2022/03/18 by Peter Breunig · 3 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Water management and technologies #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Prehistory #Human settlement #Geography #Settlement (finance) #Population #State (computer science) #Politics #Productivity #Scale (ratio) #Archaeology #Ethnology #Ancient history #Economy #History #Political science #Sociology #Economic growth #Cartography #Economics #Demography
paper · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190050092.013.5
openalex publication_date 2022/03/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract States are characterized by a settlement system with urban sites where many people live close, by social and political structures that organize such communal living, and economic productivity that secures the population’s food supply. In Nigeria, these characteristics appear long before the first recognized states. This chapter describes the prehistoric forerunners of such states, using as examples the Chad Basin and central Nigeria and focusing on the last two millennia BCE, as it is in this period that the relevant developments can first be seen to arise. They include food production and the transition from family-based, small villages to later large-scale settlements in the Chad Basin. In central Nigeria, food-producing communities created artistic sculptures that show complex rites and offer insight into spiritual beliefs. These developments are followed by the rise of iron production, population shifts, and another rise in large-scale settlement formation. While these prehistoric developments cannot explain precisely why and how state formation occurred a short time later, they nevertheless give an impression of the basis on which state formation could build.