Region of Study>> African Archaeology >> Later Stone Age Africa

Around 10,000 BC, African societies developed microlith technology which permitted even finer flint tools that could be mounted in rows on a handle. Such a tool was useful for harvesting wild grasses and also permitted fine shell and bone fish hooks, further varying diet. These incipient Neolithic conditions led to eventual settlement sites being founded in parts of Africa as the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle was replaced by an agrarian and herding society. Other parts of the continent remained in the Paleolithic however.

Africa's earliest evidence for pottery and domesticated plants and animals comes from the north of the continent, in around 7000-6000 BC, and this different lifestyle is preserved in the images of Saharan rock art. As the Sahara increased in size due to global climate change, its early farmers were forced south and eastwards, to the Niger and Nile valleys spreading their new ideas as they moved.