Summary
- The Lebombo bone, a baboon fibula with 29 notches, is 42,000 to 43,000 years old by 24 radiocarbon dates, and is described as the earliest known tally stick, though what the notches meant is still debated (Wikipedia, "Lebombo bone", citing d'Errico et al., PNAS, 2012; Keith Houston)
- In Boston's 1721–1722 smallpox epidemic, 2.4% of the 280 people inoculated by Zabdiel Boylston died, against 14% of those who caught the disease naturally. Cotton Mather had learned of the practice from Onesimus, an enslaved man from West Africa (Partnership of Historic Bostons)
- Peter Schmidt and Donald Avery reported in 1978 that the Haya of north-western Tanzania, and their ancestors 1,500 to 2,000 years ago, made carbon steel in furnaces fed with preheated air (Science, 22 September 1978)
- Over three months in 1975 in Zimbabwe, an unvented pit latrine trapped an average of 179 flies a day, against 2 a day in the ventilated Blair design. More than 500,000 have been built in Zimbabwe since 1975 (World Bank Water and Sanitation Program, 2002)
| # | Invention | Origin (Modern Country) | Date | Credited To | Defining Number |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lebombo bone tally | Border Cave, South Africa (Eswatini border) | c. 42,000–43,000 years ago | Early Later Stone Age inhabitants | 29 notches |
| 2 | Papyrus | Egypt | Earliest roll c. 2900 BC | Ancient Egyptians | About 4,000 years in use |
| 3 | Artificial toe | Egypt | 950–710 BC | Unknown Egyptian makers | 87% of normal toe flexion in tests |
| 4 | Preheated-air carbon steel | Tanzania | c. 1,500–2,000 years ago | Haya ironworkers | 13 furnaces excavated |
| 5 | Smallpox inoculation | West Africa, recorded in Boston | Described 1716, used 1721 | Practice described by Onesimus | 2.4% vs 14% mortality |
| 6 | Bamum script | Cameroon | 1896–1910 (type cast 1918) | King Ibrahim Njoya | 73 signs and 10 numerals in later form |
| 7 | Mathematics of CT scanning | South Africa | 1956–1964 | Allan Cormack | 1979 Nobel Prize (shared) |
| 8 | Blair ventilated pit latrine | Zimbabwe | 1973 | Peter Morgan, Blair Research Laboratory | 179 vs 2 flies a day |
| 9 | Hippo Water Roller | South Africa | 1991 | Pettie Petzer and Johan Jonker | 90 litres per trip |
| 10 | Ushahidi crisis mapping | Kenya | January 2008 | Okolloh, Kobia, Hersman, Rotich | About 300 reports in the first month |
This list is ordered by date, oldest first, rather than ranked. Dates marked "c." are approximate because sources disagree or give only a range.
Selected Details About Each Invention on the List
1. The Lebombo Bone Tally (South Africa, on the Eswatini border)
A baboon fibula about 8 cm long with 29 notches, found by Peter Beaumont in Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains in 1973 (Wikipedia; Keith Houston). Twenty-four radiocarbon dates place it 42,000 to 43,000 years ago, far older than the Ishango bone it is often confused with. The 2012 PNAS study of Border Cave concluded that its inhabitants used notched bones for notational purposes (d'Errico et al.), and the bone resembles calendar sticks still used by the San in Namibia (History of Information). It is broken at one end, so 29 may not be the full count, and Beaumont reads the notches as ritual marks. Treat it as the earliest known tally stick, not a proven calculator.
2. Papyrus (Egypt)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes papyrus as a writing support invented by the ancient Egyptians. The earliest known roll, from a tomb at Saqqara, dates to about 2900 BC and is blank, and the oldest written rolls date from the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties (Met Museum; Roemer, via History of Information). It was made the same way for about 4,000 years and used until the eleventh century AD, and the word paper derives from it (Journal of Ethnobiology). In 2013, archaeologists at Wadi el-Jarf on the Red Sea found hundreds of fragments from the end of Khufu's reign, about 2551 to 2528 BC, including inspector Merer's logbook of hauling limestone from Tura to the Great Pyramid (AERA; Archaeology). Nearly 800 fragments were later handed to Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities in 100 glass frames (History.com).
