Savanna Pastoral Neolithic

Through archaeology, historical linguistics and archaeogenetics, they conventionally have been identified with the area's first Afroasiatic-speaking settlers. Archaeological dating of livestock bones and burial cairns has also established the cultural complex as the earliest centre of pastoralism and stone construction in the region.

Overview

The makers of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture are believed to have arrived in the Rift Valley sometime during the Pastoral Neolithic period (c. 3,000 BC-700 AD). Through a series of migrations from Horn of Africa, these early Cushitic-speaking pastoralists brought cattle and caprines southward from the Sudan and/or Ethiopia into northern Kenya, probably using donkeys for transportation. According to archaeological dating of associated artifacts and skeletal material, they first settled in the lowlands of Kenya between 5,200 and 3,300 ybp, a phase referred to as the Lowland Savanna Pastoral Neolithic. They subsequently spread to the highlands of Kenya and Tanzania around 3,300 ybp, which is consequently known as the Highland Savanna Pastoral Neolithic phase.

Excavations in the area indicate that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic peoples were primarily cattle pastoralists. They milked this livestock, and also possessed goats, sheep, and donkeys. They typically buried their deceased in cairns. Their toolkit was characterized by a blade and bladelet-based lithic industry, earthenware pots, stone bowls and pestles, and occasional grindstones. The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic peoples sometimes hunted medium and large game on the plains, and during the culture's lowland phase, they likewise fished in Lake Turkana.

Sonia Mary Cole (1954) indicates that certain pestles and grindstones that she excavated from ochreous levels were stained with ochre, while others from the carbonized layers were not. She consequently suggests that the latter were instead used for grinding grain. Other scholars have argued that there is no direct archaeological evidence that SPN peoples cultivated grains or other plant domesticates.

Although detailed information on this segment of African prehistory is not abundant, data so far available reveal a succession of cultural transformations within the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic. The transformations seem to have been fostered by both environmental change and population movements. Among these changes was the apparent abandonment of the stone bowls at around 1,300 years before present.

Ancient DNA analysis of a Savanna Pastoral Neolithic bone excavated at the Luxmanda site in Tanzania found that the specimen carried a large proportion of ancestry related to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of the Levant, similar to that borne by modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting the Horn of Africa. This suggests that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture bearers may have been Cushitic speakers. Further research has shown that the Pastoral Neolithic people, supported the previously identified three-component model: Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Levantine groups, Stone Age East African foragers, and individuals related to present-day Dinka.