The Iron Age in Africa

When I worked in Nigeria, collected hand made iron tools. I walked the Onitsa Market on the river Niger, where hundred of African Ibo smiths manufactured original and interesting hand tools, agricultural machines and a large variety of machetes and knives. I bought a lot, very cheap for me, and had it sent back to Buenos Aires. It never arrived.

While in Europe the Iron Age followed the Bronze Age, in Africa it started EARLIER and followed directly the Stone Age. Ancients Greeks used heavy and expensive bronze body armor and hand machetes that were almost useless in battle after a few hits. African iron knives were durable although the quality of the metal (they mined and refined it themselves) was poor.

In Onitsa I bought also bronze statues, some of artistic value, sold to me as "antiquities". A few heads I brought to Argentina in my luggage, and later to Israel, but they disappeared. In retrospective, it is quite imaginable that the Niger River Delta people like Igbo and Ibibio, could have advanced more rapidly than the Europeans, even they peopling Europe instead us. I speculate that they "lost the train" with a difference of 2000 years.

When I worked in the Delta, the area was peaceful and policed, a legacy of recent British colonials. It hits me as paradoxical that instead of developing fast (the region is rich in oil and tropical agriculture), they descended into a jungle slum. The Delta peoples are intelligent, healthy and physically stronger than Europeans. I can't explain their failure but I am sure that raw IQ is not the answer. The IQ of British Africans is similar to that of the autochthonous population that created the Industrial Revolution.