Man, Past and Present
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Title: Man, Past and Present
Author: A. H. Keane
Editor: Alfred C. Haddon
A. Hingston Quiggin
Release date: March 26, 2011 [eBook #35685]
Language: English
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MAN
PAST AND PRESENT
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
BOMBAY }
CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
MADRAS }
TORONTO: J. M. DENT AND SONS, LTD.
TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
MAN
PAST AND PRESENT
BY
A. H. KEANE
REVISED, AND LARGELY RE-WRITTEN, BY
A. HINGSTON QUIGGIN
AND
A. C. HADDON
READER IN ETHNOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920
PREFACE TO NEW EDITION
Those who are familiar with the vast amount of ethnological literature
published since the close of last century will realize that to revise
and bring up to date a work whose range in space and time covers the
whole world from prehistoric ages down to the present day, is a task
impossible of accomplishment within the compass of a single volume.
Recent discoveries have revolutionized our conception of primeval man,
while still providing abundant material for controversy, and the rapidly
increasing pile of ethnographical matter, although a vast amount of
spade work remains to be done, is but one sign of the remarkable
interest in ethnology which is so conspicuous a feature of the present
decade. Even to keep abreast of the periodical literature devoted to his
subject provides ample occupation for the ethnologist and few are those
who can now lay claim to such an omniscient title.
Under such circumstances the faults of omission and compression could
not be avoided in revising Professor Keane's work, but it is hoped that
the copious references which form a prominent feature of the present
edition will compensate in some measure for these obvious defects. The
main object of the revisers has been to retain as much as possible of
the original text wherever it fairly represents current opinion at the
present time, but so different is our outlook from that of 1899 that
certain sections have had to be entirely rewritten and in many places
pages have been suppressed to make room for more important information.
In every case where new matter has been inserted references are given
to the responsible authorities and the fullest use has been made of
direct quotation from the authors cited.
Mrs Hingston Quiggin is responsible for the whole work of revision with
the exception of Chapter XI, revised by Miss Lilian Whitehouse, while
Dr A. C. Haddon has criticized, corrected and supervised the work
throughout.
A. H. Q.
A. C. H.
10 _October_, 1919.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 1
II. THE METAL AGES--HISTORIC TIMES AND PEOPLES 20
III. THE AFRICAN NEGRO: I. SUDANESE 40
IV. THE AFRICAN NEGRO: II. BANTUS--NEGRILLOES--BUSHMEN--
HOTTENTOTS 84
V. THE OCEANIC NEGROES: PAPUASIANS (PAPUANS AND
MELANESIANS)--NEGRITOES--TASMANIANS 132
VI. THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS 163
VII. THE OCEANIC MONGOLS 219
VIII. THE NORTHERN MONGOLS 254
IX. THE NORTHERN MONGOLS (_continued_) 300
X. THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES 332
XI. THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES (_continued_) 388
XII. THE PRE-DRAVIDIANS: JUNGLE TRIBES OF THE DECCAN,
SAKAI, AUSTRALIANS 422
XIII. THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES 438
XIV. THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES (_continued_) 488
XV. THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES (_continued_) 501
APPENDIX 556
INDEX 562
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
(at the end of the volume)
PLATE I.
1. Hausa slave of Tunis (Western Sudanese Negro).
2. Zulu girl, South Africa (Bantu Negroid).
3, 4. Abraham Lucas, Age 32, South Africa (Koranna Hottentot).
5, 6. Swaartbooi, Age 20, South Africa (Bushman).
PLATE II.
1. Andamanese (Negrito).
2. Semang, Malay Peninsula (Negrito).
3. Aeta, Philippines (Negrito).
4. Central African Pygmy (Negrillo).
5-7. Tapiro, Netherlands New Guinea (Negrito).
PLATE III.
1, 2. Jemmy, native of Hampshire Hills, Tasmania (Tasmanian).
3, 4. Native of Oromosapua, Kiwai, British New Guinea (Papuan).
5, 6. Native of Hula, British New Guinea (Papuo-Melanesian).
PLATE IV.
1. Chinese man (Mixed Southern Mongol).
2. Chinese woman of Kulja (mixed Southern Mongol).
3, 4. Kara-Kirghiz of Semirechinsk.
5. Kara-Kirghiz woman of Semirechinsk.
6. Solon of Kulja (Manchu-Tungus).
PLATE V.
1. Jelai, an Iban (Sea-Dayak) of the Rejang river, Sarawak,
Borneo (mixed Proto-Malay).
2. Buginese, Celebes (Malayan).
3. Bontoc Igorot, Luzon, Philippines (Malayan).
4. Bagobo, Mindanao, Philippines (Malayan).
5, 6. Kenyah girls, Sarawak, Borneo (mixed Proto-Malay).
PLATE VI.
1. Samoyed, Tavji.
2. Tungus.
3. Ostiak of the Yenesei (Palaeo-Siberian).
4. Kalmuk woman (Western Mongol).
5. Gold of Amur river (Tungus).
6. Gilyak woman (N.E. Mongol).
PLATE VII.
1. Ainu woman, Yezo, Japan (Palaeo-Siberian).
2. Ainu man, Yezo, Japan (Palaeo-Siberian).
3, 4. Fine and coarse types of Japanese men (mixed Manchu-Korean and
Southern Mongol.)
5. Korean (mixed Tungus-Eastern Mongoloid).
6. Lapp (Finnish).
PLATE VIII.
1. Eskimo, Port Clarence, West Alaska.
2. Indian of the north-west coast of North America. ?Kwakiutl
(Wakashan stock).
3. Cocopa, Lower California (Yuman stock).
4. Navaho, Arizona (Athapascan linguistic stock).
5, 6. Buffalo Bull Ghost, Dakota of Crow Creek (Siouan stock).
PLATE IX.
1. Carib, British Guiana.
2. Guatuso, Costa Rica.
3. Native of Otovalo, Ecuador.
4. Native of Zambisa, Ecuador.
5. Tehuel-che man, Patagonia.
6. Tehuel-che woman, Patagonia.
PLATE X.
1. Sita Wanniya, a Henebedda Vedda, Ceylon (Pre-Dravidian).
2. Sakai, Perak, Malay Peninsula (Pre-Dravidian).
3. Irula of Chingleput, Nilgiri Hills, South India
(Pre-Dravidian).
4. Paniyan woman, Malabar, South India (Pre-Dravidian).
5. Kaitish, Central Australia (Australian).
6. Mulgrave woman (Australian).
PLATE XI.
1, 2. Dane (Nordic).
3. Dane (mixed Alpine).
4. Breton woman of Guingamp (mixed Alpine).
5. Swiss woman (Nordic).
6. Swiss woman (Alpine).
PLATE XII.
1. Catalan man, Spain (Iberian).
2. Irishman, Co. Roscommon (Mediterranean).
3, 4. Kababish, Egyptian Sudan (mixed Semite).
5. Egyptian Bedouin (mixed Semite).
6. Afghan of Zerafshan (Iranian).
PLATE XIII.
1, 2. Bisharin, Egyptian Sudan (Hamite).
3. Beni Amer, Egyptian Sudan (Hamite).
4. Masai, British East Africa (mixed Nilote and Hamite).
5. Shilluk, Egyptian Sudan (Nilote, showing approach to Hamitic
type).
6. Shilluk, Egyptian Sudan (Nilote).
PLATE XIV.
1, 2. Kurd, Nimrud-Dagh, lake Van, Kurdistan, Asia Minor (Nordic).
3, 4. Armenian, Kessab, Djebel Akrah, Kurdistan (Armenoid Alpine).
5. Tajik woman of E. Turkestan (Alpine).
6. Tajik of Tashkend (mixed Alpine and Turki).
PLATE XV.
1, 2. Sinhalese, Ceylon (mixed "Aryan").
3. Hindu merchant, Western India (mixed "Aryan").
4. Kling woman, Eastern India (Dravidian).
5. Linga Banajiga, South India (Dravidian).
6. Vakkaliga, Canarese, South India (mixed Alpine).
PLATE XVI.
1, 2. Ruatoka and his wife, Raiatea (Polynesian).
3. Tiawhiao, Maori, New Zealand (Polynesian).
4. Maori woman, New Zealand (Polynesian).
5, 6. Girls of the Caroline Islands (Micronesian).
We offer our sincere thanks for the use of the following photographs:
A. H. Keane, _Ethnology_ (1896), IV. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; IX. 3, 4;
XII. 6; XIV. 5, 6.
A. H. Keane, _Man, Past and Present_ (1899), I. 2; II. 3; V. 2;
VI. 4, 5, 6; VII. 5; IX. 1, 2; X. 4, 6; XII. 5.
A. R. Brown, II. 1.
Prof. R. B. Yapp, II. 2.
