the overfishing, Greenpeace has recommended countries reduce

11210-522: The road: The capitals' airports include: Of the sixteen, the most important hub and entry point to West Africa are Kotoka International Airport , and Murtala Muhammed International Airport , offering many international connections. Iron-working Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys . The earliest surviving prehistoric iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt , were made from meteoritic iron-nickel . It

11328-736: The same regions (e.g., Djado , Acacus , Tadrart ). Hunters in the Central Sahara farmed, stored, and cooked undomesticated central Saharan flora , underwent domestication of antelope , and domesticated and shepherded Barbary sheep . After the Kel Essuf Period and Round Head Period of the Central Sahara, the Pastoral Period followed. Some of the hunter-gatherers who created the Round Head rock art may have adopted pastoral culture, and others may have not. As

11446-496: The same time period, and only a small number of those objects were weapons. A more recent theory claims that the development of iron technology was driven by the disruption of the copper and tin trade routes, due to the collapse of the empires at the end of the Late Bronze Age. These metals, especially tin, were not widely available and metal workers had to transport them over long distances, whereas iron ores were widely available. However, no known archaeological evidence suggests

11564-848: The south Atlantic Ocean . In the United Nations scheme of African regions , the region of Western Africa includes 16 states and the United Kingdom Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha : Mali , Burkina Faso , Senegal and the Niger are mostly in the Sahel , a transition zone between the Sahara desert and the Sudanian Savanna ; Benin , Ivory Coast , The Gambia , Ghana , Guinea , Guinea-Bissau , Liberia , Sierra Leone , Togo and Nigeria compose most of Guinea ,

11682-538: The subsequent expansion of the West African forest . West African hunter-gatherers occupied western Central Africa (e.g., Shum Laka ) earlier than 32,000 BP, dwelled throughout coastal West Africa by 12,000 BP, and migrated northward between 12,000 BP and 8000 BP as far as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania. During the Holocene , Niger-Congo speakers independently created pottery in Ounjougou , Mali –

11800-405: The sword of Liu Bang , the first Han emperor, was made in this fashion. Some texts of the era mention "harmonizing the hard and the soft" in the context of ironworking; the phrase may refer to this process. The ancient city of Wan ( Nanyang ) from the Han period forward was a major center of the iron and steel industry. Along with their original methods of forging steel, the Chinese had also adopted

11918-451: The technology spread, iron came to replace bronze as the dominant metal used for tools and weapons across the Eastern Mediterranean (the Levant , Cyprus , Greece , Crete , Anatolia and Egypt). Iron was originally smelted in bloomeries , furnaces where bellows were used to force air through a pile of iron ore and burning charcoal . The carbon monoxide produced by the charcoal reduced

12036-630: The technology spread. Mesopotamia was fully into the Iron Age by 900 BC. Although Egypt produced iron artifacts, bronze remained dominant until its conquest by Assyria in 663 BC. The Iron Age began in India about 1200 BC, in Central Europe about 800 BC, and in China about 300 BC. Around 500 BC, the Nubians , who had learned from the Assyrians the use of iron and were expelled from Egypt, became major manufacturers and exporters of iron. One of

12154-661: The traditional name for the area near the Gulf of Guinea ; Mauritania lies in the Maghreb , the northwestern region of Africa that has historically been inhabited by West African groups such as the Fulani , Soninke , Wolof , Serer and Toucouleur people , along with Arab-Berber Maghrebi people such as the Tuareg ; Cape Verde is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean ; and Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha consists of eight main islands located in four different parts of

12272-704: The west to the Middle East and Central Asia in the east. There are also 10th-century references to cast iron , as well as archeological evidence of blast furnaces being used in the Ayyubid and Mamluk empires from the 11th century, thus suggesting a diffusion of Chinese metal technology to the Islamic world. One of the most famous steels produced in the medieval Near East was Damascus steel used for swordmaking , and mostly produced in Damascus , Syria , in

12390-523: The western Maghreb) is composed of semi-arid terrain known as Sahel , a transitional zone between the Sahara and the West Sudanian savanna . Forests form a belt between the savannas and the southern coast, ranging from 160 km to 240 km in width. The northwest African region of Mauritania periodically suffers country-wide plagues of locusts which consume water, salt and crops on which

12508-545: The western Sahel, and increases more likely in the central to east Sahel, although opposite trends cannot yet be ruled out. These trends will affect the frequency and severity of floods, droughts, desertification , sand and dust storms, desert locust plagues and water shortages. However, irrespective of the changes in seasonal mean rain, the most intense storms are expected to become more intense, amplifying flood frequency. Enhanced carbon emissions and global warming may also lead to an increase in dry spells especially across

