2024年4月1日发(作者：战网国际服官网地址)

新托福TPO7阅读原文(三):Agriculture, Iron, and the Bantu Peoples

TPO-7-3：Agriculture, Iron, and the Bantu Peoples

There is evidence of agriculture in Africa prior to 3000 B.C. It may have

developed independently, but many scholars believe that the spread of agriculture and

iron throughout Africa linked it to the major centers of the Near East and

Mediterranean world. The drying up of what is now the Sahara desert had pushed

many peoples to the south into sub-Sahara Africa. These peoples settled at first in

scattered hunting-and-gathering bands, although in some places near lakes and rivers,

people who fished, with a more secure food supply, lived in larger population

concentrations.

Agriculture seems to have reached these people from the Near East, since the

first domesticated crops were millets and sorghums whose origins are not African but

west Asian. Once the idea of planting diffused, Africans began to develop their own

crops, such as certain varieties of rice, and they demonstrated a continued

receptiveness to new imports. The proposed areas of the domestication of African

crops lie in a band that extends from Ethiopia across southern Sudan to West Africa.

Subsequently, other crops, such as bananas, were introduced from Southeast Asia.

Livestock also came from outside Africa. Cattle were introduced from Asia, as

probably were domestic sheep and goats. Horses were apparently introduced by the

Hyksos invaders of Egypt (1780-1560 B.C.) and then spread across the Sudan to West

Africa. Rock paintings in the Sahara indicate that horses and chariots were used to

traverse the desert and that by 300-200 B.C., there were trade routes across the Sahara.

Horses were adopted by peoples of the West African savannah, and later their

powerful cavalry forces allowed them to carve out large empires. Finally, the camel

was introduced around the first century A.D. This was an important innovation,

because the camel’s abilities to thrive in harsh desert conditions and to carry large

loads cheaply made it an effective and efficient means of transportation. The camel

transformed the desert from a barrier into a still difficult, but more accessible, route of

trade and communication.

Iron came from West Asia, although its routes of diffusion were somewhat

different than those of agriculture. Most of Africa presents a curious case in which

societies moved directly from a technology of stone to iron without passing through

the intermediate stage of copper or bronze metallurgy, although some early

copper-working sites have been found in West Africa. Knowledge of iron making

penetrated into the forest and savannahs of West Africa at roughly the same time that

iron making was reaching Europe. Evidence of iron making has been found in Nigeria,

Ghana, and Mali.

This technological shift cause profound changes in the complexity of African

societies. Iron represented power. In West Africa the blacksmith who made tools and

weapons had an important place in society, often with special religious powers and

functions. Iron hoes, which made the land more productive, and iron weapons, which

made the warrior more powerful, had symbolic meaning in a number of West Africa

societies. Those who knew the secrets of making iron gained ritual and sometimes

political power.

Unlike in the Americas, where metallurgy was a very late and limited

development, Africans had iron from a relatively early date, developing ingenious

furnaces to produce the high heat needed for production and to control the amount of

air that reached the carbon and iron ore necessary for making iron. Much of Africa

moved right into the Iron Age, taking the basic technology and adapting it to local

conditions and resources.

The diffusion of agriculture and later of iron was accompanied by a great

movement of people who may have carried these innovations. These people probably

originated in eastern Nigeria. Their migration may have been set in motion by an

increase in population caused by a movement of peoples fleeing the desiccation, or

drying up, of the Sahara. They spoke a language, proto-Bantu (“Bantu”means “the

people”), which is the parent tongue of a language of a large number of Bantu

languages still spoken throughout sub-Sahara Africa. Why and how these people

spread out into central and southern Africa remains a mystery, but archaeologists

believe that their iron weapons allowed them to conquer their hunting-gathering

opponents, who still used stone implements. Still, the process is uncertain, and

peaceful migration—or simply rapid demographic growth—may have also caused the

Bantu explosion.

译文：TPO-7-3 农业、铁器和班图人

在非洲，早在公元前3 000年以前就有了农业的迹象。它可能是独立发展的，

但很多学者认为农业和铁器在非洲的传播将非洲与近东的中心和地中海世界联

系了起来。就是现在的撒哈拉沙漠地区的不断变得干旱使得很多人向南迁徙到撒

哈拉沙漠以南的非洲地区。这些部落起初分散地定居，并仍靠打猎和采集维生，

尽管是在靠近湖泊和河流的地区人们以捕鱼为业，有较稳定的食物供给，聚集了

较多的人口。农业技术可能来自于近东最终为非洲人所知，因为最初驯化的农作

物是起源于西亚而不是非洲的小米和高粱。一旦种植的思想传播开来，非洲人就

开始培育他们自己的农作物，比如某些水稻，并且他们一直愿意接受新的外来作

物。人们认为驯化非洲作物的地区从埃塞俄比亚一直延伸到苏丹的南部，再到西

非。接下来，其他的作物，比如香蕉，就从东南亚传入到非洲了。