Asian rice, mung bean and cotton on the Swahili coast
Arroz, haba mungo y algodón asiáticos en la costa suajili
- Date
- c. 700-1000 CE · confidence low
- Place
- Unguja Ukuu, Unguja Island, Zanzibar, Tanzania
- Credited to
- Swahili communities and Indian Ocean merchants
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Charred remains of rice, mung bean and cotton from several coastal communities and the Comoros show that South Asian crops reached East Africa in the first millennium.
Crowther and colleagues (PNAS, 2016) study archaeobotany from Kenya, Tanzania, the Comoros and Madagascar between the 7th and 13th centuries. Linking the crops to the westward Austronesian expansion is an interpretation; they may also have arrived through trade. Indicative location.
What it led to
- Asian rice and pulses in the Swahili diet and trade
- cotton and local textile production on the coast
- an archaeological signal of Austronesian and Indian Ocean routes westward