Early Africans invented and discovered things which ensured their survival-rafts, crude clothing, tools, weapons and traps, the wheel, pottery, the marked stick for measuring, and ways of making fire and smelting copper and iron. No one of the early inventions was supreme, as each was important at the time. Without fire, African's early metal industry could not have been born. Although Africans' first weapons were tree limbs and stone, they imaginably improved on those designs. For example, after choosing a split end tree branch, someone used the fork with bits of vine or thongs (cut from animal hides) to form slings for throwing stones. The invention of agriculture by Africans (?12,000 BC) by means of deliberate planting called forth the invention of hoes, digging-sticks, and sickles for reaping. More intensive cultivation became possible, resulting in population growth, more settled existences of Africans, and more time to engage in abstract thought. During this time cattle, sheep, goats, horses, camels, asses, and pigs were captured and tamed. These provided a meat source and, as bodily changes occurred in the animals under domestication, increased milk secretions, wool, and hair for weaving. Early on cultivation in small plots was largely women's work; herding, men's work. Ancient Egyptian wall paintings show one of the early plows. It was invented by harnessing an animal to the heavy, short-handled, long-bladed hoe (which is still in use). However, the plow did not become wide-spread outside Africa until the succeeding Bronze Age (the period between the Stone and Iron Age-roughly 4000 BC to 2600 BC).
The first material made by humans was probably the mixture of clay, sand, and water-- the first "plastic." It was molded or shaped into an article (e.g. pottery) and then dried in the sun or baked until hard. Cloth making required a number of inventions. The fibers that grew in nature were short, whether it was the hair or wool of animals or the fibers of cotton, flax, and other plants. They had to be spun into threads which could then be worked into cloth. Even after the spinning of threads had been invented, ways had to be found for weaving the threads into fabrics. Twigs and reeds were used to make baskets. The weaving of baskets and mats was a well-developed art in Egypt by 5000 BC; rope by 4500 BC; elaborate textile weaving from flax by 3000 BC; and woolen cloth by 1000 BC. An Egyptian knife (between 900 and 800 BC) is the world's oldest voluntary making of a "steeled" piece of iron (Diop, Civilization, p285).
Meanwhile, they were building a body of languages, literature, art, and music.
When Africans started to live in villages and in larger settlements, more massive and more permanent structures were built-and some with brick. Those involved many new inventions. The earliest builders used rocks and dead trees. Tools were invented for cutting down trees and shaping and cutting stone.
At first, these tools were themselves wood or stone but were later replaced by the discovery/invention of metal. Ancient Egyptians invented inclined planes to raise the great stone blocks of the pyramids into position-some blocks weighing 50 tons. To cut such large pieces of stone, shape them, and move them into position required many inventions. Usually, an invention emerged from a few key ideas after a long period of trial and error; or sometimes by accident. Each individual was required to think deeply with both sides of their brains about every little thing they did that led to inventions and discoveries. The point is that no invention ever stands alone but rather is built upon the inventions that have gone before. Simple as these things seem to us now, they were new to the life of that early time. Principles underlying these inventions and discoveries are still fundamental to human existence.
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.
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