Middle Africa (7,821–6,094 BCE): Mega-Chad Waters, Expanding…

Middle Africa (7,821–6,094 BCE): Mega-Chad Waters, Expanding Rainforests, and the Great Equatorial Rivers.

During the Early Holocene, Middle Africa stretched from the Lake Chad basin through Cameroon and the Central African Republic into the forests of Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, southward through Katanga and Angola, and westward to the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. Across this enormous region, stronger tropical rainfall reshaped lakes, forests and rivers while human communities remained hunters, gatherers and fishers.

In the north, Lake Mega-Chad formed one of Africa's largest Early Holocene aquatic landscapes. Stronger rainfall and river discharge filled the Chad Basin far beyond the limits of the later lake, creating broad shallow waters, deltas, marshes, sandy shorelines and seasonally flooded grasslands. Around much of this age, the system stood near one of its great Holocene high phases.

Human communities moved through these lakeshore and wetland environments, combining hunting and gathering with fishing wherever aquatic resources were abundant. Fish, waterfowl, wetland plants, hippopotamuses and other animals concentrated around shifting shorelines, while adjoining savannas supported terrestrial game. Settlement remained mobile or recurrent rather than organized into permanent food-producing villages.

Farther south in Cameroon, rainforest expanded strongly after the beginning of the Holocene. Around Lake Barombi Mbo, forest reached one of its greatest Holocene extensions, replacing much of the more open vegetation that had characterized the preceding glacial period.

The Cameroon Grassfields remained more varied. At Shum Laka, hunter-gatherers occupied a landscape containing both forest and more open vegetation. They used quartz-rich microlithic Later Stone Age technologies and repeatedly returned to the rockshelter while hunting within the surrounding uplands. Pottery and polished macrolithic traditions had not yet appeared.

Across Gabon, Congo and much of the Congo Basin, expanding tropical forest covered enormous areas. Rivers, swamp forests, seasonally inundated ground and terra-firme forest created a complex landscape rather than one continuous ecological zone. The Congo, Ubangi, Sangha, Kasai, Ogooué and their tributaries formed the strongest natural corridors through this forested world.

Human groups occupied these river and forest environments despite the often sparse archaeological record left by acidic soils and rapid tropical decay. Fishing, hunting, gathering of wild fruits and nuts, and use of river margins supported flexible settlement patterns adapted to local forest and wetland conditions.

Rainforest expansion did not erase every open habitat. In parts of Gabon and Cameroon, localized savanna or woodland enclaves survived within a broadly forested landscape, maintaining ecotones attractive to both people and wildlife.

Toward Katanga and Angola, environments became progressively more open. Woodland, grassland, upland plateaus, rivers and seasonal wetlands supported Later Stone Age communities whose subsistence depended on hunting and gathered plant foods rather than agriculture or domestic animals.

The islands of São Tomé and Príncipe followed a separate history. Their volcanic mountains, humid forests, streams and endemic species developed entirely without human occupation. No people, introduced mammals, cultivated plants or anthropogenic clearings existed there during this age.

Across the entire subregion, pottery remained absent from the secure epochal core. The later ceramic, agricultural and iron-working societies of Cameroon and the Congo Basin lay thousands of years ahead, as did the major migrations associated with later Bantu-speaking populations.

Near the end of the period, hydroclimatic change around 6,200 BCE affected the northern part of the region more visibly than the equatorial forest core. Discharge from Mega-Chad declined from its earlier peak, while the great rainforests of Cameroon and the Congo Basin remained extensive. Middle Africa therefore responded unevenly to the wider climatic disturbance.

Legacy of the Age

By 6,094 BCE, Middle Africa contained one of the largest freshwater landscapes of the African Humid Period beside one of the world's greatest expanding tropical forests. Lake Mega-Chad spread across immense northern lowlands, while rainforest reached maximum or near-maximum Early Holocene extent through Cameroon and much of the equatorial basin. Great rivers structured movement through forest and wetland, and Later Stone Age communities continued to hunt, gather and fish without agriculture, livestock or pottery becoming region-wide systems. Farther south, woodland and savanna remained prominent across Katanga and Angola, while São Tomé and Príncipe remained wholly unpeopled. The defining history of the age was the expansion and diversification of water and forest landscapes across a region still entirely outside the later farming, iron-working and village worlds of Central Africa.