---
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
chunk: 17/21
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

It is especially interesting that the form of writing that developed in Bunyoro was based on a floral code, as the absence of both writing and flowers in African culture have been used by Jack Goody as evidence of African culture's separateness from that of "Eurasia." Goody has written that African peoples generally did not make significant use of flowers in worship, gift-giving or decoration. He does "not know of any indigenous use of odours", nor of plants playing a role in stories or myths. This is thought to be because of Africa's "simple" agriculture, "non-complex" societies and absence of a "culture of luxury". This description of African life does not fit well with what we know of precolonial Bunyoro, a large, relatively ancient, and extremely hierarchical kingdom, and the analysis of the role of flowers was quite inaccurate.
The ancient court music composers of Buganda discovered how human auditory perception processes a complex sequence of rapid, irregular sound impulses by splitting the total image into perceptible units at different pitch levels. They had made use of their discovery in composition, creating indirectly polyphonies of interweaving melodic lines that would suggest words to a Luganda speaker, as if some spirit were talking to the performers of a xylopnone or to the lone player of a harp (ennanga). The combination of the first two Xylophone parts creates 'illusory' melodic patterns that exist only in the observers mind, not actually played by either of the first two musicians directly. That these 'resultant' or 'inherent' patterns are materialised only in the minds of listeners is a remarkable feature of Bugandan music. It is probably the oldest example of an audio-psychological effect known as auditory streaming (first recognized in western literature as the melodic fission effect) to delliberately occur in music. The music would be produced by regular movement, with the fingers or sticks combining two interlocking tone-rows, but the patterns heard would be irregular, often asymmetric and complex. All the 102 xylophone compositions that were transcribed by Gerhard Kubik In Buganda during the early 1960s reveal an extremely complex structure, and they "fall apart' in perception-generated innerent melodlc-rhythmic patterns. No one, so far, has Succeeded in composing a new piece that would match in quality and complexity those compositions handed down for generations. Some of them can even be dated by correlating the accompanying song texts with the reign of past kings.
The Agikuyu of Kenya used a Mnemonic-pictographic device they called Gicandi to record and spread knowledge. This kind of memory device uses a pictorial symbolism which proceeds by simplified pictures, tracing only part of an object or a conventional image. A small number of pictures is sufficient to record a happening, suggest to a medicine-man the formula for magical practices and to a singer the object and verses of his song. A kikuyu was also able to follow the history of his herd by notches on a stick. A certain notch on a stick that identified a specific cow would signify insemination; another notch would record the birth of the calf and by such records the cattle breeder was able to estimate the amount of milk from his herd.
It is noteworthy that the word for letters or numerals in Kikuyu is ndemwa, which translates to those that have been cut. Father Cangolo of the consolata fathers who lived among the Kikuyu in the 1930s recorded that:

Recently an old Kikuyu took to a public meeting a wooden stick on which he was able to read the amount of tax paid by him to government on each year since it began being collected.

== Transportation technologies ==

=== North Africa ===
Since the 5th Dynasty, awareness of the wheel may have been in ancient Egypt.
During the 13th Dynasty, the earliest wheeled transport emerged in ancient Egypt.
The potter's wheel was introduced into ancient Nubia by ancient Egypt. The wheelhead of a potter's wheel, which was made of clay and dated to 1850 BCE, was found at Askut.
Since the Meroe period, ox-powered water wheels, specifically saqiya, and shaduf were used in Nubia.
Between 3200 BP and 1000 BP, various Central Saharan rock art sites from the Horse Period were created depicting charioteers, mostly upon horse-driven chariots and rarely upon cattle-driven chariots; these painted and engraved depictions were distributed in 81 painted and 120 engraved depictions in Algeria, 18 painted and 44 engraved depictions in Libya, 6 engraved depictions in Mali, 125 engraved depictions in Mauritania, 96 engraved depictions in Morocco, 29 engraved depictions in Niger, and 21 engraved depictions in Western Sahara, and were likely created by the Garamantes, whose ancestors were ancient Berbers and Saharan pastoralists. Rock art engravings of ox-drawn wagons and horse-driven chariots can be found in Algeria, Libya, southern Morocco, Mauritania, and Niger.
In the 5th century BCE, Herodotus reported use of chariots by Garamantes in the Saharan region of North Africa.
By the 4th century BCE, the water wheel, particularly the noria and sakia, was created in ancient Egypt.
In the 1st century CE, Strabo reported use of chariots by Nigretes and Pharusii in the Saharan region of North Africa.