---
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
chunk: 11/21
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:40:31.520269+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Northern Africa ===
Egyptians wore linen from the flax plant, and used looms as early as 4000 BCE. Nubians mainly wore cotton, beaded leather, and linen.
The Djellaba was made typically of wool and worn in the Maghreb.

=== West Africa and the Sahel ===
Valentim Fenandes, writing in the early sixteenth century on the basis of news received in Lisbon from early travellers, praised the high quality of Mandinka cotton cloth that was found all along the west coast of West Africa Such comments were repeated with regard to the cotton cloth of the "Slave Coast" and Benin as well, produced especially in centers in the Yoruba country. John Phillips, an English captain who sailed to the Slave Coast at the end of the seventeenth century, was particularly impressed with local cloth, some of which was purchased by the European traders and fetched high prices in the New World.
Some of the oldest surviving African textiles were discovered at the archaeological site of Kissi in northern Burkina Faso. They are made of wool or fine animal hair in a weft-faced plain weave pattern. Fragments of textile have also survived from the thirteenth century Benin City in Nigeria.
In the Sahel, cotton is widely used in making the boubou (for men) and kaftan (for women).
Bògòlanfini (mudcloth) is cotton textile dyed with fermented mud of tree sap and teas, hand made by the Bambara people of the Beledougou region of central Mali.
By the 12th century, so-called Moroccan leather, which actually came from the Hausa area of northern Nigeria, was supplied to Mediterranean markets and found their way to the fairs and markets of Europe
Kente was produced by the Akan people (Ashante, Fante, Enzema) and Ewe people in the countries of Togo, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.
During the 11th Century, the now vanished people of the Tellem (as they are called by the Dogon who inhabit the region from the 16th Century onwards) entered the
area from the south, probably from the rain forest. From the 11th up to the 15th Century, the Tellem buried their dead in the remaining old granaries and in new buildings they built in the caves. The dead were buried with wooden headrests, bows, quivers, hoes, musical instruments, baskets, gourds, leather sandals, boots, bags, amulets, woolen and cotton blankets, coifs, tunics, and fiber aprons. These perishable objects found in a reasonably good state of preservation in the caves belong to the oldest objects that have been preserved from SubSaharan Africa. Archaeologists and textile experts who have analyzed the Tellem textiles assert found that they were of high quality and that no other region in the world has such a great variety of linear and geometrical patterns in cotton fabrics by means of a single color (the only one available: i.e. indigo). According to Rita Bolland, the Tellem designs have been the object of search for infinite combinations which have persisted to this day. To illustrate this search by Tellem weavers, Gerdes examines some patterns found on preserved fragments of tunics, sleeves, coifs and caps, woven in plain weave: i.e. the weave in which the horizontal and vertical threads cross each other one over, one under. According to Gerdes, the average width of the threads is 1 mm. The weavers alternated groups of natural white cotton threads with groups of blue, indigo-dyed, threads. From left to right, six vertical white threads are followed by four blue threads; from top to bottom, three horizontal white threads are followed by three blue threads. These yield a plane pattern. The basic rectangle has dimensions ten (=6+4) by six (=3+3), or (6+4) X (3+3). Gerdes adds that generally, the dimensions are (m+n) x (p+q), where m, n, p, and q are natural numbers. The Tellem weavers experimented with dimensions and found relationships between the dimensions and the (symmetry) properties of the patterns that resulted. In particular, the variation among the discovered plain weave fragments suggests that the weavers knew the effect on the patterns of the selection of even and odd dimensions, in addition to how these dimensions (m+n) and (p+q) are produced. The Tellem patterns from the 11th and 12th Centuries feature woven rectangles followed by fragments of respective plane patterns, which are two-color patterns in the sense that for each there is a rigid motion of the plane translation, rotation, reflection that reverses the blue and white colors. Furthermore, according to Gerdes, the Tellem weavers employed a variant of the plain weave, whereby in one direction double threads are used instead of single threads. In this way, the weavers were able to weave cloths with decorative and strip patterns. With woven cloth, the tailor could begin his/her work: drawing and cutting pieces; knotting, stitching and sewing them together; and decorating, for example, a tunic with a plaited band along the neck opening. Geometric knowledge is imperative in each of these activities.
Decorative bands were plaited both with even and odd numbers of strings. Among the plaited bands discovered in the caves, there are on one hand bands made out of 4, 6, 8, and 14 strings, and, on the other hand, out of 5, 7, and 9 strings. The selection of an even or an odd number of strings and the weave, either plain or not, has implications for the visible decorative patterns. In addition, the Tellem weavers also produced blankets made of woolen.