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, II. 4; V. 4; VII. 1, 2;
VIII. 1, 2, 3, 4; IX. 5, 6; XV. 1, 2.
Dr Wollaston, cf. _Pygmies and Papuans_, p. 212; II. 5, 6, 7.
Dr G. Landtman, III. 3, 4.
Anthony Wilkin, III. 5, 6.
Prof. C. G. Seligman, V. 1; (_The Veddas_, pl. V) X. 1; XII. 3, 4;
XIII. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6.
L. F. Taylor, V. 3.
A. C. Haddon, I. 3, 4, 5, 6; III. 1, 2; IV. 1; V. 5, 6; VII. 6;
XI. 1, 2, 3; XII. 1, 2; XIII. 4; XVI. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Miss M. A. Czaplicka, VI. 1, 2, 3.
Dr W. Crooke (cf. _Northern India_, pl. III), XV. 3.
Baelz, VII. 3, 4.
Bureau of American Ethnology, VIII. 5, 6.
E. Thurston (_Castes and Tribes of Southern India_, II. p. 387),
X. 3; (ibid. IV. pp. 236, 240), XV. 5; XV. 6.
Sir Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen and Messrs Macmillan & Co.
(_Across Australia_, II. fig. 169), X. 5.
Prof. J. Kollmann, XI. 5, 6.
P. W. Luton, XII. 2.
Prof. F. von Luschan and the Council of the Royal Anthropological
Institute (_Journ. Roy. Anth. Inst._, XLI., pl. XXIV, 1, 2,
pl. XXX, 1, 2), XIV. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Dr W. H. Furness, XVI. 5, 6.
CHAPTER I
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
The World peopled by Migration from one Centre by Pleistocene
Man--The Primary Groups evolved each in its special Habitat--
Pleistocene Man: _Pithecanthropus erectus_; The Mauer jaw, _Homo
Heidelbergensis_; The Piltdown skull, _Eoanthropus Dawsoni_--General
View of Pleistocene Man--The first Migrations--Early Man and his
Works--Classification of Human Types: _H. primigenius_, Neandertal
or Mousterian Man; _H. recens_, Galley Hill or Aurignacian Man--
Physical Types--Human Culture: Reutelian, Mafflian, Mesvinian,
Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean, Mousterian, Aurignacian, Solutrian,
Magdalenian, Azilian--Chronology--The early History of Man a
Geological Problem--The Human Varieties the Outcome of their several
Environments--Correspondence of Geographical with Racial and
Cultural Zones.
In order to a clear understanding of the many difficult questions
connected with the natural history of the human family, two cardinal
points have to be steadily borne in mind--the specific unity of all
existing varieties, and the dispersal of their generalised precursors
over the whole world in pleistocene times. As both points have elsewhere
been dealt with by me somewhat fully[1], it will here suffice to show
their direct bearing on the general evolution of the human species from
that remote epoch to the present day.
It must be obvious that, if man is specifically one, though not
necessarily sprung of a single pair, he must have had, in homely
language, a single cradle-land, from which the peopling of the earth
was brought about by migration, not by independent developments from
different species in so many independent geographical areas.
It follows further, and this point is all-important, that, since the
world was peopled by pleistocene man, it was peopled by a generalised
proto-human form, prior to all later racial differences. The existing
groups, according to this hypothesis, have developed in different areas
independently and divergently by continuous adaptation to their several
environments. If they still constitute mere varieties, and not distinct
species, the reason is because all come of like pleistocene ancestry,
while the divergences have been confined to relatively narrow limits,
that is, not wide enough to be regarded zoologically as specific
differences.
The battle between monogenists and polygenists cannot be decided until
more facts are at our disposal, and much will doubtless be said on both
sides for some time to come[2]. Among the views of human origins brought
forward in recent years should be mentioned the daring theory of
Klaatsch[3]. Recognising two distinct human types, Neandertal and
Aurignac (see pp. 8, 9 below), and two distinct anthropoid types,
gorilla and orang-utan, he derives Neandertal man and African gorilla
from one common ancestor, and Aurignac man and Asiatic orang-utan from
another. Though anatomists, especially those conversant with anthropoid
structure[4], are not able to accept this view, they admit that many
difficulties may be solved by the recognition of more than one
primordial stock of human ancestors[5]. The questions of adaptation to
climate and environment[6], the possibilities of degeneracy, the varying
degrees of physiological activity, of successful mutations, the effects
of crossing and all the complicated problems of heredity are involved in
the discussion, and it must be acknowledged that our information
concerning all of these is entirely inadequate.
Nevertheless all speculations on the subject are not based merely on
hypotheses, and three discoveries of late years have provided solid
facts for the working out of the problem.
These discoveries were the remains of _Pithecanthropus erectus_[7] in
Java, in 1892, of the Mauer jaw[8], near Heidelberg, in 1907, and of the
Piltdown skull[9] in Sussex in 1912. Although the Mauer jaw was accepted
without hesitation, the controversy concerning the correct
interpretation of the Javan fossils has been raging for more than twenty
years and shows no sign of abating, while _Eoanthropus Dawsoni_ is too
recent an intruder into the arena to be fairly dealt with at present.
Certain facts however stand out clearly. In late pliocene or early
pleistocene times certain early ancestral forms were already in
existence which can scarcely be excluded from the _Hominidae_. In range
they were as widely distributed as Java in the east to Heidelberg and
Sussex in the west, and in spite of divergence in type a certain
correlation is not impossible, even if the Piltdown specimen should
finally be regarded as representing a distinct genus[10]. Each
contributes facts of the utmost importance for the tracing out of the
history of human evolution. _Pithecanthropus_ raises the vexed question
as to whether the erect attitude or brain development came first in the
story. The conjunction of pre-human braincase with human thighbone
appeared to favour the popular view that the erect attitude was the
earlier, but the evidence of embryology suggests a reverse order. And
although at first the thighbone was recognised as distinctly human it
seems that of late doubts have been cast on this interpretation[11], and
even the claim to the title _erectus_ is called in question. The
characters of straightness and slenderness on which much stress was laid
are found in exaggerated form in gibbons and lemurs. The intermediate
position in respect of mental endowment (in so far as brain can be
estimated by cranial capacity) is shown in the accompanying diagram in
which the cranial measurements of _Pithecanthropus_ are compared with
those of a chimpanzee and prehistoric man. The teeth strengthen the
evidence, for they are described as too large for a man and too small
for an ape. Thus _Pithecanthropus_ has been confidently assigned to a
place in a branch of the human family tree.
[Illustration: POSITION OF P. ERECTUS.
(Manouvrier, _Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop._ 1896, p. 438.)]
The Mauer jaw, the geological age of which is undisputed, also
represents intermediate characters. The extraordinary strength and
thickness of bone, the wide ascending ramus with shallow sigmoid notch
(distinctly simian features) and the total absence of chin[12] would
deny it a place among human jaws, but the teeth, which are all
fortunately preserved in their sockets, are not only definitely human,
but show in certain peculiarities less simian features than are to be
found in the dentition of modern man[13].
[Illustration: GENEALOGICAL TREE OF MAN'S ANCESTRY.
(A. Keith, _The Antiquity of Man_, 1915; fig. 187, p. 501.)]
The cranial capacity of the Piltdown skull, though variously
estimated[14], is certainly greater than that of _Pithecanthropus_, the
general outlines with steeply rounded forehead resemble that of modern
man, and the bones are almost without exception typically human. The
jaw, however, though usually attributed to the same individual[15],
recalls the primitive features of the Mauer specimen in its thick
ascending portion and shallow notch, while in certain characters it
differs from any known jaw, ancient or modern[16]. The evidence afforded
by the teeth is even more striking. The teeth of _Pithecanthropus_ and
of _Homo Heidelbergensis_ were recognised as remarkably human, and
although primitive in type, are far more advanced in the line of human
evolution than the lowly features with which they are associated would
lead one to expect. The Piltdown teeth are more primitive in certain
characters than those of either the Javan or the Heidelberg remains. The
first molar has been compared to that of Taubach, the most ape-like of
human or pre-human teeth hitherto recorded, but the canine tooth (found
by P. Teilhard in the same stratum in 1913[17]) finds no parallel in any
known human jaw; it resembles the milk canine of the chimpanzee more
than that of the adult dentition.
It cannot be said that any clear view of pleistocene man can be obtained
from these imperfect scraps of evidence, valuable though they are.
