INTRODUCTION
This paper is an attempt to integrate within the published literature more evidence recovered from recent archaeological works conducted on the islands of Unguja, Zanzibar and Comores all located on western Indian Ocean. Detailed information is being prepared in a forthcoming book on Zanzibar and the Western Indian Ocean from About 30,000 Years Ago. Zanzibar Islands form part of Tanzania , on the coast of East Africa and Comores is made of four islands just north of Madagascar . Comores islands, like Zanzibar , are African territories which had ancient population which adopted Islamic tradition from about plus/minus AD 900. Detailed studies or the long history of the coast of East Africa has been provided elsewhere (see Horton and Middleton 2000; Chami 1994, 2006, 2008). One aim in this paper is to provide some reflection on what is already published about the ancient civilization of the Swahili coast, but has not yet well been discussed. Another aim is to bring into the same reflection information being recovered from new archaeological works on the western Indian Ocean Islands which as noted above is being published in more detail elsewhere. The major aim is to say that ancient Africa contributed more to the ancient world civilization than it has been acknowledged.
IDEOLOGIES IN THE STUDIES OF THE AFRICAN PAST
The studies of the African past involve various disciplines including history, anthropology, linguistics and archaeology. Although archaeology and aspects of physical anthropology provide material evidence for ancient human settlements and activities, ideologies in these studies render such objectivity near impossible. There has been a raging debate in archaeology about how these studies should be performed without biases (see Renfrew and Bahn 1991). The debate remains unresolved. I have reviewed this debate elsewhere (Chami 2006) and I have also discussed the racist ideology which played a major role in writing a biased history of Africa with special focus on the coast of Eastern Africa (Chami 2008). Suffice to reiterate only few things so that we can advance in examining the nature of the new evidence intended for this paper.
The disciplines which have been used to study the human past were loaded with racist ideology in about the end of the 18 th century. It was a situation which occurred when Europeans had industrialized and were in the move to establish colonies in the areas of the world which had not been colonized yet. It was also an attempt to justify why other human beings should be utilized as slaves. Europeans started to believe that their ethnicity was better physically and mentally compared to the rest of the human groups. Göttingen and Cambridge Universities are known to have been given responsibilities of re-examining human ethnicities and in that manner established nature of their humanities physically and mentally. The process of this work and the results established can be read in Bernal (1987) and in Harris (1968).
The concept of race was invented suggesting that different ethnicities are biological groups developing into independent species. In that manner ethnic groups, now termed races, were regarded to have different mental capacities and different genetic and cultural aspects including different environmental adaptations. As I have noted this idea elsewhere (Chami 2006, 2008), Hegel and Gobineau are known among the extremist thinkers in this aspect:
This is what the whole course of history teaches us. Every race has its own
modes of thinking: every race, capable of developing a civilization, develops
one peculiar to itself, and which it can not engraft upon any other, expect by
amalgamation of blood, and then in but a modified degree (in Harries 1968: 103-104).
This framework of thinking I have equated it with an atomic model which views ethnic groups as racial groups similar to atoms of substances (Chami 2008). Racism is unscientific as already expressed by Carvalli-Sforza (2001: 12-13; see also Chami 2008):
It is difficult to find another reason to explain the enthusiasm of nineteenth
-century philosophers and political scientists like Gobineau and his followers
for maintaining “racial purity”. These men were convinced that the success
of whites was due to their racial supremacy. Because only visible traits
could be studied then, it was not absurd to imagine that pure races existed.
But today we know that they do not, and that they are practically impossible
to create.
As indicated elsewhere (see Chami 2006, 2007) African ethnic groups, particularly those identified formally as “Negroid” and “Bushmen” were considered to be at the bottom of the hierarchy suggesting that these could not have developed “civilization” or could not had invented anything. These were also placed in the region south of Sahara and in that sense this region was supposed to have remained “primitive”. This attitude also led to the undermining of some aspects of evolutionary theory which suggested that similarities in cultural aspects between distance communities of the world meant independent invention and hence common psychic unity of mankind (Harris 1968). Diffusionism and historical particularism set in suggesting that human groups developed in particular geo-environmental conditions and that only those mentally capable were to develop cultural sophistication and pass it to those alleged unable groups. In the extreme view of diffusionism those alleged unable groups were considered even incapable of learning from the alleged able groups. The implication was that the presence of the alleged able groups was necessary in the regions of the former for any cultural development to occur. This was therefore how the appearance of sophisticated cultures was initially thought to have occurred in Africa . It was thought that actual immigration of the non-Africans to Africa for colonization was necessary to cause civilizations . Therefore Great Zimbabwe had to be built by colonist from the Mediterranean World or Near East and the Swahili culture and its sophistication was considered as Persian or Arabic (the alleged Zanj empire).
