Pastoral Neolithic of East Africa
Pastoreo neolítico de África oriental
- Date
- c. 3000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Lothagam North, Lake Turkana, Kenya
- Credited to
- Pastoralists of the Turkana basin
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
The arrival of cattle, sheep and goats in the Turkana basin, accompanied by large monumental cemeteries with stone pillars. It is the earliest establishment of herding south of the eastern Sahara and predates agriculture in the region by millennia.
The Lothagam North cemetery (c. 3000-2300 BCE) was published by Hildebrand et al. (PNAS, 2018). Evidence of dairying in the region is later.
What it led to
- the spread of herding to Tanzania and southern Africa
- monumentality without centralised chiefdoms
- the pastoral traditions of Nilotic and Cushitic peoples