Foragers or Cultivators? A Discussion of Wilks's “Big Bang” Theory of Akan History. Journal of West African History, Vol. 1, Iss. 2 (2015): 1–26. ISSN 2327-1868

Abstract

This article follows various recent contributions challenging Ivor Wilks’s “big bang” theory of Akan history. In a paper published in 2005, Wilks reconfirmed his hypothesis that the Akan populations inhabiting the forestland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were hunter-gatherers who achieved a new level of mastery of the environment, and gave way to centralized political formations. The present paper analyzes the technical, demographic and social conditions of the transition process from a hunting-gathering to a swidden agricultural economy, and provides a picture, consistent with the archaeological data, that pushes back by centuries the practice of agriculture in the forest, showing that it is unlikely that hunter-gatherers, in a short span of only two centuries, could have launched an agrarian and industrial revolution, and created the Akan civilization.

Keywords: Akan, Asante, Ghana, Wilks