ABSTRACT
A great deal of the older anthropological and popular thinking about the history—or pre-history—of West Africa seems most plausible on the assumption that the main events there took place fairly recently. Agriculture is practised nearly everywhere that it can be practised in West Africa, given the general level of technology available. There are many crops, and the farmers show very considerable sophistication in their methods. West African agricultural societies tend to be intensely local in their cultural orientation. West Africa developed a great number of related art styles, especially in forms such as sculpture, music, and the dance, which could exert their influence fairly readily across language barriers and which could be expressed in the media available to the artists. The linguistic situation likewise suggests great age and little movement. There are many hundreds of languages spoken in West Africa—nobody knows how many.
