region became arid, forcing people to move and fi nd new
sources of food. Th us, over long stretches of time, the dietary
habits of the ancient Africans changed.
In spite of all these variables, a number of generalizations
can be made about the food and diet of ancient Africans. Un-
til the advent of agriculture, the earliest Africans survived
by hunting, gathering, and fi shing. Anthropologists theorize
that the earliest humans became bipedal—that is, walked up-
right on two legs—because natural selection favored those
who could travel long distances in the search primarily for
tubers, or rounded roots, such as the potato, that grew under-
ground. While tubers were an important source of food to the
very earliest Africans, Africa has few native tubers, about half
a dozen species, and those that did grow were small. Other,
imported varieties of tubers would later become important
agricultural crops.
Meat made up a major portion of the diet of early hunter-
gatherers; among many Bantu-speaking peoples, the words
for “food” and “meat” are still the same as they were in an-
cient times. In the equatorial forests of East Africa, for ex-
ample, bands of small-statured African groups (sometimes
termed Pygmies) survived by using spears, snares, nets, and
arrows to capture and kill a range of game, from birds and
rabbits to such large animals as hippopotamuses, giraff es, an-
telope, buff alo, gazelles, and elephants. Women, meanwhile,
gathered mushrooms, nuts, berries, fruits, some varieties of
cactus, and leafy vegetables. Nutritionists believe that the diet
of ancient Africans was in many respects superior to that of
modern peoples. Because hunter-gatherers consumed at least
80 diff erent types of plants and possibly many more, they had
a great deal of variety in their diet and suff ered no vitamin or
mineral defi ciencies—though starvation was an ever-present
threat. Eggs were gathered as well, but in some parts of the
continent eggs were a taboo item, thought to weaken men and
cause women to miscarry or become sterile. In some parts of
Africa eggs are still taboo.
In some portions of Africa termites and caterpillars were
roasted and eaten, oft en with honey, as snacks. Most com-
monly, the meat from game animals was preserved by smok-
ing and drying. When it was cooked, it was either roasted over
an open fi re or cooked in stews w it h vegetables; many of t hese
stews were also used as sauces for meat. A common sweetener
was honey, and a common beverage was made by brewing
kola nuts, herbs, and berries into a drink; kola nuts contain
caff eine, and the ancient Africans learned that they could en-
ergize people, especially men before a battle. Along the coasts
and rivers people caught and ate fi sh, which they fried, boiled,
pickled, or sometimes ate raw. Fish included mackerel, fl oun-
der, carp, pike, cod, and others; seafood included crab, snails,
oysters, lobster, prawns, shrimp, and crayfi sh.
Th e diet of ancient Africans changed as they came to
place less emphasis on hunting and gathering and more on
agriculture and livestock herding. Livestock herding, which
provided not only meat but also milk, cheese, butter, and yo-
gurt, was practiced primarily by people who lived in more
arid regions of the continent; in damper regions diseases
spread by such pests as the tsetse fl y made livestock herding
more precarious. Livestock included camels, cattle, donkeys,
goats, and sheep. Interestingly, modern peoples of Africa, in
common with Europeans, have the world’s lowest incidence
of lactose intolerance, or the inability to digest the sugar in
milk. It is believed that this tolerance for milk is a dietary ad-
aptation that dates back thousands of years to ancient Africa.
Historians believe that the fi rst domesticated cattle appeared
sometime between 3000 and 2000 b.c.e. Th e hardy Tunis
sheep from North Africa had been tended for some 2,000
years when the U.S. president George Washington had some
imported to help replenish his own sheep herd. While pigs
could be found in North Africa, they were not domesticated.
Many African tribes domesticated species of dogs as sources
of food.
Crop cultivation added considerable range to the ancient
African diet. Th e earliest African agriculturists lived in the
highlands of Ethiopia, though Bantu-speaking people from
East Africa and the Nilotes from northwest Africa were also
among the earliest farmers. Some of the crops that formed an
important part of the African diet included sorghum, mil-
let, beans, okra, and cowpeas. In some parts of the continent
pumpkins, cassava, and sweet potatoes were cultivated.
Th e African diet expanded again with the development
of trade with other regions of the world, particularly Asia.
Chief among imported foods were rice, yams, plantain, taro,
and bananas. Tubers continued to be an important part of
the diet. One variety of potato, for example, could weigh up
to 9 pounds and was an important source of water in the diet
for travelers and isolated herders. Th ese foods, in combina-
tion with indigenous crops, enabled the African population
to expand signifi cantly. In particular, they contributed to the
spread of Bantu-speaking people throughout large portions
of central and southern Africa. Wheat, too, was added to the
African diet, and such crops as wheat, millet, sorghum, andFineware cup decorated with frogs and lotus fl owers painted in black,
from Faras, Sudan, dating to the fi rst or second century c.e. (© Th e
Trustees of the British Museum)
food and diet: Africa 473