While I have defended diffusionism elsewhere (Chami 2007) it should be noted at this juncture that diffusionism of the 19 th and 20 th century was loaded with racist ideology developed in Gottingen and Cambridge Universities . I have argued that if racism was removed from the diffusionist theory then the theory is probably correct and to add in this paper diffusionism is a scientific principle if devoid of racist ideologies. Human groups have interacted and others migrated to different parts of the world exchanging and carrying their technologies from areas of invention or innovations to the new ones. In other sciences it has been know that organic and inorganic materials do diffuse by different mechanisms including inorganic and non-organic means. Humanities have shared their ideas and genetic traits from the time of Homo-erectus or before. Humanity has continued to interact since then through different means including sailing. Human communication between different parts of the world did not begin with travels of Christopher Columbus or Vasco da Gama in the 15 th /16 th century.
In Africa the theory of hierachization of ethnicities and diffusion/migration of the alleged capable groups influenced virtually all scholars who have been studying the past. The problem is that the idea was developed to be a faith or religion. The idea was not a paradigm. As I noted elsewhere (Chami 2008), archaeological and other studies of the past can be corrected and made more objective if the biases we have been observing were a product of a paradigm. A paradigm is a highly accepted idea which changes when evidence against it is raised (Kuhn 1970). However, religious ideas are protected and defended by any means and that is why the change of how Africa has been seen from the Victorian period will need political means as panacea.
Africa was viewed as cul de sac , dentified with the lack of inertness. Nothing was seen to have been invented within for even Stone Age technologies had to have arrived from Europe . Ancient Egypt with its civilization had to be hijacked from African for it was even thought that immigrants coming from as far as Caucasus Mountain were responsible with the foundation and growth of Egypt (see Marks 1991:9). All ancient Egyptian records of their origin suggest South of Egypt, meaning Africa, as the source of civilization have been refused until now (see Bolliger et al 2005). It is not science needed to debate this academic aspect, but political means.
It is true, as I have demonstrated elsewhere (see Chami 2006, 2007), that Africa received from other people and was visited by other people probably as much as it gave and visited other people. This balance can not apply for every periods of history, but can not be denied for all periods of history. That Africa has received cultural aspects and technologies invented in other parts of the world by other people is also tantamount to arguing that Africa has passed many technologies and innovations to other people of the world. It is the principle of diffusion presented earlier. I have argued that no single people have stayed in isolation for millennium (Chami 2007). Evidence of contact and exchanges between people or even evidence of colonization of one people by another or of a colonization of a landscape by foreign people can be found and be demonstrated in history. The problem in the modern western scholarship is that of denying other peoples capacities and viewing other people to have been isolated from the activities of the ancient world. Actually some scholars have come to belief that there was no long distance sailing in the great oceans before Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama (for more recent discussion see Kehoe 2008). Again this is religion. It is not science.
Probably one of the major political break-through to be of the modern world will be to break asunder the racist and other related ideologies in the studies of humans. Since pseudo science was used to justify racism (see Harries 1968: Chapter 4) science should also be used to destroy it. No doubt that much has now been done in genetic studies to destroy this thinking (see Carvalli-Sfporza 2001; Johanson and Edgar 1996). Archaeology has started doing its part in Africa and elsewhere and more efforts are needed before the dying hard racists are finally discredited. I have noted that if this was a scientific paradigm it would be easy to come to an end: however since this is a kind of ideology or religion then this will take more time to come to an end and probably by the aid of political measures.
According to Kuhn (1970) paradigms fall down when new ones emerge with more convincing set of evidence. This is because paradigms are scientific by nature. Ideologies, on the other hand are not paradigms. It is my conclusion that these are therefore to be fought by means other than science. Sometimes political and legal methods may work such as those which dealt with South African apartheid system or the establishment of UNESCO convention against racism. In India and Australia it is obvious that only political and legal measures will eliminate cast systems.
KNOWN AND DISCUSSED FACTS ABOUT AFRICA 'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE EARLY CIVILIZATIONS
Without digressing too much from the issues in this paper, it should be noted that Elliot Smith is remembered for his idea that different parts of the ancient world, led by Egyptians, had been in interaction. What came to be known as hyperdiffusionism was a school out of this idea. Egypt was then thought to have been the land of Hamites . The idea that many cultural aspects observed in Americas had attributes indicating pre-Columbian contacts with other parts of the world became part of this early thinking as still supported by the die-hard scholars (Jairazbhoy 1974 and Fell 1975).