Rather may we agree with Keith that the problem grows more instead of
less complex. "In our first youthful burst of Darwinianism we pictured
our evolution as a simple procession of forms leading from ape to man.
Each age, as it passed, transformed the men of the time one stage nearer
to us--one more distant from the ape. The true picture is very
different. We have to conceive an ancient world in which the family of
mankind was broken up into narrow groups or genera, each genus again
divided into a number of species--much as we see in the monkey or ape
world of to-day. Then out of that great welter of forms one species
became the dominant form, and ultimately the sole surviving one--the
species represented by the modern races of mankind[18]."
We may assume therefore that the earth was mainly peopled by the
generalised pleistocene precursors, who moved about, like the other
migrating faunas, unconsciously, everywhere following the lines of least
resistance, advancing or receding, and acting generally on blind impulse
rather than of any set purpose.
That such must have been the nature of the first migratory movements
will appear evident when we consider that they were carried on by rude
hordes, all very much alike, and differing not greatly from other
zoological groups, and further that these migrations took place prior to
the development of all cultural appliances beyond the ability to wield a
broken branch or a sapling, or else chip or flake primitive stone
implements[19].
Herein lies the explanation of the curious phenomenon, which was a
stumbling-block to premature systematists, that all the works of early
man everywhere present the most startling resemblances, affording
absolutely no elements for classification, for instance, during the
times corresponding with the Chellean or first period of the Old Stone
Age. The implements of palaeolithic type so common in parts of South
India, South Africa, the Sudan, Egypt, etc., present a remarkable
resemblance to one another. This, while affording a _prima facies_ case
for, is not conclusive of, the migrations of a definite type of
humanity.
After referring to the identity of certain objects from the Hastings
kitchen-middens and a barrow near Sevenoaks, W. J. L. Abbot proceeds:
"The first thing that would strike one in looking over a few trays of
these implements is the remarkable likeness which they bear to those of
Dordogne. Indeed many of the figures in the magnificent 'Reliquiae
Aquitanicae' might almost have been produced from these specimens[20]."
And Sir J. Evans, extending his glance over a wider horizon, discovers
implements in other distant lands "so identical in form and character
with British specimens that they might have been manufactured by the
same hands.... On the banks of the Nile, many hundreds of feet above its
present level, implements of the European types have been discovered,
while in Somaliland, in an ancient river valley, at a great elevation
above the sea, Seton-Karr has collected a large number of implements
formed of flint and quartzite, which, judging from their form and
character, might have been dug out of the drift-deposits of the Somme
and the Seine, the Thames or the ancient Solent[21]."
It was formerly held that man himself showed a similar uniformity, and
all palaeolithic skulls were referred to one long-headed type, called,
from the most famous example, the Neandertal, which was regarded as
having close affinities with the present Australians. But this
resemblance is shown by Boule[22] and others to be purely superficial,
and recent archaeological finds indicate that more than one racial type
was in existence in the Palaeolithic Age.
W. L. H. Duckworth on anatomical evidence constructs the following
table[23].
Group I. Early ancestral forms.
_Ex. gr. H. heidelbergensis._
Group II. _Subdivision A. H. primigenius._
_Ex. gr. La Chapelle._
_Subdivision B. H. recens_; with varieties
{ _H. fossilis. Ex. gr. Galley Hill._
{ _H. sapiens._
H. Obermaier[24] argues as follows: _Homo primigenius_ is neither the
representative of an intermediate species between ape and man, nor a
lower or distinct type than _Homo sapiens_, but an older primitive
variety (race) of the latter, which survives in exceptional cases down
to the present day[25]. Clearly then, according to the rules of
zoological classification, we must term the two, _Homo sapiens var.
primigenius_, as compared with _Homo sapiens var. recens_.
Whatever classification or nomenclature may be adopted the dual division
in palaeolithic times is now generally recognised. The more primitive
type is commonly called Neandertal man, from the famous cranium found
in the Neandertal cave in 1857, or Mousterian man, from the culture
associations. To this group belong the Gibraltar skull[26], and the
skeletons from Spy[27], and Krapina, Croatia[28], together with the
later discoveries (1908-11) at La Chapelle[29] (Correze), Le
Moustier[30], La Ferassie[31] (Dordogne) and many others.
Palaeolithic examples of the modern human type have been found at Bruex
(Bohemia)[32], Bruenn (Moravia)[33] and Galley Hill in Kent[34], but the
most complete find was that at Combe Capelle in 1909[35]. The numerous
skeletons found at Cro-Magnon[36] and at the Grottes de Grimaldi at
Mentone[37] though showing certain skeletal differences may be included
in this group, the earliest examples of which are associated with
Aurignacian culture[38].
From the evidence contributed by these examples the main characteristics
of the two groups may be indicated, although, owing to the imperfection
of the records, any generalisations must necessarily be tentative and
subject to criticism.
The La Chapelle skull recalls many of the primitive features of the
"ancestral types." The low receding forehead, the overhanging
brow-ridges, forming continuous horizontal bars of bone overshadowing
the orbits, the inflated circumnasal region, the enormous jaws, with
massive ascending ramus, shallow sigmoid notch, "negative" chin and
other "simian" characters seem reminiscent of _Pithecanthropus_ and
_Homo Heidelbergensis_. The cranial capacity however is estimated at
over 1600 c.c., thus exceeding that of the average modern European, and
this development, even though associated, as M. Boule has pointed out,
with a comparatively lowly brain, is of striking significance. The low
stature, probably about 1600 mm. (under 5-1/2 feet) makes the size of
the skull and cranial capacity all the more remarkable. "A survey of
the characters of Neanderthal man--as manifested by his skeleton, brain
cast, and teeth--have convinced anthropologists of two things: first,
that we are dealing with a form of man totally different from any form
now living; and secondly, that the kind of difference far exceeds that
which separates the most divergent of modern human races[39]."
The earliest complete and authentic example of "Aurignacian man" was the
skeleton discovered near Combe Capelle (Dordogne) in 1909[40]. The
stature is low, not exceeding that of the Neandertal type, but the limb
bones are slighter and the build is altogether lighter and more slender.
The greatest contrast lies in the skull. The forehead is vertical
instead of receding, and the strongly projecting brow-ridges are
diminished, the jaw is less massive and less simian with regard to all
the features mentioned above. Especially is this difference noticeable
in the projection of the chin, which now for the first time shows the
modern human outline. In short there are no salient features which
cannot be matched among the living races of the present day.
On the cultural side no less than on the physical, the thousands of
years which the lowest estimate attributes to the Early Stone Age were
marked by slow but continuous changes.
The Reutelian (at the junction of the Pliocene and Pleistocene),
Mafflian and Mesvinian industries, recognised by M. Rutot in Belgium,
belong to the doubtful Eolithic Period, not yet generally accepted[41].
The lowest palaeolithic deposit is the Strepyan, so called from Strepy,
near Charleroi, typically represented at St Acheul, Amiens, and
recognised also in the Thames Valley[42]. The tools exhibit deliberate
flaking, and mark the transition between eolithic and palaeolithic
work. The associated fauna includes two species of elephant,
_E. meridionalis_ and _E. antiquus_, two species of rhinoceros,
_R. Etruscus_ and _R. Merckii_, and the hippopotamus. It is possible
that the Mauer jaw and the Piltdown skull belong to this stage.
The Chellean industry[43], with the typical coarsely flaked
almond-shaped implements, occurs abundantly in the South of England and
in France, less commonly in Belgium, Germany, Austria-Hungary and
Russia, while examples have been recognised in Palestine, Egypt,
Somaliland, Cape Colony, Madras and other localities, though outside
Europe the date is not always ascertainable and the form is not an
absolute criterion[44].
Acheulean types succeed apparently in direct descent but the implements
are altogether lighter, sharper, more efficient, and are characterised
by finer workmanship and carefully retouched edges. A small finely
finished lanceolate implement is typical of the sub-industry or local
development at La Micoque (Dordogne).
The Chellean industry is associated with a warm climate and the remains
of _Elephas antiquus_, _Rhinoceros Merckii_ and hippopotamus. Lower
Acheulean shows little variation, but with Upper Acheulean certain
animals indicating a colder climate make their appearance, including
the mammoth, _Elephas primigenius_, and the woolly rhinoceros,
_R. tichorhinus_, but no reindeer.
The Mousterian industry is entirely distinct from its predecessors. The
warm fauna has disappeared, the reindeer first occurs together with the
musk ox, arctic fox, the marmot and other cold-loving animals. Man
appears to have sought refuge in the caves, and from complete skeletons
found in cave deposits of this stage we gain the first clear ideas
concerning the physical type of man of the early palaeolithic period.
