First farmers in the Central African rainforest: A view from southern Cameroon

• DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2011.03.024
• Publication Date: 2011-06-03T21:31:29Z
• Authors: Katharina Neumann; Koen Bostoen; Alexa Höhn; Stefanie Kahlheber; Alfred Ngomanda; Barthelémy Tchiengué
• Keywords: 2. Zero hunger; climatic change; Linguistique comparée; 06 humanities and the arts; 15. Life on land; Philologie africaine; pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum); shifting cultivation; 01 natural sciences; Languages and Literatures; Linguistique historique; oil palm (Elaeis guineensis); Langues et littératures africaines; 0601 history and archaeology; Bantu expansion; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Agriculture was introduced into the Central African rainforest from the drier West African savanna, in concert with a major climatic change that amplified seasonality just after 2500 BP. The savanna crop pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), dated to 2400–2200 BP, could only be cultivated due to the development of a distinct dry season. Increasing seasonality and the replacement of mature forests by pioneer formations is indicated by Trema orientalis in the pollen diagram of Nyabessan after 2400 BP. However, charcoal data do not point to the existence of savannas in South Cameroon during this period, but rather to a mosaic of mature and pioneer forests. The early rainforest farmers combined the cultivation of pearl millet with the exploitation of wild oil-containing tree fruits, such as oil palm and Canarium. The existence of pioneer formations that can be easily cut favoured the establishment of shifting cultivation. The archaeobotanical finds fit into a linguistic scenario of West-Bantu speakers making the cultivation of pearl millet one of their food production strategies before expanding further to the South. The reconstructed inherited pearl millet vocabulary for the early phases of Bantu language history provides strong circumstantial evidence for an overlap of the major stages of the Bantu expansion with the dispersal of food production.