Fortified-town-building culture of the Lake Chad basin (Chari river floodplain), known for terracotta and bronze work; predates and overlaps with the rise of Kanem-Bornu (already tracked in canonical from 700), eventually absorbed or displaced by Kanem-Bornu expansion and Sao-descended peoples such as the Kotoko.
Declined under pressure from Kanem and was absorbed by the rising Kotoko and neighboring peoples by around 1600.
The atlas holds 3 border frames for Sao civilisation — the shape you scrub through changes in 600 BC · 2 · 801.
Broad continental history noting the Sao culture's place among Lake Chad-basin Iron Age societies.
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