Typical Mousterian implements consist of leaf-like or triangular points
made from flakes struck from the nodule instead of from the dressed
nodule itself, as in the earlier stages. The Levallois flakes, occurring
at the base of the Mousterian (sometimes included in the Acheulean
stage), initiate this new style of workmanship, but the Mousterian point
shows an improvement in shape and a greater mastery in technique,
producing a more efficient tool for piercing and cutting. Scrapers,
carefully retouched, with a curved edge are also characteristic, besides
many other forms. The complete skeletons from Le Moustier itself, La
Chapelle, La Ferassie, and Krapina all belong to this stage, which marks
the end of the lower palaeolithic period, the Age of the Mammoth.
The upper palaeolithic or Reindeer Age is divided into Aurignacian,
Solutrian, and Magdalenian[45] culture stages, with the Azilian[46]
separating the Magdalenian from the neolithic period. Each stage is
distinguished by its implements and its art. The Aurignacian fauna,
though closely resembling the Mousterian, indicates an amelioration of
climate, the most abundant animals being the bison, horse, cave lion,
and cave hyena, and human settlements are again found in the open. Among
the typical implements are finely worked knife-like blades (Chatelperron
point, Gravette point), keeled scrapers (Tarte type), _burins_ or
gravers, and various tools and ornaments of bone. Art is represented by
engravings and wall paintings, and to this stage belong statuettes
representing nude female figures such as those of Brassempouy, Mentone,
Pont-a-Lesse (Belgium), Predmost and Willendorf, near Krems. The
Neandertal type appears to have died out and Aurignacian man belongs to
the modern type represented at Combe Capelle. If the evidence of the
figurines is to be accepted, a steatopygous race was at this time in
existence, which Sollas is inclined to connect with the Bushmen[47].
The Solutrian stage is characterised by the abundance of the horse,
replaced in the succeeding period by the reindeer. The Solutrians seem
to have been a warlike steppe people who came from the east into western
Europe. Their subsequent fate has not been elucidated. The culture
appears to have had a limited range, only a few stations being found
outside Dordogne and the neighbouring departments. The technique, as
shown in the laurel-leaf and willow-leaf points, exhibits a perfection
of workmanship unequalled in the Palaeolithic Age, and only excelled by
late prehistoric knives of Egypt.
The rock shelter at La Madeleine has given its name to the closing epoch
of the Palaeolithic Age. The flint industry shows distinct decadence,
but the working in bone and horn was at its zenith; indeed, so marked is
the contrast between this and the preceding stage that Breuil is
convinced that "the first Magdalenians were not evolved from the
Solutrians; they were new-comers in our region[48]." The typical
implements are barbed harpoons in reindeer antler (later that of the
stag), often decorated with engravings. Sculpture and engravings of
animals in life-like attitudes are among the most remarkable records of
the age, and the polychrome pictures in the caves of Altamira, "the
Sistine chapel of Quaternary Art," are the admiration of the world[49].
In the cave of Mas-d'Azil, between the Magdalenian and Neolithic
deposits occurs a stratum, termed Azilian, which, to some extent,
bridges over the obscure transition between the Palaeolithic and
Neolithic Ages. The reindeer has disappeared, and its place is taken by
the stag. The realistic art of the Magdalenians is succeeded by a more
geometric style. In flint working a return is made to Aurignacian
methods, and a particular development of pygmy flints has received the
name _Tardenoisian_[50].
The characteristic implement is still the harpoon, but it differs in
shape from the Magdalenian implement, owing to the different structure
of the material. Painted pebbles, marked with red and black lines, in
some cases suggesting a script, have given rise to much controversy.
Their meaning at present remains obscure[51].
The question of prehistoric chronology is a difficult one, and the more
cautious authorities do not commit themselves to dates. Of late years,
however, such researches as those of A. Penck and E. Brueckner in the
Alps[52] and of Baron de Geer and W. C. Brogger in Sweden[53], have
provided a sound basis for calculations. Penck recognises four periods
of glaciation during the pleistocene period, which he has named after
typical areas, the Guenz, Mindel, Riss and Wuerm. He dates the Wuerm
maximum at between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago and estimates the
duration of the Riss-Wuerm interglacial period at about 100,000 years.
According to his calculations the Chellean industry occurs in the
Mindel-Riss, or even in the Guenz-Mindel interval, but it is more
commonly placed in the mild phase intervening before the last (Wuerm)
glaciation, this latter corresponding with the cold Mousterian stage. At
least four subsequent oscillations of climate have been recognised by
Penck, the Achen, Buehl, Gschnitz and Daun, and the correspondence of
these with palaeolithic culture stages may be seen in the following
table[54].
Penck and Brueckner Obermaier and others Rutot
Post-glacial {Daun } Azilian Proto-Neolithic}
with {Gschnitz} Azilian }
oscillations {Buehl } Magdalenian } Neolithic
{Achen } Magdalenian Solutrian and }
} Aurignacian }
IV. Wuerm. 4th Glacial } Mousterian Lower
Lower Mousterian Magdalenian
and Acheulean
Riss-Wuerm. 3rd Solutrian and Chellean Upper
Interglacial Aurignacian Mousterian
Warm Mousterian
III. Riss. 3rd Glacial Cold Mousterian Lower
Acheulean
Chellean
Mindel-Riss. 2nd Acheulean Mauer jaw Strepyan
Interglacial Chellean Pre-Palaeolithic Mesvinian
Mafflian
II. Mindel. 2nd Glacial } }
} }
Guenz-Mindel. 1st } No artefacts } No artefacts
Interglacial } }
} }
I. Guenz. 1st Glacial } }
James Geikie[55], under the heading, "Reliable and Unreliable estimates
of geological time," points out that the absolute duration of the
Pleistocene cannot be determined, but such investigations as those of
Penck "enable us to form some conception of the time involved." He
accepts as a rough approximation Penck's opinion that "the Glacial
period with all its climatic changes may have extended over half a
million years, and as the Chellean stage dates back to at least the
middle of the period, this would give somewhere between 250,000 and
500,000 years for the antiquity of man in Europe. But if, as recent
discoveries would seem to indicate, man was an occupant of our Continent
during the First Interglacial epoch, if not in still earlier times, we
may be compelled greatly to increase our estimate of his antiquity"
(p. 303).
W. J. Sollas, on the other hand, is content with a far more contracted
measure. Basing his calculations mainly on the investigations of de
Geer, he concludes that the interval that separates our time from the
beginning of the end of the last glacial episode is 17,000 years. He
places the Azilian age at 5500 B.C., the middle of the Magdalenian age
somewhere about 8000 B.C., Mousterian 15,000 B.C., and the close of the
Chellean 25,000 B.C.[56]
But when all the changes in climate are taken into consideration, the
periods of elevation and depression of the land, the transformations of
the animals, the evolution of man, the gradual stages of advance in
human culture, the development of the races of mankind, and their
distribution over the surface of the globe, this estimate is regarded by
many as insufficient. Allen Sturge claims "scores of thousands of years"
for the neolithic period alone[57], and Sir W. Turner points out the
very remote times to which the appearance of neolithic man must be
assigned in Scotland. After showing that there is undoubted evidence of
the presence of man in North Britain during the formation of the Carse
clays, this careful observer explains that the Carse cliffs, now in
places 45 to 50 feet above the present sea-level, formed the bed of an
estuary or arm of the sea, which in post-glacial times extended almost,
if not quite across the land from east to west, thus separating the
region south of the Forth from North Britain. He even suggests, after
the separation of Britain from the Continent in earlier times, another
land connection, a "Neolithic land-bridge" by which the men of the New
Stone Age may have reached Scotland when the upheaved 100-foot terrace
was still clothed with the great forest growths that have since
disappeared[58].
One begins to ask, Are even 100,000 years sufficient for such
oscillations of the surface, upheaval of marine beds, appearance of
great estuaries, renewed connection of Britain with the Continent by a
"Neolithic land-bridge"? In the Falkirk district neolithic
kitchen-middens occur on, or at the base of, the bluffs which overlook
the Carse lands, that is, the old sea-coast. In the Carse of Gowrie also
a dug-out canoe was found at the very base of the deposits, and
immediately above the buried forest-bed of the Tay Valley[59].
That the neolithic period was also of long duration even in Scandinavia
has been made evident by Carl Wibling, who calculates that the
geological changes on the south-east coast of Sweden (Province of
Bleking), since its first occupation by the men of the New Stone Age,
must have required a period of "at least 10,000 years[60]."
