The Bono (Brong) farmers of the forest edge, in the country the Akan remember as their first home.
In the tradition the people came out of the Amowi rock shelter near Pinihini, led by the woman Ameyaa, and her son Asaman led them to Yefri and then to Manso (Bono Manso); the river god Tano, whose rock shrine (Taa Kora) stands near Tano Boase, watched over them. Archaeology gives the shelters radiocarbon dates of about AD 370-510, Bonoso dates between 660 and 1068, and iron smelting in the area from the first millennium. On 1 January 1200 these are villages of yam and oil-palm farmers, hunters and smiths.
Bono Manso was settled by the thirteenth century, so it may or may not yet exist; no ruler is attested.
Who holds it
- Title
- Heads of the matrilineal clans (abusua) and village elders; the priests of Tano
- Since
- Not known
- Confidence
- low
How things stand that morning
Independent villages. Begho, at the western edge of the Bono country, governs itself. No raiding is recorded on any side.
Customs
Matrilineal descent and inheritance through the clan (abusua); the earth, the river gods (Tano above all) and the ancestors; shrines in groves and rocks; iron working. The later stool (the chief's carved seat as the symbol of office), the gold weights and the court of the Bono king are not attested so early.
Assemblies
The lineage heads and elders of each village. Nothing is known of any wider council in 1200.
What the year holds
What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.
- Through 1200The farming year: clearing in the dry season, planting with the first rains in March and April, the yam harvest from about August.Depends on: Nothing in play. Stopped by: Nothing likely.
Places of note
- Bono Manso: Later royal town; settled by the thirteenth century
- Tano Boase: Amowi rock shelters and Taa Kora: Origin shelter and the river god's shrine; position approximate
Where the sources disagree
- Bono's founding is dated from the eleventh century to the fifteenth (see the realm record). The tradition that the Fante left from here about 1250 is a traditional date only.
Evidence: Archaeology (rock shelters, Bonoso, Bono Manso) and twentieth-century Bono tradition; no written source.
On the map: A people's country, not a border; drawn from the later Bono heartland.
Primary sources for Akan (Bono country and Begho)
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- Ife, Benin, Nri, the Yoruba towns and the Akan: archaeology and recorded tradition (no contemporary text; traditions written down from the 1890s). No text of any kind exists for the forest belt in 1200.
Sources and studies
- Bono state (Wikipedia, citing Effah-Gyamfi 1974, Warren 1976, Ameyaw 1979, Crossland 1989, Compton 2017)
- Bono Manso (Wikipedia)
- Akan people (Wikipedia, citing Andah and Anquandah 1988, Arhin 1979, Posnansky 2015, Shinnie 2005, Konadu and Campbell 2016)
- K. Effah-Gyamfi, Bono Manso: An Archaeological Investigation into Early Akan Urbanism (1985); D. M. Warren, Bibliography and vocabulary of the Akan (Twi-Fante) language (1976) and his Techiman-Bono studies; as cited on Wikipedia
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.