Before the Colony: Stone, Iron and Rice

Sierra Leone's story does not begin with ships arriving from Nova Scotia. Archaeological finds show that the land has been lived in continuously for at least 2,500 years, by one society after another.

In November 1965 the American anthropologist Carleton Coon and his wife dug into a rock shelter at Yengema, in Kono District, formed where a huge slab of granite had fallen and come to rest on other rocks. They recovered 16,954 pieces of material, including 984 stone implements and 277 pieces of pottery. The finds fell into three layers, one culture after another, reaching back into the Stone Age.

A few years later the archaeologist John Atherton excavated two more rock shelters in the north, at Kamabai and Yagala in Bombali District. His report, published in 1972, followed people there from the time of stone tools into the time of iron.

Iron was in use by the ninth century, and by the end of the tenth century people along the coast were farming. The Limba of the north, whose language is unrelated to any other spoken in the country, are believed to be the earliest people still living in Sierra Leone. Their own traditions say they have always lived in the Wara Wara mountains.

Much of this history is still in the ground. If you know of old pots, stone tools or carved figures turning up on a farm in your family's village, share a photograph. It may be the first record of a site.