12626-517: Was a Yoruba empire of what is today Western, North Central Nigeria and Southern Republic of Benin . Established in the 14th century, the Oyo Empire grew to become one of the largest West African states. It rose through the outstanding organizational skills of the Yoruba, wealth gained from trade and its powerful cavalry . The Oyo Empire was the most politically important state in the region from

12744-499: Was left of the local wildlife, but by that time, it was too late. During the 1930s, the elephant population in the Gold Coast was about 300, and Sierra Leone between 500 and 600. Although a small number of elephants survived in Nigeria, hunting, agricultural expansion and clearing of forest in that country drastically affected its wildlife population, particularly elephants. Despite the historical damage that has been done to

12862-618: Was mass-produced. Steel was produced in Sri Lanka from 300 BC by furnaces blown by the monsoon winds . The furnaces were dug into the crests of hills, and the wind was diverted into the air vents by long trenches. This arrangement created a zone of high pressure at the entrance, and a zone of low pressure at the top of the furnace. The flow is believed to have allowed higher temperatures than bellows-driven furnaces could produce, resulting in better-quality iron. Steel made in Sri Lanka

12980-566: Was not foreign. It became mature about 1500 BC. Archaeological sites containing iron smelting furnaces and slag have also been excavated at sites in the Nsukka region of southeast Nigeria in what is now Igboland : dating to 2000 BC at the site of Lejja (Eze-Uzomaka 2009) and to 750 BC and at the site of Opi (Holl 2009). The site of Gbabiri (in the Central African Republic) has yielded evidence of iron metallurgy, from

13098-555: Was originally a complex alloy with iron as its main component together with various trace elements . Recent studies have suggested that its qualities may have been due to the formation of carbon nanotubes in the metal. According to Will Durant , the technology passed to the Persians and from them to Arabs who spread it through the Middle East. In the 16th century, the Dutch carried the technology from South India to Europe, where it

13216-565: Was practiced on a large scale in India. In Southern India (present day Mysore ) iron was in use 12th to 11th centuries BC. The technology of iron metallurgy advanced in the politically stable Maurya period and during a period of peaceful settlements in the 1st millennium BC. Iron artifacts such as spikes , knives , daggers , arrow -heads, bowls , spoons , saucepans , axes , chisels , tongs , door fittings, etc., dated from 600 to 200 BC, have been discovered at several archaeological sites of India. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote

13334-454: Was the finery forge , which seems to have been devised in the region around Namur in the 15th century. By the end of that century, this Walloon process spread to the Pay de Bray on the eastern boundary of Normandy , and then to England, where it became the main method of making wrought iron by 1600. It was introduced to Sweden by Louis de Geer in the early 17th century and was used to make

13452-714: Was the desired product and the intermediate step of producing cast iron involved an expensive blast furnace and further refining of pig iron to cast iron, which then required a labor and capital intensive conversion to wrought iron. Through a good portion of the Middle Ages, in Western Europe, iron was still being made by the working of iron blooms into wrought iron. Some of the earliest casting of iron in Europe occurred in Sweden, in two sites, Lapphyttan and Vinarhyttan, between 1150 and 1350. Some scholars have speculated

13570-410: Was the discovery of carburization , the process of adding carbon to wrought iron. While the iron bloom contained some carbon, the subsequent hot-working oxidized most of it. Smiths in the Middle East discovered that wrought iron could be turned into a much harder product by heating the finished piece in a bed of charcoal, and then quenching it in water or oil. This procedure turned the outer layers of

13688-565: Was the first to apply water power to bellows in metallurgy, the first drawn and printed illustration of its operation with water power appeared in 1313 AD, in the Yuan dynasty era text called the Nong Shu . In the 11th century, there is evidence of the production of steel in Song China using two techniques: a "berganesque" method that produced inferior, heterogeneous steel and a precursor to

13806-625: Was then succeeded by the Ghana Empire that first flourished roughly between the 2nd and 12th centuries C.E., which later gave way to the Mali Empire . In current-day Mauritania, there exist archaeological sites in the towns of Tichit and Oualata that were initially constructed around 2000 B.C., and were found to have originated from the Soninke branch of the Mandé peoples . Also, based on

13924-681: Was traded extensively within the region and in the Islamic world . One of the world's foremost metallurgical curiosities is an iron pillar located in the Qutb complex in Delhi . The pillar is made of wrought iron (98% Fe ), is almost seven meters high and weighs more than six tonnes. The pillar was erected by Chandragupta II Vikramaditya and has withstood 1,600 years of exposure to heavy rains with relatively little corrosion . Historians debate whether bloomery-based ironworking ever spread to China from

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