3. The Artificial Toe (Egypt)
Two ancient Egyptian toes are likely the oldest known prosthetics: a three-part wood and leather toe from a female mummy near Luxor, dated 950 to 710 BC, and the Greville Chester toe, made of cartonnage before 600 BC (University of Manchester). Egyptologist Jacky Finch had two volunteers, each missing a right big toe, walk in replicas and replica sandals at Salford University's gait laboratory. One wearing the cartonnage replica reached 87% of the flexion of their natural toe, and Finch concluded that walking normally in sandals without a toe would have been very hard. The wood and leather toe predates by about 400 years the Capua leg of about 300 BC, previously thought the oldest, whose original was destroyed in a wartime bombing raid. The full data appeared in the Journal of Prosthetics and Orthotics in 2012 (NBC News).
4. Preheated-Air Carbon Steel (Tanzania)
Schmidt and Avery reported in Science that the Haya of north-western Tanzania, and their forebears 1,500 to 2,000 years ago, smelted iron with preheated air and produced carbon steel, possibly as an adaptation to overexploited forests (Science, 22 September 1978). They found 13 furnace remnants on Lake Victoria's western shore, radiocarbon-dated to 1,500 to 2,000 years old, and the Haya rebuilt a traditional furnace from memory two years earlier (TIME). TIME contrasted this with Karl Wilhelm Siemens's open-hearth furnace nearly 19 centuries later. The strongest claims are disputed: later archaeometallurgists such as Killick have questioned the oldest dates and the independent invention of preheated blast (as summarised in a ResearchGate-hosted review).
5. Smallpox Inoculation (West Africa and Boston)
In 1716, Cotton Mather recorded that his enslaved servant Onesimus said an operation had given him a mild case and protected him for life, and showed Mather the scar on his arm (Partnership of Historic Bostons). Inoculation was not an African monopoly: an account of its use in Constantinople appeared in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions in 1714, and Mather checked the practice with other West African enslaved people (Historic Bostons; Rush University). In 1721, Zabdiel Boylston, the only Boston doctor willing to try it, began with his son and two enslaved people on 26 June. Over 800 people died by May 1722, but of the 280 Boylston inoculated, 2.4% died, against 14% of those infected naturally. Inoculation used live virus and is not vaccination, which came with Edward Jenner in 1796.
6. The Bamum Script (Cameroon)
King Ibrahim Njoya created six scripts for the Bamum language between 1896 and 1910, moving from pictures to a semi-syllabary (Wikipedia). The first, Lewa, dates to 1896–1897 and began with several hundred symbols, which sources put at 465 to 600. It was simplified to 73 syllabic signs and 10 numerals, and Njoya used it for a history of his people, a pharmacopoeia, a calendar, and legal records (Omniglot). Copper type was cast in 1918, and the script fell out of use around 1931 after Njoya's exile to Yaoundé. After the French took over part of Cameroon in 1919, libraries and the printing press were destroyed, and teaching was banned. A revival project has run since 2007.
7. The Mathematics of CT Scanning (South Africa)
Allan Cormack, born in Johannesburg in 1924, became the part-time physicist at Cape Town's Groote Schuur Hospital in 1956, supervising radioactive isotopes (University of Cape Town). His theory of building a cross-section image from X-rays taken at many angles began there in early 1956 and continued briefly in mid-1957 (Wikipedia), and he published it in 1963 and 1964 (Britannica Kids). It drew little interest until Godfrey Hounsfield and colleagues built the first CT scanner in the early 1970s, and the two shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They had never met, and Cormack did most of his research on his own time between 1956 and 1964 (Akademski Imenik).