Still more startling are the results of the protracted researches
carried on by J. Nueesch at the now famous station of Schweizersbild,
near Schaffhausen in Switzerland[61]. This station was apparently in the
continuous occupation of man during both Stone Ages, and here have been
collected as many as 14,000 objects belonging to the first, and over
6000 referred to the second period. Although the early settlement was
only post-glacial, a point about which there is no room for doubt, L.
Laloy[62] has estimated "the absolute duration of both epochs together
at from 24,000 to 29,000 years." We may, therefore, ask, If a
comparatively recent post-glacial station in Switzerland is about 29,000
years old, how old may a pre- or inter-glacial station be in Gaul or
Britain?
From all this we see how fully justified is J. W. Powell's remark that
the natural history of early man becomes more and more a geological, and
not merely an ethnological problem[63]. We also begin to understand how
it is that, after an existence of some five score millenniums, the first
specialised human varieties have diverged greatly from the original
types, which have thus become almost "ideal quantities," the subjects
rather of palaeontological than of strictly anthropological studies.
And here another consideration of great moment presents itself. During
these long ages some of the groups--most African negroes south of the
equator, most Oceanic negroes (Negritoes and Papuans), and Australian
and American aborigines--have remained in their original habitats ever
since what may be called the first settlement of the earth by man.
Others again, the more restless or enterprising peoples, such as the
Mongols, Manchus, Turks, Ugro-Finns, Arabs, and most Europeans, have no
doubt moved about somewhat freely; but these later migrations, whether
hostile or peaceable, have for the most part been confined to regions
presenting the same or like physical and climatic conditions. Wherever
different climatic zones have been invaded, the intruders have failed to
secure a permanent footing, either perishing outright, or disappearing
by absorption or more or less complete assimilation to the aboriginal
elements. Such are some "black Arabs" in Egyptian Sudan, other Semites
and Hamites in Abyssinia and West Sudan (Himyarites, Fulahs and others),
Finns and Turks in Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula (Magyars, Bulgars,
Osmanli), Portuguese and Netherlanders in Malaysia, English in tropical
or sub-tropical lands, such as India, where Eurasian half-breeds alone
are capable of founding family groups.
The human varieties are thus seen to be, like all other zoological
species, the outcome of their several environments. They are what
climate, soil, diet, pursuits and inherited characters have made them,
so that all sudden transitions are usually followed by disastrous
results[64]. "To urge the emigration of women and children, or of any
save those of the most robust health, to the tropics, may not be to
murder in the first degree, but it should be classed, to put it mildly,
as incitement to it[65]." Acclimatisation may not be impossible but in
all extreme cases it can be effected only at great sacrifice of life,
and by slow processes, the most effective of which is perhaps Natural
Selection. By this means we may indeed suppose the world to have been
first peopled.
At the same time it should be remembered that we know little of the
climatic conditions at the time of the first migrations, though it has
been assumed that it was everywhere much milder than at present.
Consequently the different zones of temperature were less marked, and
the passage from one region to another more easily effected than in
later times. In a word the pleistocene precursors had far less
difficulty in adapting themselves to their new surroundings than modern
peoples have when they emigrate, for instance, from Southern Europe to
Brazil and Paraguay, or from the British Isles to Rhodesia and
Nyassaland.
What is true of man must be no less true of his works; from which it
follows that racial and cultural zones correspond in the main with zones
of temperature, except so far as the latter may be modified by altitude,
marine influences, or other local conditions. A glance at past and
existing relations the world over will show that such harmonies have at
all times prevailed. No doubt the overflow of the leading European
peoples during the last 400 years has brought about divers dislocations,
blurrings, and in places even total effacements of the old landmarks.
But, putting aside these disturbances, it will be found that in the
Eastern hemisphere the inter-tropical regions, hot, moist and more
favourable to vegetable than to animal vitality, are usually occupied by
savage, cultureless populations. Within the same sphere are also
comprised most of the extra-tropical southern lands, all tapering
towards the antarctic waters, isolated, and otherwise unsuitable for
areas of higher specialisation.
Similarly the sub-tropical Asiatic peninsulas, the bleak Tibetan
tableland, the Pamir, and arid Mongolian steppes are found mainly in
possession of somewhat stationary communities, which present every stage
between sheer savagery and civilisation.
In the same way the higher races and cultures are confined to the more
favoured north temperate zone, so that between the parallels of 24 deg. and
50 deg. (but owing to local conditions falling in the far East to 40 deg. and
under, and in the extreme West rising to 55 deg.) are situated nearly all
the great centres, past and present, of human activities--the Egyptian,
Babylonian, Minoan (Aegean), Hellenic, Etruscan, Roman, and modern
European. Almost the only exceptions are the early civilisations
(Himyaritic) of Yemen (Arabia Felix) and Abyssinia, where the low
latitude is neutralised by altitude and a copious rainfall.
Thanks also to altitude, to marine influences, and the contraction of
the equatorial lands, the relations are almost completely reversed in
the New World. Here all the higher developments took place, not in the
temperate but in the tropical zone, within which lay the seats of the
Peruvian, Chimu, Chibcha and Maya-Quiche cultures; the Aztec sphere
alone ranged northwards a little beyond the Tropic of Cancer.
Thus in both hemispheres the iso-cultural bands follow the isothermal
lines in all their deflections, and the human varieties everywhere
faithfully reflect the conditions of their several environments.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Ethnology_, Chaps. V. and VII.
[2] See A. H. Keane, _Ethnology_, 1909, Chap. VII.
[3] H. Klaatsch, "Die Aurignac-Rasse und ihre Stellung im Stammbaum des
Menschen," _Ztschr. f. Eth._ LII. 1910. See also _Praehistorische
Zeitschrift_, Vol. I. 1909.
[4] Cf. A. Keith's criticisms in _Nature_, Vol. LXXXV. 1911, p. 508.
[5] W. L. H. Duckworth, _Prehistoric Man_, 1912, p. 146.
[6] W. Ridgeway, "The Influence of Environment on Man," _Journ. Roy.
Anthr. Inst._, Vol. XL. 1910, p. 10.
[7] E. Dubois, "_Pithecanthropus erectus_, transitional form between Man
and the Apes," _Sci. Trans. R. Dublin Soc._ 1898.
[8] O. Schoetensack, _Der Unterkiefer des Homo Heidelbergensis_, etc.,
1908.
[9] C. Dawson and A. Smith Woodward, "On the Discovery of a Palaeolithic
Skull and Mandible," etc., _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._ 1913.
[10] This was the view of A. Smith Woodward when the skull was first
exhibited (_loc. cit._), but in his paper, "Missing Links among Extinct
Animals," _Brit. Ass._ Birmingham, 1913, he is inclined to regard
"Piltdown man, or some close relative" as "on the direct line of descent
with ourselves." For A. Keith's criticism see _The Antiquity of Man_,
1915, p. 503.
[11] W. L. H. Duckworth, _Prehistoric Man_, 1912, p. 8.
[12] For the relation between chin formation and power of speech, see E.
Walkhoff, "Der Unterkiefer der Anthropomorphen und des Menschen in
seiner funktionellen Entwicklung und Gestalt," E. Selenka,
_Menschenaffen_, 1902; H. Obermaier, _Der Mensch der Vorzeit_, 1912, p.
362; and W. Wright, "The Mandible of Man from the Morphological and
Anthropological points of view," _Essays and Studies presented to W.
Ridgeway_, 1913.
[13] Cf. W. L. H. Duckworth, _Prehistoric Man_, 1912, p. 10, and A.
Keith, _The Antiquity of Man_, 1915, p. 237.
[14] A. Smith Woodward, 1070 c.c.; A. Keith, 1400 c.c.
[15] G. G. MacCurdy, following G. S. Miller, _Smithsonian Misc. Colls._
Vol. 65, No. 12 (1915), is convinced that "in place of _Eoanthropus
dawsoni_ we have two individuals belonging to different genera," a human
cranium and the jaw of a chimpanzee. _Science_, N.S. Vol. XLIII. 1916,
p. 231. See also Appendix A.
[16] For a full description see _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._ March, 1913.
Also A. Keith, _The Antiquity of Man_, 1915, p. 320, and pp. 430-452.
[17] C. Dawson and A. Smith Woodward, "Supplementary Note on the
Discovery of a Palaeolithic Human Skull and Mandible at Piltdown
(Sussex)," _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._ April, 1914.
[18] _The Antiquity of Man_, 1915, p. 209.
[19] Thus Lucretius:
"Arma antiqua manus, ungues, dentesque fuerunt,
Et lapides, et item silvarum fragmina rami."