Specific items found in Americans have been discussed including script some of which is clearly Norse runes and other inscription similar to Egyptian and other Mediterranean regions. Pyramids and their burial and religious aspects similar to those of Egypt and other places have also heavily been discussed. Statues depicting black people of the Egyptian military traditions and other religious traditions are also discussed. Kehoe (2008) and Storey et al . (2008) have recently discussed the reluctance which exists in accepting new finds which suggest interaction which existed between Americas and the rest of the world. The two publications have provided more evidence indicating that domesticates of Asiatic origin, particularly chicken, already existed in Americas before Columbian period. All scholars wonder whether this new evidence will make scholars change their mind and accept what I have called diffusionism without racist tone (Chami 2007):
The crux of the matter is that labelling the Americas a New World allowed
European powers to claim right of first discovery under international law.
The necessary corollary was that human-like beings in the New World were
either not fully human savages in wilderness, or had forfeited their rights
by rejecting God's will. The myth of Columbus discovering a New
World is the chartering myth, in Malinowski's sense, for all European
claims to American territories. The myth is assiduously taught in schools,
commemorated with public monuments, and celebrated with holidays.
Every schooled person learned it as a fact. (Kehoe 2008: 1)
I have also discussed elsewhere (Chami 2006) African participation in ancient civilizations. I suggested how Egypt and Punt for example were African civilizations not found or developed by people of outside Africa . I suggested that modern, African people had their ancestors either developing their semi-political and economic systems and they also participated in trade with those within Africa and outside Africa . The point I stressed in the book was that Africans in the ancient time were not just people with cultures and history, but also participated in affairs of the ancient world systems.
One aspect which I strongly developed was that Egypt , as it has been stressed before by other scholars, was African and it had cultural and economic link with other African territories. Both Ante Diop (1981) and I have presented how the Egyptian language was similar to that of Africa . This aspect will continue to be refused by scholars who think Egypt was not African. Diop has provided more than enough evidence that Egyptian demonstrated with pictures and literature who they were and who the other people they interacted with through trade and war were. The pictures of those from outside Africa , for examples those being smit in the palette of Narmer, are clearly different and it is not difficult for one with eyes to recognize the Asiatic/Europeans features of the foreigners. I have carried forward to demonstrate how Punt was a sister territory of Egypt in the Sub-Saharan Africa and how together they had sailed in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean and beyond.
I have also demonstrated post Egyptian African connection with Persians, India , Carthaginians and even Chinese territories (Chami 2006). I have provided historical and archaeological evidence showing what is the reality and what is denied concerning aspects of African building of civilizations and the relations which existed among themselves and the rest of the ancient world. The continued denial of empirical evidence I have presented for the last 20 years of my studies of the African past has been discussed in my recent work (Chami 2008). It suggests, as noted above, that archaeology is being turned into religion.
(I shall present in the conference slides bearing the evidence and I shall also bring copies of the book)
NEW AND LESS DISCUSSED EVIDENCE
In this paper I would like to add few things which I did not raise in my previous work (Chami 2006). It is on new information I have collected since then and new readings. It is about the relationship between Eastern Africa and the Near East and Southeast Asia . In my previous publication (Chami 2006) is was noted that remains of animals in Zazibar such as chicken and cattle in the ancient time suggested contact with Asia . It was also noted that gum copal found in Mesopotamia dating back to 3000 BC was brought from the coast of East Africa . It has also been known for a long time now that Asia as far as China has had domesticates from ancient time which came from Africa such as millet, sorghum, cow peas and cotton. Domesticates of Asiatic origin found in Africa from the ancient time include coconut, banana, rice, chicken and cattle (Bos indicus). Recently banana has been found in contexts dating back to 3000 BC in Uganda (Lejju et al. 2005) and 1000 BC in Cameroon (Mbida 2005).
It has to be noted here that evidence from other cultural materials, of Asiatic aspects in Africa , were very popularly discussed in the first half of the 20 th century. This view did not continue in the 1970 's as scholars of this period disparaged it because they did not belief in pre-Islamic sailing. All Asiatic crops in Africa were then thought to have arrived only in the Islamic period. Aspects such as widespread of outrigger canoes, music styles and some kind of art, all occurring between Asia and Africa , were strong aspects of that discussion which lost forum after 1970s. Corollary to my recent findings of ancient materials demonstrating ancient sailing in Zanzibar and elsewhere on the Swahili coast I decided to continue to examine publications and documents about the ancient time. I also continued my archaeological research in Zanzibar and extended it to the Islands of Comores.
