African Kingdoms

Adanse / Adansi (Akan State) (Africa)

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It would seem that Akan people in Africa migrated into the southern edges of the forests of what is now Ghana. They came from a broad band of territory on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Their migration took place around the eleventh century AD, during a period in which the kingdom of Old Ghana was dramatically weakened by a devastating conflict with the Almoravids.

When Old Ghana fell in AD 1237, the trading state of Bonoman (Bono Manso) was established by the Abron people. In various waves Akan groups migrated away from the increasingly wealthy Bonoman state to found their own settlement areas deeper into Ghana.

Farming prospered, producing wealth in food, and some of the Akan communities in time coalesced into small states and minor kingdoms. Historically this started with Twifo-Heman which formed around 1480, but an older and far more nebulous state of Adanse or Adansi seemingly preceded it.

Many southern Akan sub-groups trace their historical, spiritual, and cultural roots back to Adanse, which is located in the southern part of the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The name 'Adanse' translates roughly to 'builders' or 'house builders', with tradition regarding the state as the place in which advanced stone-and-clay building and architectural arts began in the region.

Adanse's earliest-known major settlement and capital was Adansemanso. Archaeological investigation here has shown that the site was heavily inhabited from the early centuries AD, although not necessarily by Akan themselves as their large-scale arrival cannot be pinned to any date before the eleventh century AD.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Akwamu 1640-1750 - A Study of the Rise and Fall of a West African Empire, Ivor Willks, 2001, from the acclaimed documentary film series, Africa: A Voyage of Discovery with Basil Davidson, released in 1984, from A Historical Geography of Ghana, Kwamina B Dickson, from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, Zeinab Badawi (Mariner Books, 2024), and from External Links: Ghana Web, and Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Akuapem, and World Statesmen, and The 'Big Bang' theory reconsidered: some thoughts on the fabric of early Ghanaian history, Gérard Chouin (HAL Open Science, 2012, PDF), and Recent Excavations of Adansemanso, Brian C Vivian (Department of Anthropology SUNY, Binghamton Binghamton, New York 13902, PDF).)

1000s

The general view of Akan migration is that during the African Iron Age they migrate into the southern edges of the forests of what is now Ghana from a broad band of territory on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, known as the Sahel.

Akan people - photographed here around the beginning of the twentieth century - migrated into regions of modern Ghana from around the eleventh century AD, but probably in smaller family groups rather than as a single mass movement of people

That migration takes place around the eleventh century AD, during a period in which the kingdom of Old Ghana is dramatically weakened by a devastating conflict with the Almoravids.

The Akan people enter the forests of southern Ghana to discover a largely unknown population which has occupied the Adansemanso site since the end of the fourth century AD (potentially themselves very early Akan arrivals - see above). Akan dominance eventually turns the site into their first state capital and a centre of local gold production. Precise events are entirely unknown.

1200s - 1400s

During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the development of Adansemanso reaches its peak. The settlement is a large and fairly complex one, quite possibly the largest such settlement in Ghana's central forest area. It is constantly maintained and even rebuilt as age catches up with some structures.

This Akan terracotta memorial head was crafted in the eighteenth century in the traditional Twifo-Heman region, and was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

c.1480

A Twi-speaking group of Akan, the Twifo, have migrated away from the gold-rich state of Bono to settle for a time in Adanse before establishing around 1480 the state of Twifo-Heman.

This is an early inland Akan gold-producing historical state which has Hemang as its early capital under the Abrade royal clan. The 'Twifo Road' gradually develops into the seventeenth century to link Cape Coast to Twifo-Heman, thereby serving as a key route for gold and trade tolls. It is ruled by the early kings of the Akwamu.

c.1500s - 1600s

Adansemanso continues to thrive, but increasingly as a major settlement within other state structures. The initial dominance of it comes from the Akan state of Denkyira (from at least 1659), before that is destroyed by a Kwaaman-led rebellion.

Denkyira's main centre of interest and occupation was around the coastal region of what later became Ashantiland (shown here in the nineteenth century), which later developed into the Gold Coast area, close to modern Ivory Coast but still within Ghana's borders

fl 1600s

Last king of Adansemanso. Defeated by Denkyira.

c.1600s

The much greater state of Asante soon dominates large swathes of Ghana, but a declining Adansemanso is finally abandoned towards the end of the sixteenth century or at the start of the seventeenth.