East Africa is known as the cradle of human life, home to the evolution of hominids from the earliest upright walkers to modern humans. But one evolutionary step remained a blank slate for Africa: the development of agriculture. It is well documented in much of the world where and when people began to farm and raise animals as cultures transitioned out of hunter-gatherer economies. People in East Africa, like most of the continent, long ago transitioned to agricultural economies, but the histories of when and how were not well known.
The story of the origins of agriculture in East Africa is now being illuminated. In 2024, Steven Goldstein, assistant professor of anthropology in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and his colleague, Natalie Mueller of Washington University in St. Louis, reported the earliest evidence for plant farming in East Africa based on dating seeds and grain excavated at the Kakapel Rockshelter in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya.
The work showed evidence of a wide range of crops from all over Africa and pushed back the dates for farming in East Africa. A West African crop, cowpeas, was dated to 2,300 years ago, making it the earliest documented domesticated crop in East Africa.
“The fact that West African crops are growing first supports the theory that migrations of Bantu speakers from around modern Nigeria brought farming. But crops like finger millet and sorghum do not show up together as a package; rather they integrated at separate times,” explains Goldstein. “There were many individual movements of people and trade, and farmers in East Africa had choices of what crops to focus on.”
Goldstein believes that the principle of choice is a way of combatting variability of soil and water in East Africa, as opposed to an economy of cash crops that accompanied the colonial integration of East Africa into a global economy.
“A crop like finger millet requires a bit more labor and produces fewer calories per acre than corn, but it has more micronutrients, and it is more resistant to insect predation. It grows well in relatively nutrient-poor soils in much of East Africa. In the face of droughts, aridity and climate change, it is hugely beneficial to have those strategic options,” Goldstein observes.
Goldstein and his collaborators want to help change the portrayal of Africa as a place of constant famine and food insecurity.
“It’s just simply not true,” he says. “The major complex states across sub-Saharan Africa only began to change after colonialism. I think we are rectifying the portrayal by looking at the sustainable options and strategies that clearly were successful in supporting large populations in the past.”