One example of old and ignored information which I re-examined is the one published by Ingrams (1967) that the language of Sumerians was similar to the African language practised today on the Swahili Coast . Ingrams reported this information with the aim to show that the early settlers of the coast of East Africa, particularly Zanzibar –of which he was discussing, had had cultural and possible physical similarity with those found in Mesopotamian civilization. All the words reported are truly similar or related to Kiswahili language. The first three columns is by Igrams (1967: 4) and the forth is my own clarification.
Summerian Swahili English My addition
ZI ZIMU Spirit Mzimu - ancentral spirit
believed to have lived in
water- hence ZI or ZA
-MU M(U) Indicates life Muu –living spirit among
Chaga of Kilimanjaro.
Mungu - God.
UZ (M-) BUZI Goat It is Mbuzi in Swahili.
EME ULIMI Tongue -
DU DOMO Mouth Mdomo in Swahili
MULU M(U)TU Man Related Bantu
languages have
M(u)ru. r and l in
Bantu interchangeable.
.
TAM/GAN MCHANA
GA/CHA MTANA Day -
Igrams noted other five similar aspects between Sumerians and the Swahili:
- Almost universal thematic harmony of the vowels.
- Formation of the greater number of derivatives by means of suffixes.
- System of declension by means of causal suffixes to the root word without affecting any change in it.
- Absence of any distinction between masculine and femine genders.
- existence of a negative conjunctions.
- The use of verbal forms instead of conjuctions.
Ingrams has also related other cultural aspects such as early boats which he argues that they look like the primitive Egyptian boats. Early Egpytians boats have also been related to primitive boats of the Nile and East Africa (Casson 1971).
As noted above, Cheick Ante Diop (1981) and myself (2006) have discussed more about the relationship between Egyptian language and that of Africa west and east respectively. I have also suggested that Mereotic language was African. It is obvious for the case of Meroetic and Egyptian that they were not only similar in language, but also in physical make-up of people as Diop (1991) following Herodutus have convincingly demonstrated. Can the same similarity be established for Sumerian and African cultures and people?
To add more ideas to what Ingrams had argued for Sumerian's link with Africa , according to Brummett et al. (2000) Sumerians were not Semitic or Indo-Europeans. If this is an established fact, then who else could have spoken a language similar to a Bantu speakers' language? Their early script is reported to have been similar to Egyptians' script (Brummett et al 2000: 22-23). Sumerians also named mountains with a word Kur . This is like the original hill capital of Kuru for Cushites who lived south of Egypt and it is the same as the word ru used by all Bantu speakers for Mountains . According to Brummett et al . (2000: 24) “the god's earthly representative for Sumerians was called ensi, the higher priest and city governor, who acted as the god's caretaker in both religious and civil functions”. What a coincidence that the same word is also used among many African languages to mean higher, honourable one, only attributed to God or his representative on earth - the Mfalume (King for Swahili people).
In the Swahili language Mwenye/Mwinyi enzi Mungu means the highest, honourable god. It should also be noted here that the rulers of Comores and Zanzibar islands were referred to as Mwinyi mkuu meaning the highest, honourable. In these islands, particular in Comores, the word enzi was added to the title of the Mwinyi Mkuu . This tradition was widespread in Africa . The mythical rulers of the interlocutrice regions are said to have been wenye enzi or wa-chwe-zi – semi-godish people. I was amazed when I found that the rulers of the Ibo land, Nigeria are referred to as ezi or eze .
Apparently the African traditions have preserved much of the ancient traditions which existed in the earliest civilizations. One way to look at these traditions is to argue that they have been African from the beginning. Another way is to assume that they were spread to Africa by ancient civilizations which had much cultural and ethnic affiliations with ancient African people. However, the problem with the second thinking is that Herodutus reported that Egyptians were black and had curl hair and their ethnicity and culture had been spread to Asia and Caucus region. There are modern scholars who are not happy with what Herodutus reported. They want scholars to remove his work from History. The then celebrated father of History is now regarded as a liar.
It is entirely frustrating that he was one of the few eyewitnesses whose accounts
we have to the remnants of living ancient Egyptian culture and yet wrote so few
things that really help us . (Bolliger et al. 2005: 18)
As a result, his “knowledge”- which came from people to whom he
spoke-came from second immigrant sources and not from Egyptians at all.
