village 25 miles northwest, fragments bear fingermarks of those who long ago smoothed the structures’ clay interiors.

Some of the furnaces were nearly an adult’s arm span in width, with walls thick and strong to contain the heat of more than 2,100° Fahrenheit needed to smelt iron. Unlike other furnaces that required workers to force air into them with bellows, these were designed to suck air in, then out through a chimney, no human labor required. This would have made it significantly easier to produce the iron, which was fashioned into hoes, axes, and arrowheads.

28:T43f,{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://nvdium.com/en/articles/196316058#article","url":"https://nvdium.com/en/articles/196316058","headline":"The migration that transformed Africa's languages, genes, and cultures","description":"Genes and archaeology are revealing how Bantu speakers spread across much of Africa.","datePublished":"2026-11-07T12:21:55.942Z","dateModified":"2026-11-07T12:21:55.953Z","mainEntityOfPage":"https://nvdium.com/en/articles/196316058","isAccessibleForFree":true,"inLanguage":"en","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://nvdium.com/#website"},"speakable":{"@type":"SpeakableSpecification","cssSelector":[".article-header h1","[data-testid='article-summary']"]},"articleSection":"Technology","keywords":"","image":["https://nvdium.com/nvdium-logo.png"],"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Katarina Zimmer, Knowable Magazine"}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Nvdium","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://nvdium.com/nvdium-logo.png","width":960,"height":960}},"copyrightHolder":{"@type":"Organi