CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND CURRENT CHALLENGES _____________________________________________________________________ C HAP TE R TWO 2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND CURRENT CHALLENGES 2.1 Historical background Assumptions regarding population settlement 50. Prehistoric remains discovered on the RIM site in 1973 by A. Bassey confirm the presence of hunter-gatherer populations in the northwest of Burkina Faso some 12,000 to 5,000 years ago, before the Christian era. These populations settled in the area from 3,600 to 2,600 BC, a period that saw the beginnings of agricultural and metallurgical activities. 51. Testimony relating to religious matters (such as artefacts made of polished stone associated with burial remains) dates back to 1,000 years BP and to the beginnings of the spiritual revolution among Burkina Faso’s ancestors. There are many traces of human cultures on Sindou sites located in the southwest and in Oursi Pond in the north. 52. The transition to historical times began in the first millennium after the death of Christ, when the settlement of those people who are today part of Burkina Faso started. An in-depth review of oral traditions can distinguish the peoples who settled before the 12th Century AD. These were sedentary people and shepherds organised in autonomous social systems: 53. 48 • In the west there were the Bwaba, Senoufo and Bobo, who probably came in successive waves from the Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea regions. • In the centre there were the Ninisi (who were related to the San). • In the centre-west there were the Gourounsi (Lyélà, Ko, Kassena, Nakana, Puguli, Kussace, Nuna and Sissala), who maintained their organisational autonomy until the eve of colonisation. • In the centre-east there were the Bissa of Mande origin. • In the northwest were the Dogon and Kurumba populations that had settled there in very ancient times. These groups did not live in isolation. Their lands were traversed by commercial routes that connected the groups with the external world.