Bamana Puppet
20th century. Wood, cloth & pigment. Mali (Bambara)
Image courtesy of the Savannah African Art Museum.
The West African region is home to generations of city-states, kingdoms and empires along the river Niger.
Urban communities in West Africa reach back five thousand years to a time when the Sahara was a vast and fertile grassland. The people who inhabited this grassland left depictions of themselves and their animals, such as cattle, which provided a reliable food supply. As climate changed and the Sahara began its transition into the desert that it is today, societies slowly moved southward. Starting at 800 B.C.E., one such group of settlers, the Nok people, began a legacy in terracotta that trickled down to the cultures today, It would take a few millennia for this region of the world to regain access to the wider world.
The introduction of the camel from Arabia helped reconnect West Africa to international trade routes beginning in 700 C.E., allowing caravans to cross the Sahara. Cities, such as Djenne, Timbuktu and Walata, became hubs due to their position at the edge of the Sahara where life reemerges along a vast region known as the Sahel. Djenne itself is on the banks of the Beni, a tributary of the Niger River, the lifeline to many kingdoms and empires that lie further south.
The Niger River connects many cultures revealing a great diversity of peoples, terrains and histories. Descending from Djenne, tributaries multiply and grasslands emerge, where generations of empires – Ghana, Mali, Songhay rose and fell. The grasslands then turn into dense tropical forests as one approaches the coast; which is home to the Benin and Akan kingdoms among many others.
Bibliography:
Atmore, A., Stacey, G., & Forman, W. (1979). Black kingdoms, black peoples: The West African heritage. Akure, Nigeria: Fagbamigbe.
By Maxime Mballa-Tagny.