The Dark Age in West Africa

HBDChick links to population collapse in Congo rainforest. The article looks to 1149 radiocarbon dates linked to 115 pottery styles recovered from 726 sites, matching that with linguistics and genetics. None of these dating methods are perfect; genetics in particular works by generation, not timeline unless there is literacy.

Dirk Seidensticker - whose name sounds like a Mel Brooks character - and his team find an expansion of West African culture in this region... up to AD 400. Then, it seems, came "Late Antiquity". The population crashed until AD 600, and didn't really recover until AD 1000. So, file the Congo watershed and basin for yet another Dark Age, if Scott Alexander will pardon the expression; alongside the Mediterranean and Iran.

As noted these dates are not solid, absent a good West African IntCal20 with tree-rings and the like. They are solid enough to tell us that most Bantu languages in Congo today are young. Future linguistic study in Congo will need to distinguish between AD 1000 founders and survivals from before the bottleneck. Some communities did survive but seem to have switched languages, like the Pygmies did (but again... when?).

The proposed date for the population collapse, at least, overlap the coming of plague to the Axsum kingdom up that other great African river. Either Congo got the yersinia from Ethiopia or the other way 'round; David Keys would say the latter. Yersinia's base is clearly Eurasian but there was plenty of Iran / Somalia commerce during the Sasanian heyday, maybe even Parthian before then.

We've noted here, also, fifth century Ilopango. This wasn't the AD 536 event in Constantinople. But maybe Ilopango had reach for weather further south and west. Certainly seems to have cut the Xinca culture off at the knees, so it never rivaled the Maya.