Kintampo Complex Family

This little family represents a Neolithic culture of West Africa called the Kintampo Complex, which occupied most of the territory of what is now Ghana between 2500 and 1400 BC. Living in villages of wattle-and-daub houses (sometimes built on stone foundations), these ancient Ghanaians would have subsisted on crops such as pearl millet, yams, and oil palm, as well as keeping livestock such as cattle and goats. However, they had yet to adopt the metalworking technology that their contemporaries elsewhere in West Africa had begun to develop, so they would have still used stone for making tools and jewelry.

A lot of artistic guesswork went into this illustration since I had more written descriptions than photos of the Kintampo people’s material culture to go on. I did read that they would have possessed cigar-shaped rasps for beating barkcloth, so that is why they’re wearing barkcloth clothes here. As for the young son wielding miniature weapons to the left, he’s supposed to be playing soldier like little boys around the world cultures like to do.

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