Homo sapiens
Early Hominid spread into different environments and by the end of the Pleistocene era, Homo sapiens (occupying both the old and new worlds Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands) had been sufficiently differentiated into six major races: the Australoid, the Caucasoid, the Mongoloid, the Negroid the Pymoid and the Sanoid. Each race is a human population that is sufficiently in-bred to have a distinctive genetic composition shown in a distinctive combination of physical traits. Racial differences were a result of man occupying different environments and adapting to the new situation. Adaptation was made possible by gene mutation, natural selection, genetic drift and population mixing of hybridization.
The Sangonans of West Africa
Cultural differentiation in Africa can be reconstructed from the archaeological evidence available. Early Acheulian hand-axe culture might have spread all over Africa, including West Africa.
Thus, about 50, 000 years ago the heavy browed Sangonans spread across most of Africa, south of the Sahara. They had learnt to make fire, lived in caves or rock shelters and were equipped with better tools consisting of choppers and scrappers.
The Sangonans were forest dwellers, occupying the great lakes of Central Africa, the present day Congo and Angola and around the Zambezi River. They probably spread into different areas of the forest zone of West Africa to give more impetus to Acheulian culture. This results in the development of variants of stone cultures found in West Africa of different ages as shown in the archaeological findings in Ugwuele 55, 000 B.C (Anozie 1980), Nsukka 2555 B.C. (Hartle 1967), Ukpa Rock Shelter 2935 B.C. (Hartle 1967 and 1972) Iwo Eleru 9250 (Shaw 1965, and sites in Ghana and Sierra Leone (Wai Ogodsu Anday BW 1973 and 1979)
The other folks that developed another stone culture in East Africa which was contemporaneous with the Sangonans are called Fouresmith culture. They were developed in a more open grassland and lightly wooded terrain of the Plateau regions to the south. The hand-axes were almond in shape and mostly made of gray shell found in the region. They made more use of wood, resin and bone and conducted ingenuous varieties of traps for capturing animals.
The West African Stone Age, particularly that of the Ugwuele, had relationship chronologically and typologically with those of the Sangonan and the Fouresmith. The northward migration of earlier folks into the blooming Sahara region via the Cameroons and southeastern Nigeria might have opened another new era of African culture in the Saharan and Western Africa. Regional variations in physical appearance began to appear 35, 000 years ago. Homo sapiens had appeared alongside the Neanderthals who became extinct by 10, 000 B.C. Small statured men occupied southern Africa. The Sangonans have been displaced by the Negroes. The Neanderthals occupying North Africa were displaced by new settlers from South Africa and probably by Asia Minor. These new types lived in larger groups and had regulated community life.
The Wet Phase of Sahara
At about 10, 000 B.C., the climate of the Sahara grew cooler, rivers; flowed and pasture appeared. The Sahara became an area of interchange of peoples, ideas and technology. This continued and was intensified b about 5, 000 B.C. when the “wet phase” ushered in a period of mellow fruitfulness. For about three thousand years the Sahara teemed with life and culture. Tropical peoples from the south mixed with Mediterranean peoples from the north.
These Sahara inhabitants raised herds of horned-cattle and by 3, 500 B.C., they were also practicing some form of primitive agriculture while their neighbors in the Nile Valley grew food by tilling, sowing and irrigation. Thus, the Sahara became the cradle of the African Neolithic Age and one could say that in developmental terms African civilization had passed another remarkable phase. The universal hand-axe of over a million years ago was replaced by better tools and weapons made by different types of men for different purposes. Egypt at this era belonged to the Sahara-Sudan region of wet phase, but it assumed a special position as a result of the presence of the River Nile and its linkage with the Near East and the Eastern Sudan.
The Sahara Desert
About 3, 000 B.C. the Sahara began to dry up, the rivers and pastures began to disappear. Then began a steady movement of Saharan people into more favourable lands. Some moved northward and merged with the mixed population of the African Mediterranean. The Saharans who migrated eastward towards the Nile came up against Egyptian resistance which gradually diminished with the weakening position of the Egyptians Kingdoms. The other movement was southward into the heart of the continent. These Saharans mingled with those they found and new ways of life emerged in various places.
On the Ethiopian Plateau and in East Africa, for example, stock-raising cultures emerged. In the south-western Sahara, on the western Sudanese fringe, a Neolithic way of life based on local experiment and inventors emerge, new crops such as sorghum and rice were grown; and in the West Africa Savanna, new crops such as yam and melons were grown.
In Africa south of the Sahara, the appearance of iron-work, and its attendant job creation and population growth, occurred at different times in different regions. In the Nile Valley, the use of iron at Kush was common around 500 B.C. By 200 B.C, it was at Meroe and around 440 B.C. it was also used at Nok in southern Zaria (Nigeria). The Nok culture has proved to be clear evidence of a traditional stage between a Stone age food-collecting culture and one that grew food. The metal age of Africa emerged independent of Europe, and developed its distinctive features independent of Northern Africa. Iron helped the final conquest of the equatorial forest which was started in the late Stone Age. With the spread of iron, people also spread. Gradually, in the early Metal Age of Africa, the Savannah people came in contact with the forest people as typified in the Bantu migration, the Eri and Oduduwa migrations. Eri moved down the Anambra to begin the Anambra civilization, which finally gave rise to the Nri civilization. Great social and cultural transformation overwhelmed Africa and prepared her for another phase. These movements introduced metal work deep into the fringes of the forest zones of Nigeria. In the cultural theatre of Eastern Nigeria, Metal Age culture flourished in Nsukka area and diffused t Udi, Awka and Ikwerre. It reached its apogee in the Igbo-Ukwu culture through Nri activities which spread into the Western Igbo to dovetail with the Edo Metal Age culture – Onwuejeogwu (1970)
Notable Contributions to The Origin Of The Igbo People
Idigo (1955) made a unique contribution to the history of the origin and migration of the Igbo based on time honoured oral tradition. “One school of thought traces the origin of the Igbo from the Jews who migrated from Egypt centuries ago. The word Igbo is assumed to be a corruption of the name Hebrew. When the Hebrews left Egypt after over four hundred years of servitude, they crossed the Red Sea and wondered about in the Arabian Desert for forty years. Some of them who did not reach the Promised Land found their way to Africa south of the River Nile and then in Nigeria”
Idigo goes further to say that “according to a popular oral tradition Aguleri, a warrior and hunter called Eri migrated near the bank of River Anambra (called Omabala by the indigenes and corruptly named Anambra by the European settlers). He built his camp at Eri-Aka, near Odanduli Stream, a place which lies between Ivite and Igboezunu, Aguleri”
Other writers of Igbo history, who engaged in debates bothering on the uncertainty about the origin of the Igbo, may have done so owing to their source of information. In spite of the different contentions, however, most of them indicate that Eri came from areas further north, possibly from the Niger Confluence. This area has been the settlement of the Igala people. Isichei (1976) makes the following assertions “The first human inhabitants of Igboland must have come from areas further north, possibly from the Niger confluence. But men have been living in Igboland for at least five thousand years since the dawn