8. The Blair Ventilated Pit Latrine (Zimbabwe)
The first Blair latrine was built in 1973 at the Henderson Research Station north of Harare, with a screened vent pipe to control flies and odour (Water and Sanitation Program, 2002). Peter Morgan, who arrived in what was then Rhodesia in 1972, designed it at the Ministry of Health's Blair Research Laboratory, with a field team led by Ephraim Chimbunde (Morgan; WSP). In a 1975 three-month test, an unvented latrine averaged 179 flies a day and the Blair design 2. More than 500,000 have been built in Zimbabwe since 1975, peaking at nearly 50,000 in 1987, and the World Bank's Technology Advisory Group coined the name VIP latrine after visiting. By 2002, only 31% of the rural population had adequate sanitation, which the report said was probably related to the high cost of the standard VIP design.
9. The Hippo Water Roller (South Africa)
Pettie Petzer and Johan Jonker, two South African engineers, designed the roller in 1991, a 90-litre drum pushed along the ground instead of carried on the head (Wikipedia). It carries almost five times as much as a traditional 20-litre bucket and earned a South African Bureau of Standards Design Institute award in 1992 (TechXLab). Around 44,000 rollers had been distributed by 2013, benefitting more than 300,000 people (Brand South Africa). TechXLab lists a price of US$100 to $200, and Imvubu Projects makes it in South Africa.
10. Ushahidi (Kenya)
After Kenya's disputed December 2007 election, lawyer and blogger Ory Okolloh asked online for technologists to map the violence, and David Kobia and Erik Hersman built the tool within days (Juliana Rotich, Wharton; Logic). Rotich says it was online on 4 January 2008, about eight days after the election, and had about 300 reports within a month, while Logic has Okolloh announcing it on 9 January, so sources differ on the date. Ushahidi means testimony in Swahili. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, volunteers worldwide processed text-message reports onto a map for rescuers (Stanford Social Innovation Review). Within five years, the software was deployed in more than 159 countries and translated into more than 35 languages (Communications of the ACM), and in 2020 it was deployed over 1,400 times in 120 countries (Rights CoLab).
Quick Answers to Commonly Asked Questions About this Topic
What is the oldest African invention on this list?
The Lebombo bone tally, at 42,000 to 43,000 years old, is the oldest item. It is the oldest example found, and it does not prove when counting began.
Did Africans invent steel?
Not as a claim this list makes. Schmidt and Avery reported that the Haya made carbon steel in preheated, forced-draft furnaces 1,500 to 2,000 years ago, a method TIME contrasted with a European furnace nearly 19 centuries later. That is a specific technique, and some researchers dispute the strongest dating claims.
Did Onesimus invent the smallpox vaccine?
No. He described inoculation, which uses live smallpox virus and had also been recorded in Constantinople. Vaccination came later, with Edward Jenner in 1796. Onesimus's account helped bring a proven practice to Boston, where it cut mortality from 14% to 2.4% in Boylston's cases.
Why is CT scanning on this list when Hounsfield built the first scanner?
Because the underlying mathematics came from Cormack, who developed it in Cape Town from 1956 and published it in 1963 and 1964. Hounsfield built the first scanner in the early 1970s, and they shared the 1979 Nobel Prize.
Why is M-Pesa not on this list?
Its idea was conceived by a London-based team at Vodafone led by Nick Hughes and Susie Lonie, and Safaricom launched it in Kenya in March 2007 (World Bank). That makes it a joint project, not a clearly African invention, so it was left out.
Key Sources
Other sources are linked in the text. All pages accessed in October 2026.
- Peter R. Schmidt and Donald H. Avery, Science, 22 September 1978 (abstract), and TIME, 25 September 1978. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6010948_Complex_Iron_Smelting_and_Prehistoric_Culture_in_Tanzania and https://time.com/archive/6845911/science-africas-ancient-steelmakers/
- Partnership of Historic Bostons, "Anti-vaxxers and the smallpox debate of 1721." https://historicbostons.org/blog-1/thepox
- University of Manchester, "Egyptian toes likely to be the world's oldest prosthetics." https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/egyptian-toes-likely-to-be-the-worlds-oldest-prosthetics/
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Papyrus-Making in Egypt." https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/papyrus-making-in-egypt
- Water and Sanitation Program, "VIP Latrines in Zimbabwe: From Local Innovation to Global Sanitation Solution" (2002). https://es.ircwash.org/sites/default/files/WSP-2002-VIP.pdf
