<P> The topic of early iron metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa encompasses both studies of the technology and archaeology of indigenous iron production, and also an understanding of the role that iron production played in African societies before European colonization . </P> <P> Iron smelting was practiced by the Nok culture of Nigeria from as early as 1000 BC . The nearby Djenné - Djenno of the Niger Valley between Mali and Nigeria shows evidence of iron production from c. 250 BC . The technology was spread by the Bantu expansion to Eastern and Southern Africa during c. 500 BC to AD 400 as shown in the Urewe culture . </P> <P> Although the origins of iron working in Africa have been the subject of scholarly interest since the 1860s, it is still not known whether this technology diffused into sub-Saharan Africa from the Mediterranean region, or whether it was invented there quite independently of iron working elsewhere . Although some nineteenth - century European scholars favored an indigenous invention of iron working in sub-Saharan Africa, archaeologists writing between 1945 and 1965 mostly favored diffusion of iron smelting technology from Carthage across the Sahara to West Africa, or from Meroe on the upper Nile to central Africa, or both . The invention of radiocarbon dating in the late 1950s made it possible to date metallurgical sites in sub-Saharan Africa (since the fuel used for smelting and forging was always charcoal) and by the late 1960s some surprisingly early radiocarbon dates had been obtained for iron smelting sites in both Nigeria and central Africa (Rwanda, Burundi). This led some scholars to state that iron was independently invented in sub-Saharan Africa The same findings weakened the diffusion hypothesis (at least for those sites in Sub-Saharan Africa for which such early dates had been obtained), as there was no firm evidence at that time for the antiquity of ironworking in either Carthage or Meroe . Evidence of early Phoenician iron smelting in the western Mediterranean (900--800 BC) was not found until the 1990s and it is still not known when iron working was first practiced in Kush and Meroe in modern Sudan . </P> <P> From the mid-1970s there were new claims for independent invention of iron smelting on central Niger and from 1994--1999 UNESCO funded an initiative "Les Routes du Fer en Afrique / The Iron Routes in Africa" to investigate the origins and spread of iron metallurgy in Africa . This funded both the conference on early iron in Africa and the Mediterranean and a volume, published by UNESCO, that has generated much controversy because it included only authors sympathetic to the view that iron was independently invented in Africa . </P>

Who introduced iron based metallurgy to the mediterranean area