Pastoral Neolithic

The Pastoral Neolithic (5000 BP - 1200 BP)^[1] refers to a period in Africa's prehistory, specifically Tanzania and Kenya, marking the beginning of food production, livestock domestication, and pottery use in the region following the Later Stone Age. The exact dates of this time period remain inexact, but early Pastoral Neolithic sites support the beginning of herding by 5000 BP. In contrast to the Neolithic in other parts of the world, which saw the development of farming societies, the first form of African food production was nomadic pastoralism, or ways of life centered on the herding and management of livestock. The shift from hunting to food production relied on livestock that had been domesticated outside of East Africa, especially North Africa. This period marks the emergence of the forms of pastoralism that are still present.^[2] The reliance on livestock herding marks the deviation from hunting-gathering but precedes major agricultural development. The exact movement tendencies of Neolithic pastoralists are not completely understood.^[1]

The term "Pastoral Neolithic" is used most often by archaeologists to describe early pastoralist periods in eastern Africa (also known as the "East African Neolithic").^[3] In the Sahara, hunter-gatherers first adopted livestock (e.g., cattle, sheep, goats) in the eighth to seventh millennia BP.^[4] As the grasslands of the Green Sahara began drying out in the mid-Holocene, herders then spread into the Nile Valley and eastern Africa.

During the Pastoral Neolithic in eastern Africa (5000 BP - 1200 BP),^[5] archaeologists have identified two pastoralist groups who spread through southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania;^[5] they co-existed alongside Eburran phase 5 hunter-gatherers; these groups are known as the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic and the Elmenteitan. The Pastoral Neolithic in eastern Africa was followed by the Pastoral Iron Age approximately two thousand years ago, during which agriculture, iron technology, and Bantu speakers spread into the region.^[6]