History of Ghana

Prehistoric era

As elsewhere in Africa, the climate of Ghana varied during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago). With greater precipitation, the forest spread northward and humans retreated toward the Sahara; when precipitation diminished, they occupied even the present forest. Apart from some pebble tools from high river terraces, the first industry is Late Chellean in the southeast. In the succeeding pluvial era, the Acheulean culture (see Acheulean industry) is lacking save for the extreme north.

With increases in aridity, humans reappeared, bringing Late Acheulean and Sangoan cultures (see Sangoan industry), probably successively. They moved along the Togo mountain range from the Niger River. Sangoan tools abound in Transvolta and around Accra and extend to Kumasi; the west remained forest and was rarely visited. The Sangoan culture waned in the Gamblian pluvial era. At its close there appears a Lupemban culture (see Lupemban industry), probably from the desiccating Sahara; it occurs in basal gravels of valleys carved during the preceding pluvial period. In central Ghana its tools are shapely; near the coast, crude and formless.

Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) traditions lingered into the succeeding subpluvial era. Thereafter excavations at Legon yielded quartz microliths made on small pebbles. Up-country these occur on silt terraces deposited in the preceding wet phase as far as the Niger. This culture is independent of the Saharan Mesolithic.

The latest Mesolithic Period has stone hoes, quartz beads, and other Congo types; pottery seems absent. This stage dates to the post-Flandrian marine regression (end of 2nd millennium bce).

Several Neolithic (New Stone Age) cultures seem identifiable. They contain polished axes and usually coarse pottery. The most distinctive appears around Kintampo and in the Accra plains; it had clay houses, Saharan chert microliths, shale arm rings, and scored terra-cottas like flattened cigars. A Neolithic culture more in Mesolithic tradition was excavated near Abetifi.

Evidence is lacking for the introduction of iron. Polished stone was commonly used until the 16th century, especially in the forest. Trade in greenstone for ax manufacture flourished. In Transvolta and the west, greenstone hoes are common. No satisfactory chronology has been established, nor can existing ethnic groups be identified before the 17th century. Of excavated sites, Nsuta, with decorated pottery and bobbin beads, is believed to be early medieval; the Sekondi village and cemetery, with fine pottery, stone axes, and quartz and shell beads, lasted until Portuguese times. In the north, heavily decorated pottery continued later on open sites and mounds indicating clay houses. European imports are unknown before the 17th century.

Early traditions

The modern state of Ghana is named for the African empire that flourished until the 13th century and was situated close to the Sahara in the western Sudan (see Ghana). The centre of the empire of Ghana lay about 500 miles (800 km) to the northwest of the nearest part of the modern state, and it is reasonably certain that no part of the latter lay within its borders. The claim that an appreciable proportion of modern Ghana’s people derived from emigrants from the empire cannot be substantiated with the evidence available at present. Written sources relate only to Muslim contacts with the empire of Ghana from about the 8th to the 13th century or to the period since European contact with the Gold Coast—i.e., modern Ghana—which began in the 15th century. Many modern Ghanaian peoples possess well-preserved oral traditions, but, even though some of these may reach as far back as the 14th century, this is after the final disappearance of the empire of Ghana and such very early traditions often present considerable problems of interpretation. Little progress has so far been made in linking the surviving traditions with the available archaeological evidence.