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History
Congolese pre-history
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A wave of advance of Neolithic peoples is identified in the Northern and
North-Western parts of Central Africa during the second millennium BC.[citation
needed] They were food producing (pearl millet), with some domestic stock, and
developed a kind of arboriculture mainly based on the oil palm.[citation needed]
Several centuries later, around -2,500 years, bananas were known to some in
south Cameroon.[citation needed] From -3,500 to -2,000 years, starting off from
a nucleus area in South Cameroon on both banks of the Sanaga River, the first
Neolithic peopling of northern and western Central Africa can be followed
south-eastwards and southwards.[citation needed] In R.D. Congo the first
villages in the vicinity of Mbandaka and the Tumba Lake are known as the 'Imbonga
Tradition' around -2,600 years. In Lower-Congo, North of the Angolan border, it
is the 'Ngovo Tradition' around -2,300 years which shows the arrival of the
Neolithic wave of advance.[citation needed]
A Katanga Cross. A former form of money.In Kivu, across the country to the East,
the 'Urewe Tradition' villages first show up around -2,600 years. The few
archaeological sites known in Congo are a western extension of the 'Urewe'
Culture which is mainly known in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Western Kenya and
Tanzania.[citation needed] From the start of this Tradition, the people knew
iron smelting as it is evidenced by several iron smelting furnaces excavated in
Rwanda and Burundi.[citation needed]
The earliest evidence further to the West is known in Cameroon, and near to the
small town of Bouar in Central Africa. Though an ongoing discussion will
ultimately give us a better chronology for the start of iron production in
Central Africa, it can be said the Cameroonian data pinpoints around -2,600 /
-2,500 years iron smelting north of the Equatorial Forest.[citation needed] This
technology developed in an independent way from the previous Neolithic expansion
some 900 years later. As fieldwork done by a German team shows, the Congo river
network was slowly settled by food producing villagers going upstream in the
forest. Work from a Spanish project in the Ituri area further East suggests
villages reached there only around -800 years.[citation needed]
The supposedly bantu-speaking Neolithic thence Iron producing villagers added to
and displaced the indigenous Pygmy populations (also known in the region as the
"Bitwa" or "Twa") into secondary parts of the country.[citation needed]
Subsequent migrations from the Darfur and Kordofan regions of Sudan into the
north-east, as well as East Africans migrating into the eastern Congo added to
the mix of ethnic groups. The Bantus imported a mixed economy made up of
agriculture, small stock raising, fishing, fruit collecting, hunting and
arboriculture before -3,500 years; iron-working techniques, possibly from West
Africa, are a much later addition.[citation needed] The villagers established
the Bantu language family as the primary set of tongues for the
Congolese.[citation needed]
In the fifth century, a society began to develop in a region that initially
encompassed only a 200 kilometre (125 mi) area along the banks of the Lualaba
River in the modern day Katanga Province.[citation needed] This culture, known
as the Upemba, would eventually evolve into the more significant Luba
kingdom.[citation needed]
The process in which the original Upemba societies transitioned into the Luba
kingdom was gradual and complex. This transition ran without interruption, with
several distinct societies developing out of the Upemba culture prior to the
genesis of the Luba.[citation needed] Each of these kingdoms became very wealthy
due mainly to the region's mineral wealth, especially in ores. The civilization
began to develop and implement iron and copper technology, in addition to
trading in ivory and other goods.[citation needed] The Luba established a strong
commercial demand for their metal technologies and were able to institute a
long-range commercial net (the business connections extended over 1,500
kilometres (930 mi), all the way to the Indian Ocean). By the 1500s, the kingdom
had an established strong central government based on chieftainship.[citation
needed]
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