cattle

Outside, two old boys lingered on the street corner discussing cattle.

As the Sahara dried up after 5000 B.C., pastoral peoples (cattle herders) moved southward along major watercourses into the savanna belt of West Africa and the Sudan.

The East African highlands are ideal cattle country and the home today of such famous cattle-herding peoples as the Masai.

The highlands were inhabited by hunter-gatherers living around mountains near the plains until about 3300 B.C., when the first cattle herders appeared.

These cattle people may have moved between fixed settlements during the wet and dry seasons, living off hunting in the dry months and their own livestock and agriculture during the rains.

As was the case elsewhere, cattle were demanding animals in Africa.

Even modest cattle herds required plenty of land and considerable mobility.

At the same time, the cattle owners had to graze their stock in tsetse-fly-free areas

As a result, small cattle herds spread south rapidly in areas where they could be grazed.

Provincial police began to appear, along with district officers and cattle registration and land deeds and registration for compulsory military service.

As a result, cattle and humans came into close association.

The cattle herders had only a few possessions: unsophisticated pots and polished adzes.