[20] _Jour. Anthrop. Inst._ 1896, p. 133.
[21] _Inaugural Address_, Brit. Ass. Meeting, Toronto, 1897.
[22] M. Boule, "L'homme fossile de la Chapelle-aux-Saints," _Annales de
Paleontologie_, 1911 (1913). Cf. also H. Obermaier, _Der Mensch der
Vorzeit_, 1912, p. 364.
[23] _Prehistoric Man_, 1912, p. 60.
[24] _Der Mensch der Vorzeit_, 1912, p. 365.
[25] This is not generally accepted. See A. Keith's diagram, p. 5 and
pp. 9-10.
[26] W. J. Sollas, "On the Cranial and Facial Characters of the
Neandertal Race," _Phil. Trans._ 1907, CXCIV.
[27] J. Fraipont and M. Lohest, "Recherches Ethnographiques sur les
Ossements Humains," etc., _Arch. de Biologie_, 1887.
[28] Gorjanovi[vc]-Kramberger, _Der diluviale Mensch von Krapina in
Kroatia_, 1906.
[29] M. Boule, "L'homme fossile de la Chapelle-aux-Saints," _L'Anthr._
XIX. 1908, and _Annales de Paleontologie_, 1911 (1913).
[30] H. Klaatsch, _Praehistorische Zeitschrift_, Vol. I. 1909.
[31] Peyrony and Capitan, _Rev. de l'Ecole d'Anthrop._ 1909; _Bull. Soc.
d'Anthr. de Paris_, 1910.
[32] G. Schwalbe, "Der Schaedel von Bruex," _Zeitschr. f. Morph. u.
Anthr._ 1906.
[33] Makowsky, "Der diluviale Mensch in Loess von Bruenn," _Mitt. Anthrop.
Gesell. in Wien_, 1892.
[34] See A. Keith, _The Antiquity of Man_, 1915, Chap. X.
[35] H. Klaatsch, "Die Aurignac-Rasse," etc., _Zeitschr. f. Ethn._ LII.
1910.
[36] L. Lartet, "Une sepulture des troglodytes du Perigord," and Broca,
"Sur les cranes et ossements des Eyzies," _Bull. Soc. d'Anthr._ de
Paris, 1868.
[37] R. Verneau, _Les Grottes de Grimaldi_, 1906-11.
[38] For a complete list with bibliographical references, see H.
Obermaier, "Les restes humains Quaternaires dans l'Europe centrale,"
_Anthr._ 1905, p. 385, 1906, p. 55.
[39] A. Keith, _The Antiquity of Man_, 1915, p. 158. See also W. J.
Sollas, _Ancient Hunters_, 1915, p. 186 ff.
[40] H. Klaatsch, "Die Aurignac-Rasse," _Zeitschr. f. Eth._ 1910, LII.
p. 513.
[41] The Mesvinian implements are now accepted as artefacts and placed
by H. Obermaier immediately below the Chellean, though M. Commont
interprets them as Acheulean or even later. See W. J. Sollas, _Ancient
Hunters_, 1915, p. 132 ff.
[42] R. Smith and H. Dewey, "Stratification at Swanscombe,"
_Archaeologia_, LXIV. 1912.
[43] So called from Chelles-sur-Marne, near Paris.
[44] Cf. J. Dechelette, _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, I. 1908,
p. 89.
[45] From Aurignac (Haute-Garonne), Solutre (Saone-et-Loire), and La
Madeleine (Dordogne).
[46] Mas-d'Azil, Ariege.
[47] W. J. Sollas, _Ancient Hunters_, 1915, pp. 378-9.
[48] "Les Subdivisions de paleolithique superieur," _Congres Internat.
d'Anth._ 1912, XIV. pp. 190-3.
[49] H. Breuil and E. Cartailhac, _La Caverne d'Altamira_, 1906. For a
list of decorated caves, with the names of their discoverers, see J.
Dechelette, _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, I. 1908, p. 241. A
complete _Repertoire de l'Art Quaternaire_ is given by S. Reinach, 1913;
and for chronology see E. Piette, "Classifications des Sediments formes
dans les cavernes pendant l'Age du Renne," _Anthr._ 1904.
[50] From La Fere-en-Tardenois, Aisne.
[51] Cf. W. J. Sollas, _Ancient Hunters_, 1915, pp. 95, 534 f.
[52] _Die Alpen in Eiszeitalter_, 1901-9. See also "Alter des
Menschengeschlechts," _Zeit. f. Eth._ XL. 1908.
[53] See W. J. Sollas, _Ancient Hunters_, 1915, p. 561.
[54] H. Obermaier, _Der Mensch der Vorzeit_, 1911-2, p. 332.
[55] _The Antiquity of Man in Europe_, 1914, p. 301.
[56] _Ancient Hunters_, 1915, p. 567.
[57] _Proc. Prehist. Soc. E. Anglia_, 1. 1911, p. 60.
[58] Discourse at the R. Institute, London, _Nature_, Jan. 6 and 13,
1898.
[59] _Nature_, 1898, p. 235.
[60] _Tiden foer Blekings foersta bebyggande_, Karlskrona, 1895, p. 5.
[61] "Das Schweizersbild, eine Niederlassung aus palaeolithischer und
neolithischer Zeit," in _Nouveaux Memoires Soc. Helvetique des Sciences
Naturelles_, Vol. XXXV. Zurich, 1896. This is described by James Geikie,
_The Antiquity of Man in Europe_, 1914, pp. 85-99.
[62] _L'Anthropologie_, 1897, p. 350.
[63] _Forum_, Feb. 1898.
[64] The party of Eskimo men and women brought back by Lieut. Peary from
his Arctic expedition in 1897 were unable to endure our temperate
climate. Many died of pneumonia, and the survivors were so enfeebled
that all had to be restored to their icy homes to save their lives. Even
for the Algonquians of Labrador a journey to the coast is a journey to
the grave.
[65] W. Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, 1900, p. 586.
CHAPTER II
THE METAL AGES--HISTORIC TIMES AND PEOPLES
Progress of Archaeological Studies--Sequence of the Metal Ages--The
Copper Age--Egypt, Elam, Babylonia, Europe--The Bronze Age--Egypt
and Babylonia, Western Europe, the Aegean, Ireland--Chronology of
the Copper and Bronze Ages--The Iron Age--Hallstatt, La Tene--Man
and his Works in the Metal Ages--The Prehistoric Age in the West,
and in China--Historic Times--Evolution of Writing Systems--
Hieroglyphs and Cuneiforms--The Alphabet--The Persian and other
Cuneiform Scripts--The Mas-d'Azil Markings--Alphabetiform Signs
on Neolithic Monuments--Character and Consequences of the
later historic Migrations--The Race merges in the People--The
distinguishing Characters of Peoples--Scheme of Classification.
If, as above seen, the study of human origins is largely a geological
problem, the investigation of the later developments, during the Metal
Ages and prehistoric times, belongs mainly to the field of Archaeology.
Hence it is that for the light which has in recent years been thrown
upon the obscure interval between the Stone Ages and the strictly
historic epoch, that is to say, the period when in his continuous upward
development man gradually exchanged stone for the more serviceable
metals, we are indebted chiefly to the pioneer labours of such men as
Worsaae, Steenstrup, Forchhammer, Schliemann, Sayce, Layard, Lepsius,
Mariette, Maspero, Montelius, Brugsch, Petrie, Peters, Haynes, Sir J.
Evans, Sir A. J. Evans and many others, all archaeologists first, and
anthropologists only in the second instance.
From the researches of these investigators it is now clear that copper,
bronze, and iron were successively in use in Europe in the order named,
so that the current expressions, "Copper," "Bronze," and "Iron" Ages
remain still justified. But it also appears that overlappings, already
beginning in late Neolithic times, were everywhere so frequent that in
many localities it is quite impossible to draw any well-marked dividing
lines between the successive metal periods.
That iron came last, a fact already known by vague tradition to the
ancients[66], is beyond doubt, and it is no less certain that bronze of
various types intervened between copper and iron. But much obscurity
still surrounds the question of copper, which occurs in so many graves
of Neolithic and Bronze times, that this metal has even been denied an
independent position in the sequence.
But we shall not be surprised that confusion should prevail on this
point, if we reflect that the metals, unlike stone, came to remain. Once
introduced they were soon found to be indispensable to civilised man, so
that in a sense the "Metal Ages" still survive, and must last to the end
of time. Hence it was natural that copper should be found in prehistoric
graves associated, first with polished stone implements, and then with
bronze and iron, just as, since the arrival of the English in Australia,
spoons, clay pipes, penknives, pannikins, and the like, are now found
mingled with stone objects in the graves of the aborigines.
