Abstract
Kola nut (Cola cf. nitida) and Safou fruit (Dacryodes edulis) remains have been discovered in eleventh- to fourteenth-century archaeological contexts at Togu Missiri near Ségou in Mali. These remains are evidence of early trade in perishable foodstuffs from the West African forest zone into the Middle Niger region. On the basis of these finds, this paper argues that long-distance trade links were well established by the end of the first millennium AD. It thereby supports the hypothesis that dates the inception of trade between the West African forest zone and the savanna regions to the first millennium AD. The circumstances of the find are discussed, as are the implications for our understanding of the wider exchange network based on the Niger River system in the late first and early second millennium CE.
Highlights
Kola nuts are important to West African cultures past and present
Their cultural uses and symbolism are fairly well described for the forest zone (Drucker-Brown, 1995; Hauenstein, 1974; Kwame, 2019) but less explicitly so for the western Sahel, where they are a constant yet peripheral feature in ethnographic accounts (Bertaux, 1984; Boujou, 2000). They are highly valued culturally, kola nuts do not grow in the Sahel. They come from the West African forest zone, a fact which has even led to the cardinal direction south becoming named after kola nuts in several Sahelian Mandé languages
McIntosh, the kola and gold trades are a southern add-on to earlier networks that brought iron, sandstone objects, and salt into the Inland Niger Delta in exchange for foodstuffs and led to specialized and regular trading expeditions (McIntosh, 1998, p. 217). All of these relate to the broader economic connections in the West African savanna and the Sahel, for which archaeological research is increasingly showing that a high-volume trade over medium to long distances developed in the mid to late first millennium
Summary
Kola nuts (the seeds of Cola nitida or Cola acuminata) are important to West African cultures past and present. It thereby supports the hypothesis that dates the inception of trade between the West African forest zone and the savanna regions to the first millennium AD. All of these relate to the broader economic connections in the West African savanna and the Sahel, for which archaeological research is increasingly showing that a high-volume trade over medium to long distances developed in the mid to late first millennium.
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