He constantly records “what he was told.” Whenever he describes a place,
he adds “and I speak here as a witness” and invariably even the physical
things he describes are incorrect. (Bolliger et al 2005: 19).
I have noted above the religious problem of African history. Deny anything which elevate Africa and its people!
The archaeology of Zanzibar particularly that from the cave of Kuumbi , has uncovered many aspects which also support aspects of ancient historical documents. In a nutshell, it was thought by virtually all scholars before my work, which began in 1990, that the coast of East Africa had no settlements before AD 900. It was further thought that the beginning of settlements and domestication of plants and animals came after the beginning of Islam which was also alleged to have begun at AD 900. I have disproved these kinds of racist thinking before, showing that settlements had been on the coast of East Africa from at least the time of the Early Iron Working and even before (Chami 1994).
Recently it has been possible to demonstrate the existence of Neolithic/ domesticating communities before that of Early Iron Working period and caves of Zanzibar do not only demonstrate that, but also provide a cultural sequence dating back to about 30,000 years ago in the Middle Palaeolithic. The finding of remains of domestic animals and trade goods dating back to before BC/AD changeover to about 4000 BC disproved all thinking that trade and other cultural sophistications had not been in Sub-Saharan Africa before Islam (for conspectus see Chami 2006).
Animals which have been found in the Neolithic layers include cattle, goat/sheep, chicken, donkey, dog and cat all dating back to about 4000BC. Other cultural aspects found dating back to 10,000 BC or before (see Table 1) include human burial of multiple individuals and covered in stones/cairn and aspects of sailing and trade. Among the goods of contact and trade include chicken (an animal thought to have been domesticated in Asia from about 6000 BC), Indian beads in a BC context and another bead of the Mediterranean type also found in a Neolithic context. Volcanic stone artefacts have also been found in the Neolithic contexts in Zanzibar suggesting sailing more probably to Comores Island (see below).
Site |
Tr. |
Depth cm |
Material dated |
Lab number |
Radio carbon age, years BP |
Aspect being dated |
Kuumbi |
8 |
55-60 |
charcoal |
Ua-35922 |
1525+/-40 |
pottery |
Kuumbi |
8 |
185-190 |
landsnail shell |
Ua-35924 |
16,360 +/-115 |
Beginning of occupation |
Kuumbi |
9 |
25-30 |
charcoal |
Ua-35925 |
1245+/-55 |
Pottery |
Kuumbi |
9 |
80-85 |
Landsnail shell |
Ua-35926 |
10885+/-85 |
Human bones |
Kuumbi |
9 |
95-100 |
Shell |
Ua-35927 |
31,195+/-665 |
Beginning of occupation |
Table 1: See human bones dating in row 5 and earliest settlements of humans in
Zanzibar in the last row.
In Comores Island , recent research has now uncovered from both a cave and open site materials as old as of Stone Age. These include stone artefacts, Neolithic bones of chicken, goat, and cattle. Also in the Neolithic layer are beads of glass and shell. These new findings suggest that transoceanic sailing and trade was widespread. It may also be suggested that the volcanic stone artefacts found in Zanzibar could have come from Comores. These findings also put off the theory that the islands of the western Indian Ocean were first settled by non-Africans. Both Zanzibar and Comores islands have cultural similarity beginning from Stone Age and the affinity of the languages spoken in the two countries clearly suggest that Islam was introduced in communities which were African and well established on the western Indian Ocean and probably beyond.
CONCLUSION
Let it be accepted from now on that the cliché that pre-colonial Africa had no history is no longer sustainable. Western scholars using archaeology tried to modify this idea by showing that the Sub-Saharan Africa had at least smelted iron and domesticated from about 2000 years, but this modification did not allow major revolution in the thinking about the African history. The Khoisan people continued being viewed as unchanged and the Bantu speakers kept moving around the content with their iron tools like locasts. The iron and domesticates of the Bantu speakers were even viewed to have arrived from the north or Asia with no local capacity to develop and innovate them. Bantu speakers were viewed until now as people who could not build permanents and sophisticated settlements and could not build empires (see Ehret 1998). It also remained until very recently or even now that the Africans could not sail in deep waters and involve in international trade. West African Atlantic Ocean had to wait for Vasco-Dagama in the 15 th century to open it for sailing. Strangely enough it was argued that the Bantu migration never reached the coastal littoral and that the ancient reported towns by Greaco-Roman documents were of non-Africans (see Sutton 1994-5, Ehret 1998). This thinking has slightly changed (Phillipson 2005) after my discovery of sites of the Early Iron Working period accepted by scholars to have been of the early Bantu speakers. (Chami 2006).
