Afrikagf (Africa), страница 5

In the regions outside the western area occupied by the Negro proper, exclusive of the upper Nile, the similarities of culture outweigh the differences. Here the cylindrical type of hut prevails; clothing is of skin or leather but is very scanty; iron ornaments are worn in profusion; arrows are not feathered; shields of hide, spears with leather sheaths are found and also fighting bracelets. Certain small differences appear between the eastern and western portions, the dividing line being formed by the boundary between Bornu and Hausaland. Characteristic of the east are the harp and the throwing-club and throwing-knife, the last of which has penetrated into the forest area. Typical of the west are the bow and the dagger with the ring hilt. The tribes of the upper Nile are somewhat specialized, though here, too, are found the cylindrical hut, iron ornaments, fighting bracelets, &c., characteristic of the Sudanese tribes. Here the removal of the lower incisors is common, and circumcision entirely absent. Throughout the rest of the Sudan is found Semitic culture introduced by the Arabized Libyan. Circumcision, as is usual among Mahommedan tribes, is universal, and tooth-mutilation absent; of other characteristics, the use of the sword has penetrated to the northern portion of the forest area. The culture prevailing in the Horn of Africa is, naturally, mainly Hamito-Semitic; here are found both cyhnddcal and bee-hive huts, the sword (which has been adopted by the Masai to the south), the lyre (which has found its way to some of the Nilotic tribes) and the head-rest. Circumcision is practically universal.

As has been said earlier, the history of Africa reaches back but a short distance, except, of course, as far as the lower Nile valley and Roman Africa is concerned; elsewhere no records exist, save tribal traditions, and these only relate to very recent events. Even archaeology, which can often sketch the main outlines of a people's history, is here practically powerless, owing to the insufficiency of data. It is true that stone imple. ments of palaeolithic and neolithic types are found sporadically in the Nile valley, Somaliland, on the Zambezi, in Cape Colony and the northern portions of the Congo Free State, as well as in Algeria and Tunisia; but the localities are far too few and too widely separated to warrant the inference that they are to be in any way connected. Moreover, where stone implements are found they are, as a rule, very near, even actually on, the surface of the earth; nothing occurs resembling the regular stratification of Europe, and consequently no argument based on geological grounds is possible.

The lower Nile valley, however, forms an exception; flint implements of a palaeolithic type have been found near Thebes. not only on the surface of the ground, which for several thousand years has been desert owing to the contraction of the river-bed, but also in stratified gravel of an older date. References to a number of papers bearing on the discussion to which then discovery has given rise may be found in an article by Mr H. R. Hall in Man, 1905, No. 19. The Egyptian and also the Somali land finds appear to be true palaeoliths in type and remarkably similar to those found in Europe. But evidence bearing on the Stone age in Africa, if the latter existed apart from the localities mentioned, is so slight that little can be said save that from the available evidence the palaeoliths of the Nile valley alone can with any degree of certainty be assigned to a remote period of antiquity, and that the chips scattered over Mashonaland and the regions occupied within historic times by Bushmen are the most recent; since it has been shown that the stone flakes were used by the medieval Makalanga to engrave their hard pottery and the Bushmen were still using stone implements in the 19th century. Other early remains, but of equally uncertain date, are the stone circles of Algeria, the Cross river and the Gambia. The large system of ruined forts and ``cities'' in Mashonaland, at Zimbabwe and elsewhere, concerning which so many ingenious theories have been woven, have been proved to date from medieval times.

Origin and spread of the racial stocks.

Thus while in Europe there is a Stone age. divided into periods according to various types of implement disposed in geological strata, and followed in orderly succession by the ages of Bronze and Iron, in Africa can be found no true Stone age and practically no Bronze at all. The reason is not far to seek; Africa is a country of iron, which is found distributed widely throughout the continent in ores so rich that the metal can be extracted with very little trouble and by the simplest methods. Iron has been worked from time immemorial by the Negroid peoples, and whole tribes are found whose chief industry is the smelting and forging of the metal. Under such conditions, questions relating to the origin and spread of the racial stocks which form the population of Africa cannot be answered with any certainty; at best only a certain amount of probability can be attained.

