Chadic Peoples

Date: c. 5000 b.c.e.-700 c.e.

Locale: Central and West Africa

Chadic Peoples

Today, the Chadic peoples are those in central, western, and eastern Africa who speak one of the many languages of the Chadic language family, a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Approximately 26 million people today speak a Chadic language; 22 million of these speak Hausa. Chadic languages use tonal inflection to differentiate meaning in identical words. Chadic languages have been spoken around the Lake Chad region since 5000-4000 b.c.e. Two archaeological sites show Chadic people in settled communities and creating art by the first millennium b.c.e.

Cliff paintings from some nine thousand years ago in the Borkou and Ennedi regions (north-central Chad) depict elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, cattle, camels, and harpoon fishing. Lake Chad was then much larger and the region wetter, gradually becoming drier and more desertlike over the next several thousand years. In the fifth century b.c.e., the Greek historian Herodotus described a black population who inhabited caves in the Fezzan area (now a region of desert and oases in southern Libya). Archaeological excavations south of Lake Chad revealed terra-cotta and cast bronze objects associated with a people known as the Sao along the Chari (or Shari) and Lagone Rivers. The period from 550 b.c.e. to 50 c.e. produced decorated pottery vessels. Between 50 and 700 c.e., more finely finished pottery vessels and simplified terra-cotta human and animal figures were made. Head forms created in terra-cotta around 700 c.e. combined human and frog features, symbolizing fertility and the beginning of the rainy season, when the frogs appear. Excavations have revealed tenth century c.e. Sao walled cities and metalworking that suggest the sophistication of their ancient predecessors. The Sao would disappear by the seventeeth century; their modern descendants are probably the Kotoko.

In north-central Nigeria near the village of Nok, terra-cotta sculptures have been excavated that are dated between 1000 b.c.e. and 875 c.e.. These human and animal heads and figures show a highly developed technical skill with the creation of hollow terra-cotta sculptures. From about 800 b.c.e. to about 200 c.e., the Nok flourished on the Jos Plateau; in addition to sculpting terra-cotta figures, they probably worked tin and iron.

With the expansion of Islam, Arab traders arrived from the north in the seventh century c.e. Soon after, nomads from North Africa who may have been associated with the Toubou arrived and ultimately established, north of Lake Chad, the state of Kanem-Bornu, which reached its height some five hundred years later. The kings of this civilization would become Islamic by the eleventh century.

Bibliography

Connah, G. Three Thousand Years in Africa. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Hodges, Carleton, ed. Papers on the Manding. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1971.

Koslow, Philip J. Kanem-Borno: One Thousand Years of Splendor. New York: Chelsea House, 1994.

Mori, Fabrizio. The Great Civilisations of the Ancient Sahara: Neolithisation and the Earliest Evidence of Anthropomorphic Religions. Translated by B. D. Philips. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1998.

Nachtigal, Gustav. Sahara and Sudan: Kawar, Bornu, Kanem, Borku, Ennedi. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1979.