Domestication of sorghum and pearl millet in the African Sahel
- Date
- c. 4000 to 2500 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Sahel (West and Northeast Africa)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Sub-Saharan Africa became an independent centre of cereal domestication, with distinct crops adapted to the seasonal aridity of the Sahel and Sahara.
Seed impressions in pottery from the Butana Group of the eastern Sahel (in present-day Sudan) record cultivation of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) showing early domestication traits during the fourth millennium BCE, while pearl millet (Cennchrus/Pennisetum glaucum) was domesticated in the western Sahel, with domestication traits documented in ceramic temper in northern Mali by about 2500 BCE. Archaeologists recognise at least three African cereal pathways: small millets in the central Sahara, sorghum in the eastern Sahel and pearl millet in the western Sahel, alongside the later domestication of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) in the inland Niger Delta. These drought-resistant grains thrived where Near Eastern wheat and barley could not, sustaining later Sahelian and West African societies and, in the case of pearl millet, spreading to South Asia by around 2500 BCE.
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Further reading
The wider story
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