But that there was a true Copper Age[67] prior to that of Bronze, though
possibly of not very long duration, except of course in the New
World[68], has been placed beyond reasonable doubt by recent
investigations. Considerable attention was devoted to the subject by J.
H. Gladstone, who finds that copper was worked by the Egyptians in the
Sinaitic Peninsula, that is, in the famous mines of the Wadi Maghara,
from the fourth to the eighteenth dynasty, perhaps from 3000 to 1580
B.C.[69] During that epoch tools were made of pure copper in Egypt and
Syria, and by the Amorites in Palestine, often on the model of their
stone prototypes[70].
Elliot Smith[71] claims that "the full story of the coming of copper,
complete in every detail and circumstance, written in a simple and
convincing fashion that he who runs may read," has been displayed in
Egypt ever since the year 1894, though the full significance of the
evidence was not recognised until Reisner called attention to the record
of pre-dynastic graves in Upper Egypt when superintending the
excavations at Naga-ed-der in 1908[72]. These excavations revealed the
indigenous civilisation of the ancient Egyptians and, according to
Elliot Smith, dispose of the idea hitherto held by most archaeologists
that Egypt owed her knowledge of metals to Babylonia or some other
Asiatic source, where copper, and possibly also bronze, may be traced
back to the fourth millennium B.C. There was doubtless intercourse
between the civilisations of Egypt and Babylonia but "Reisner has
revealed the complete absence of any evidence to show or even to suggest
that the language, the mode of writing, the knowledge of copper ... were
imported" (p. 34). Elliot Smith justly claims (p. 6) that in no other
country has a similarly complete history of the discovery and the
evolution of the working of copper been revealed, but until equally
exhaustive excavations have been undertaken on contemporary or earlier
sites in Sumer and Elam, the question cannot be regarded as settled.
The work of J. de Morgan at Susa[73] (1907-8) shows the extreme
antiquity of the Copper Age in ancient Elam, even if his estimate of
5000 B.C. is regarded as a millennium too early[74]. At the base of the
mound on the natural soil, beneath 24 meters of archaeological layers,
were the remains of a town and a necropolis consisting of about 1000
tombs. Those of the men contained copper axes of primitive type; those
of the women, little vases of paint, together with discs of polished
copper to serve as mirrors. At Fara, excavations by Koldewey in 1902,
and by Andrae and Noeldeke in 1903 on the site of Shuruppak (the home of
the Babylonian Noah) in the valley of the Lower Euphrates, revealed
graves attributed to the prehistoric Sumerians, containing copper spear
heads, axes and drinking vessels[75].
In Europe, North Italy, Hungary and Ireland[76] may lay claim to a
Copper Age, but there is very little evidence of such a stage in
Britain. To this period also may be attributed the nest or _cache_ of
pure copper ingots found at Tourc'h, west of the Aven Valley,
Finisterre, described by M. de Villiers du Terrage, and comprising 23
pieces, with a total weight of nearly 50 lbs.[77] These objects, which
belong to "the transitional period when copper was used at first
concurrently with polished stone, and then disappeared as bronze came
into more general use[78]," came probably from Hungary, at that time
apparently the chief source of this metal for most parts of Europe. Of
over 200 copper objects described by Mathaeus Much[79] nearly all were
of Hungarian or South German _provenance_, five only being accredited to
Britain and eight to France.
The study of this subject has been greatly advanced by J. Hampel, who
holds on solid grounds that in some regions, especially Hungary, copper
played a dominant part for many centuries, and is undoubtedly the
characteristic metal of a distinct culture. His conclusions are based on
the study of about 500 copper objects found in Hungary and preserved in
the Buda Pesth collections. Reviewing all the facts attesting a Copper
Age in Central Europe, Egypt, Italy, Cyprus, Troy, Scandinavia, North
Asia, and other lands, he concludes that a Copper Age may have sprung up
independently wherever the ore was found, as in the Ural and Altai
Mountains, Italy, Spain, Britain, Cyprus, Sinai; such culture being
generally indigenous, and giving evidence of more or less characteristic
local features[80]. In fact we know for certain that such an independent
Copper Age was developed not only in the region of the Great Lakes of
North America, but also amongst the Bantu peoples of Katanga and other
parts of Central Africa. Copper is not an alloy like bronze, but a
soft, easily-worked metal occurring in large quantities and in a
tolerably pure state near the surface in many parts of the world. The
wonder is, not that it should have been found and worked at a somewhat
remote epoch in several different centres, but that its use should have
been so soon superseded in so many places by the bronze alloys.
From copper to bronze, however, the passage was slow and progressive,
the proper proportion of tin, which was probably preceded in some places
by an alloy of antimony, having been apparently arrived at by repeated
experiments often carried out with no little skill by those prehistoric
metallurgists.
As suggested by Bibra in 1869, the ores of different metals would appear
to have been at first smelted together empirically, and the process
continued until satisfactory results were obtained. Hence the
extraordinary number of metals, of which percentages are found in some
of the earlier specimens, such as those of the Elbing Museum, which on
analysis yielded tin, lead, silver, iron, antimony, arsenic, sulphur,
nickel, cobalt, and zinc in varying quantities[81].
Some bronzes from the pyramid of Medum analysed by J. H. Gladstone[82]
yielded the high percentage of 9.1 of tin, from which we must infer, not
only that bronze, but bronze of the finest quality, was already known to
the Egyptians of the fourth dynasty, _i.e._ 2840 B.C. The statuette of
Gudea of Lagash (2500 B.C.) claimed as the earliest example of bronze in
Babylonia is now known to be pure copper, and though objects from Tello
(Lagash) of earlier date contain a mixture of tin, zinc, arsenic and
other alloys, the proportion is insignificant. The question of priority
must, however, be left open until the relative chronology of Egypt and
Babylonia is finally settled, and this is still a much disputed
point[83]. Neither would all the difficulties with regard to the origin
of bronze be cleared up should Egypt or Babylonia establish her claim to
possess the earliest example of the metal, for neither country appears
to possess any tin. The nearest deposit known in ancient times would
seem to be that of Drangiana, mentioned by Strabo, identified with
modern Khorassan[84].
Strabo and other classical writers also mention the occurrence of tin in
the west, in Spain, Portugal and the Cassiterides or tin islands, whose
identity has given rise to so much speculation[85], but "though in after
times Egypt drew her tin from Europe it would be bold indeed to suppose
that she did so [in 3000 B.C.] and still bolder to maintain that she
learned from northern people how to make the alloy called bronze[86]."
Apart from the indigenous Egyptian origin maintained by Elliot Smith
(above) the hypothesis offering fewest difficulties is that the earliest
bronze is to be traced to the region of Elam, and that the knowledge
spread from S. Chaldaea (Elam-Sumer) to S. Egypt in the third millennium
B.C.[87]
There seems to be little doubt that the Aegean was the centre of
dispersal for the new metals throughout the Mediterranean area, and
copper ingots have been found at various points of the Mediterranean,
marked with Cretan signs[88]. Bronze was known in Crete before 2000 B.C.
for a bronze dagger and spear head were found at Hagios Onuphrios, near
Phaistos, with seals resembling those of the sixth to eleventh
dynasties[89].
From the eastern Mediterranean the knowledge spread during the second
millennium along the ordinary trade routes which had long been in use.
The mineral ores of Spain were exploited in pre-Mycenean times and
probably contributed in no small measure to the industrial development
of southern Europe. From tribe to tribe, along the Atlantic coasts the
traffic in minerals reached the British Isles, where the rich ores were
discovered which, in their turn, supplied the markets of the north, the
west and the south.
Even Ireland was not left untouched by Aegean influence, which reached
it, according to G. Coffey[90], by way of the Danube and the Elbe, and
thence by way of Scandinavia, though this is a matter on which there is
much difference of opinion. Ireland's richness in gold during the Bronze
Age made her "a kind of El Dorado of the western world," and the
discovery of a gold torc found by Schliemann in the royal treasury in
the second city of Troy raises the question as to whether the model of
the torc was imported into Ireland from the south[90], or whether (which
J. Dechelette[91] regards as less probable) there was already an
exportation of Irish gold to the eastern Mediterranean in pre-Mycenean
times.
Of recent years great strides have been made towards the establishment
of a definite chronology linking the historic with the prehistoric
periods in the Aegean, in Egypt and in Babylonia, and as the estimates
of various authorities differ sometimes by a thousand years or so, the
subjoined table will be of use to indicate the chronological schemes
most commonly followed; the dates are in all cases merely approximate.