Five of these racial stocks have been mentioned: Bushman, Negro, Hamite, Semite, Libyan, the last three probably related through some common ancestor. Of these the honour of being considered the most truly African belongs to the two first. It is true that people of Negroid type are found elsewhere, principally in Melanesia, but as yet their possible connexion with the African Negro is little more than theoretical, and for the present purposes it need not be considered.

The origin of the Bushman is lost in obscurity, but he may be conceived as the original inhabitant of the southern portion of the continent. The original home of the Negro, at first an agriculturist, is most probably to be found in the neighbourhood of the great lakes, whence he penetrated along the fringe of the Sahara to the west and across the eastern highlands southward. Northerly expansion was prevented by the early occupation of the Nile valley, the only easy route to the Mediterranean, but there seems no doubt that the population of ancient Egypt contained a distinct Negroid element. The question as to the ethnic affinities of the pre-dynastic Egyptians is still unsolved; but they may be regarded as, in the main, Hamitic, though it is a question how far it is just to apply a name which implies a definite specialization in what may be comparatively modern times to a people of such antiquity.

The Horn of Africa appears to have been the centre from which the Hamites spread, and the pressure they seem to have applied to the Negro tribes, themselves also in process of expansion, sent forth larger waves of emigrants from the latter. These emigrants, already affected by the Hamitic pastoral culture, and with a strain of Hamitic blood in their veins, passed rapidly down the open tract in the east, doubtless exterminating their predecessors, except such few as took refuge in the mountains and swamps. The advance-guard of this wave of pastoral Negroids, in fact primitive Bantu, mingled with the Bushmen and produced the Hottentots. The penetration of the forest area must certainly have taken longer and was probably accomplished as much from the south-east, up the Zambezi valley, as from any other quarter. It was a more peaceful process, since natural obstacles are unfavourable to rapid movements of large bodies of immigrants, though not so serious as to prevent the spread of language and culture. A modern parallel to the spread of Bantu speech is found in the rise of the Hausa language, which is gradually enlarging its sphere of influence in the western and central Sudan. Thus those qualities, physical and otherwise, in which the Bantu approach the Hamites gradually fade as we proceed westward through the Congo basin, while in the east, among the tribes to the west of Tanganyika and on the upper Zambezi, ``transitional'' forms of culture are found. In later times this gradual pressure from the south-east became greater, and resulted, at a comparatively recent date, in the irruption of the Fang into the Gabun.

The earlier stages of the southern movement must have been accompanied by a similar movement westward between the Sahara and the forest; and, probably, at the same time, or even earlier, the Libyans crossing the desert had begun to press upon the primitive Negroes from the north. In this way were produced the Fula, who mingled further with the Negro to give birth to the Mandingo, Wolof and Tukulor. It would appear that either Libyan (Fula) or, less probably, Hamitic, blood enters into the composition of the Zandeh peoples on the Nile-Congo watershed. These Libyans or Berbers, included by G. Sergi in his ``Mediterranean Race,'' were active on the north coast of Africa in very early times, and had relations with the Egyptians from a prehistoric period. For long these movements continued, always in the same direction, from north to south and from east to west; though, of course, more rapid changes took place in the open country, especially in the great eastern highway from north to south, than in the forest area. Large states arose in the western Sudan; Ghana flourished in the 7th century A.D., Melle in the 11th, Songhai in the 14th, and Bornu in the 16th.

Meanwhile in the east began the southerly movement of the Bechuana, which was probably,spread over a considerable period. Later than they, hut proceeding faster, came the Zulu-Xosa (``Kaffir'') peoples, who followed a line nearer the coast and outflanked them, surrounding them on the south. Then followed a time of great ethnical confusion in South Africa, during which tribes flourished, split up and disappeared; but ere this the culture represented by the ruins in Rhodesia had waxed and waned. It is uncertain who were the builders of the forts and ``cities,'' but it is not improbable that they may be found to have been early Bechuana. The Zulu-Xosa, Bechuana and Herero together form a group which may conveniently be termed ``Southern Bantu.',

