Editing History of Uganda (section)

==Pre-colonial period==
{{Further|Early history of Uganda}}
[[Paleolithic]] evidence of human activity in Uganda goes back to at least 50,000 years, and perhaps as far as 100,000 years, as shown by the [[Acheulean]] stone tools recovered from the former environs of [[Lake Victoria]], which were exposed along the [[Kagera River]] valley, chiefly around Nsonezi.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/uarchaeology.htm |title=East Africa Living Encyclopedia<!-- Bot generated title --> |access-date=2020-04-03 |archive-date=2021-01-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125170853/https://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/uarchaeology.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>

The cultivators who gradually cleared the forest were probably [[Bantu languages|Bantu]]-speaking people, whose slow but inexorable expansion gradually took over most of [[sub-Saharan Africa]]. They also raised goats and chickens, and they probably kept some cattle by 400 BCE. Their knowledge of agriculture and use of iron-forging technology permitted them to clear the land and feed ever larger numbers of settlers. They displaced small bands of [[indigenous people|indigenous]] [[hunter-gatherer]]s, who relocated to the less accessible mountains.<ref name="Byrnes 1990 p. 4">Rita M. Byrnes, ed. [http://countrystudies.us/uganda/ Uganda: A Country Study] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161103011534/http://countrystudies.us/uganda/ |date=2016-11-03 }}. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1990. p. 4</ref>

Meanwhile, by the first century CE and possibly as early as the fourth century BCE in Western [[Tanzania]], certain related Bantu-speaking [[metallurgist]]s were perfecting iron [[smelting]] to produce medium grade [[carbon steel]] in pre-heated forced-draught furnaces. Although most of these developments were taking place southwest of modern Ugandan boundaries, iron was mined and smelted in many parts of the country not long afterward.<ref name="Byrnes 1990 p. 4"/>