To support Egptian, Greaco and other pre-Christian documents about Punt and other settlements in Africa archaeological research has uncovered many sites of the periods and remains of materials from the ancient worlds including Mediterranean region, the Middle East and Asia . The Islands of Eastern Africa never thought to have been settled before Islamic period have now been found to have settlements beginning from about 30,000 years ago. Human burial systems are attested from more that 10,000 years ago. All these findings suggest that Africa was not behind the developments that took place elsewhere in the world and probably, as Africa is thought to have been the origin of mankind, one must be prepared to view similar earlier cultural developments in Africa .
REFERENCES
Bolliger, B. et al. 2005. Ancient civilizations: Egypt . Willoughby : Global book
Publishing.
Brummett, P. et al. 2000. Civilization past and present. New York : Longman.
Cavalli-Sforza, L. 2001. Genes, peoples and languages . London : Penguin Books
Chami, F. (2006). The Unity of the African ancient history: 3000BC to AD 500 . E&D
Publishers, Mauritius .
Chami, F. 2007. Diffusion in the Studies of the African Past : Reflections from New
archaeological findings. African Archaeological Review 23 (3-4) : 1-48.
Chami, F. 2008. The atomic model view of society : application in studies of the
African past. In Schmidt, P. (ed), Post colonial
archaeologies . (forthcoming). New York : SAR Press.
Chami, Felix , 1994, The Tanzanian Coast in the First Millennium AD , Studies in African
Archaeology 7. Uppsala : Societas Archaeologica Uppsaliensis.
Dick-Read, R. (2005). The phantom voyagers: evidence of Indonesian settlement in
Africa in Ancient times . Thurlton Publishing, Winchester .
Diop, C. 1981. Origin of the ancient Egyptians. In G. Mokhtar (ed.), General History
of Africa II. 27-83. Edinburgh : UNESCO.
Ehret, C. 1998. An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World Prehistory, 1000 BC to AD 400 . Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press .
Ingrams, W. 1967. Zanzibar : Its history and its people . London : Frank cass and co.
Ltd.
Lejju, J., Robertshaw, P. and Taylor, D. 2005. Africa's earliest bananas. Journal of
Archaeological Sciences 33 :102-113.
Harris, M. 1968. The rise of anthropological theory . New York : Thomas Y. Crowell
Company.
Horton, M. and Middleton, J. 2000. The Swahili. The Social Landscape of a
Mercantile Society . Cambridge : Blackwell.
Kehoe, A. 2008. « Will the Polynesian chickens knock down American isolation ? ».
Paper presented in WAC – Dublin.
Kuhn, T. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions . Chicago : The University of
Chicago Press.
Marks, A. and Mohammed-Ali, A. (eds) 1991. The late prehistory of the eastern
Sahel : te Mesolithic and Neolithic of Shaqadud , Sudan . Dallas : Southern
Methodist University Press.
Mbida, C. et al . 2000. Evidence for Banana cultivation and animal husbandry during
the firs tmillennium B.C. in the forest of southern Cameroon . Journal of
Archaeological Science 27: 151-162.
Phillipson, D. 2006. African Archaeology . Cambridge : Cambridge University
Press.
Renfrew, C. and Bahn, P. 1991. Archaeology: theories, methods and practice .
London : Thames and Hudson .
Sinclair, P. 2007. What is the archaeological evidence for external trading contacts on the
East African coast in the first millennium BC? In Starkey, J. et. al., eds.,
Natural resources and cultural connections of the Red Sea . Oxford : BAR
International Series 1661.
Storey, A. et al. 2008. Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-columbian introduction
of Polynesian chickens to Chile . http: www.pnas.org/content/104/25/10335.full .
Sutton, J. 1994-95a. East Africa : Interior and coast. Azania 29-30: 227-232.
See for instance Ruwenzori (for Rwanda/Burundi), Kilimakyaru (Kilimanjaro), Nguru, Uluguru, Rungwe (for mountains in Tanzania ), Nyandarua ( Kenya ) and many others.
I noted elsewhere (Chami 2006) that falume(farume) itself is the same word as farao (Pharah) of the Egyptian tradition meaning the incarnation of God. This was only attributed to Kings.