Finally began a movement hitherto unparalleled in the history of African migration; certain peoples of Zulu blood began to press north, spreading destruction in their wake. Of these the principal were the Matabele and Angoni. The movement continued as far as the Victoria Nyanza. Here, on the border-line of Negro, Bantu and Hamite, important changes had taken place. Certain of the Negro tribes had retired to the swamps of the Nile, and had become somewhat specialized, both physically and culturally (Shilluk, Dinka, Alur, Acholi, &c.). These had blended with the Hamites to produce such races as the Masai and kindred tribes. The old Kitwara empire, which comprised the plateau land between the Ruwenzori range and Kavirondo, had broken up into small states, usually governed by a Hamitic (Ba-Hima) aristocracy. The more extensive Zang (Zenj) empire, of which. the name Zanzibar (Zanguebar) is a lasting memorial, extending along the sea-board from Somaliland to the Zambezi, was also extinct. The Arabs had established themselves firmly on the coast, and thence made continual slave-raids into the interior, penetrating later to the Congo. The Swahili, inhabiting the coast-line from the equator to about 16 deg. S., are a somewhat heterogeneous mixture of Bantu with a tinge of Arab blood.

In the neighbourhood of Victoria Nyanza, where Hamite, Bantu, Nilotic Negro and Pygmy are found in close contact, the ethnic relations of tribes are often puzzling, but the Bantu not under a Hamitic domination have been divided by F. Stuhlmann into the Older Bantu (Wanyamwezi, Wasukuma, Wasambara, Waseguha, Wasagara, Wasaramo, &c.) and the Bantu of Later Immigration (Wakikuyu, Wakamba, Wapokomo, Wataita, Wachaga, &c.), who are more strongly Hamitized and in many cases have adopted Masai customs. These peoples, from the Victoria Nyanza to the Zambezi, may conveniently be termed the ``Eastern Bantu.''

Turning to the Congo basin in the south, the great Luba and Lunda peoples are found stretching nearly across the continent, the latter, from at any rate the end of the 16th century until the close of the 19th century, more or less united under a single ruler, styled Muata Yanvo. These seem to have been the most recent immigrants from the south-east, and to exhibit certain affinities with the Barotse on the upper Zambezi. Among the western Baluba, or Bashilange, a remarkable politico-religious revolution took place at a comparatively recent date, initiated by a secret society termed Bena Riamba or ``Sons of Hemp,'' and resulted in the subordination of the old fetishism to a cult of hemp, in accordance with which all hemp-smokers consider themselves brothers, and the duty of mutual hospitality, &c., is acknowledged. North of these, in the great bend of the Congo, are the Balolo, &c., the Balolo a nation of iron-workers; and westward, on the Kasai, the Bakuba, and a large number of tribes as yet imperfectly known. Farther west are the tribes of Angola, many of whom were included within the old ``Congo empire,'' of which the kingdom of Loango was an offshoot. North of the latter lies the Gabun, with a large number of small tribes dominated by the Fang who are recent arrivals from the Congo. Farther to the north are the Bali and other tribes of the Cameroon, among whom many primitive Negroid elements begin to appear. Eastward are the Zandeh peoples of the Welle district (primitive Negroids with a Hamitic or, more probably, Libyan strain), with whom the Dor trine of Nilotes on their eastern border show certain affinities; while to the west along the coast are the Guinea Negroes of primitive type. Here, amidst great linguistic confusion, may be distinguished the tribes of Yoruba speech in the Niger delta and the east portion of the Slave Coast; those of Ewe speech, in the western portion of the latter; and those of Ga and Tshi speech, on the Gold Coast. Among the last two groups respectively may be mentioned the Dahomi and Ashanti. Similar tribes are found along the coast to the Bissagos Islands, though the introduction in Sierra Leone and Liberia of settlements of repatriated slaves from the American plantations has in those places modified the original ethnic distribution. Leaving the forest zone and entering the more open country there are, on the north from the Niger to the Nile, a number of Negroids strongly tinged with Libyan blood and professing the Mahommedan religion. Such are the Mandingo, the Songhai, the Fula, Hausa, Kanuri, Bagirmi, Kanembu, and the peoples of Wadai and Darfur; the few aborigines who persist, on the southern fringe of the Chad basin, are imperfectly known.