Africa
- Yams
- Watermelon
The first instances of domestication of plants for agricultural purposes in Africa occurred in the Sahel region circa 5000 BCE, when sorghum and African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) began to be cultivated. Around this time, and in the same region, the small Guineafowl were domesticated.
Around 4000 BCE the climate of the Sahara and the Sahel started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace. This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink rather significantly and caused increasing desertification. This, in turn, decreased the amount of land conducive to settlements and helped to cause migrations of farming communities to the more humid climate of West Africa.
The most famous crop domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands is coffee. In addition, khat, ensete, noog, teff and finger millet were also domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands. Crops domesticated in the Sahel region include sorghum and pearl millet. The Kola nut, extracts from which became an ingredient in Coca-Cola, was first domesticated in West Africa. Other crops domesticated in West Africa include African rice, African yams, black-eyed peas and the oil palm.
Read more about this topic: List Of Food Origins
Famous quotes containing the word africa:
“Day by day we hear the cry of AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS. This cry has become a positive, determined one. It is a cry that is raised simultaneously the world over because of the universal oppression that affects the Negro.”
—Marcus Garvey (1887–1940)
“In Africa I had indeed found a sufficiently frightful kind of loneliness but the isolation of this American ant heap was even more shattering.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)