It has often been pointed out that there is no reason why iron should
not have been the earliest metal to be used by man. Its ores are more
abundant and more easily reduced than any others, and are worked by
peoples in a low grade of culture at the present day[92]. Iron may have
been known in Egypt almost as early as bronze, for a piece in the
British Museum is attributed to the fourth dynasty, and some beads of
manufactured iron were found in a pre-dynastic grave at El Gerzeh[93].
But these and other less well authenticated occurrences of iron are
rare, and the metal was not common in Egypt before the middle of the
second millennium. By the end of the second millennium the knowledge had
spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean[94], and towards 900 at
latest iron was in common use in Italy and Central Europe.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
Egypt[95] Babylonia[96] Aegean[97] Greece[98] Bronze Age in
Europe[99]
3300 Dynasty I
3200
3100
3000 Dynasty of Opis ?Early ?Pre-Mycenean
2900 Dyn. of Kish Minoan I
2800 Dyn. III, Dyn. of Erech
IV Dyn. of
Akkad[100]
2700
2600 Dyn. V 2nd Dyn. of Erech
2500 Dyn. VI Gutian Early Minoan II Period I.
Domination Eneolithic
2400 Dyn. of Ur (implements
2300 Dyn. IX of stone,
2200 Dyn. of Isin Middle Minoan I copper and
2100 Dyn. XI Mid. Minoan II bronze, poor
2000 Dyn. XII 1st Dyn. Babylon Mycenean I in tin)
1900 2nd Dyn. Mid. Minoan III Period II
1800
1700 Dyn. XIII 3rd Dyn. Late Minoan I
1600 Dyn. XV Period III
1500 Dyn. XVIII Late Minoan Mycenean II
II
1400 Late Minoan III
1300 Dyn. XIX Period IV
1200 Dyn. XX Homeric Age
1100 4th Dyn.
1000 Dyn. XXI 5th to 7th Dyn. Close of Bronze Age[101]
900 Dyn. XXII 8th Dyn. Hallstatt
The introduction of iron into Italy has often been attributed to the
Etruscans, who were thought to have brought the knowledge from Lydia.
But the most abundant remains of the Early Iron Age are found not in
Tuscany, but along the coasts of the Adriatic[102], showing that iron
followed the well-known route of the amber trade, thus reaching Central
Europe and _Hallstatt_ (which has given its name to the Early Iron Age),
where alone in Europe the gradual transition from the use of bronze to
that of iron has been clearly traced. W. Ridgeway[103] believes that the
use of iron was first discovered in the Hallstatt area and that thence
it spread to Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Aegean area,
and Egypt rather than that the culture drift was in the opposite
direction. There is no difference of opinion however as to the
importance of this Central European area which contained the most famous
iron mines of antiquity. Hallstatt culture extended from the Iberian
peninsula in the west to Hungary in the east, but scarcely reached
Scandinavia, North Germany, Armorica or the British Isles where the
Bronze Age may be said to have lasted down to about 500 B.C. Over such a
vast domain the culture was not everywhere of a uniform type and
Hoernes[104] recognises four geographical divisions distinguished mainly
by pottery and fibulae, and provisionally classified as Illyrian in the
South West, or Adriatic region, in touch with Greece and Italy; Celtic
in the Central or Danubian area; with an off-shoot in Western Germany,
Northern Switzerland and Eastern France; and Germanic in parts of
Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Posen.
The Hallstatt period ends, roughly, at 500 B.C., and the Later Iron Age
takes its name from the settlement of _La Tene_, in a bay of the Lake of
Neuchatel in Switzerland. This culture, while owing much to that of
Hallstatt, and much also to foreign sources, possesses a distinct
individuality, and though soon overpowered on the Continent by Roman
influence, attained a remarkable brilliance in the Late Celtic period in
the British Isles.
That the peoples of the Metal Ages were physically well developed, and
in a great part of Europe and Asia already of Aryan speech, there can be
no reasonable doubt. A skull of the early Hallstatt period, from a grave
near Wildenroth, Upper Bavaria, is described by Virchow as long-headed,
with a cranial capacity of no less than 1585 c.c., strongly developed
occiput, very high and narrow face and nose, and in every respect a
superb specimen of the regular-featured, long-headed North
European[105]. But owing to the prevalence of cremation the evidence of
race is inadequate. The Hallstatt population was undoubtedly mixed, and
at Glasinatz in Bosnia, another site of Hallstatt civilisation, about a
quarter of the skulls examined were brachycephalic[106].
Their works, found in great abundance in the graves, especially of the
Bronze and Iron periods, but a detailed account of which belongs to the
province of archaeology, interest us in many ways. The painted
earthenware vases and incised metal-ware of all kinds enable the student
to follow the progress of the arts of design and ornamentation in their
upward development from the first tentative efforts of the prehistoric
artist at pleasing effects. Human and animal figures, though rarely
depicted, occasionally afford a curious insight into the customs and
fashions of the times. On a clay vessel, found in 1896 at Lahse in
Posen, is figured a regular hunting scene, where we see men mounted on
horseback, or else on foot, armed with bow and arrow, pursuing the
quarry (nobly-antlered stags), and returning to the penthouse after the
chase[107]. The drawing is extremely primitive, but on that account all
the more instructive, showing in connection with analogous
representations on contemporary objects, how in prehistoric art such
figures tend to become conventionalised and purely ornamental, as in
similar designs on the vases and textiles from the Ancon Necropolis,
Peru. "Most ornaments of primitive peoples, although to our eye they may
seem merely geometrical and freely-invented designs, are in reality
nothing more than degraded animal and human figures[108]."
This may perhaps be the reason why so many of the drawings of the metal
period appear so inferior to those of the cave-dwellers and of the
present Bushmen. They are often mere conventionalised reductions of
pictorial prototypes, comparable, for instance, to the characters of our
alphabets, which are known to be degraded forms of earlier pictographs.
Of the so-called "Prehistoric Age" it is obvious that no strict
definition can be given. It comprises in a general way that vague period
prior to all written records, dim memories of which--popular myths,
folklore, demi-gods[109], eponymous heroes[110], traditions of real
events[111]--lingered on far into historic times, and supplied ready to
hand the copious materials afterwards worked up by the early poets,
founders of new religions, and later legislators.
That letters themselves, although not brought into general use, had
already been invented, is evident from the mere fact that all memory of
their introduction beyond the vaguest traditions had died out before the
dawn of history. The works of man, while in themselves necessarily
continuous, stretched back to such an inconceivably remote past, that
even the great landmarks in the evolution of human progress had long
been forgotten by later generations.
And so it was everywhere, in the New World as in the Old, amongst
Eastern as amongst Western Peoples. In the Chinese records the "Age of
the Five Emperors"--five, though nine are named--answers somewhat to our
prehistoric epoch. It had its eponymous hero, Fu Hi, reputed founder of
the empire, who invented nets and snares for fishing and hunting, and
taught his people how to rear domestic animals. To him also is ascribed
the institution of marriage, and in his time Tsong Chi is supposed to
have invented the Chinese characters, symbols, not of sounds, but of
objects and ideas.
Then came other benevolent rulers, who taught the people agriculture,
established markets for the sale of farm produce, discovered the
medicinal properties of plants, wrote treatises on diseases and their
remedies, studied astrology and astronomy, and appointed "the Five
Observers of the heavenly bodies."
But this epoch had been preceded by the "Age of the Three [six] Rulers,"
when people lived in caves, ate wild fruits and uncooked food, drank the
blood of animals and wore the skins of wild beasts (our Old Stone Age).
Later they grew less rude, learned to obtain fire by friction, and built
themselves habitations of wood or foliage (our Early Neolithic Age).
Thus is everywhere revealed the background of sheer savagery, which lies
behind all human culture, while the "Golden Age" of the poets fades with
the "Hesperides" and Plato's "Atlantis" into the region of the fabulous.
Little need here be said of strictly historic times, the most
characteristic feature of which is perhaps the general use of letters.
By means of this most fruitful of human inventions, everything worth
preserving was perpetuated, and thus all useful knowledge tended to
become accumulative. It is no longer possible to say when or where the
miracle was wrought by which the apparently multifarious sounds of
fully-developed languages were exhaustively analysed and effectively
expressed by a score or so of arbitrary signs. But a comparative study
of the various writing-systems in use in different parts of the world
has revealed the process by which the transition was gradually brought
about from rude pictorial representations of objects to purely
phonetical symbols.
As is clearly shown by the "winter counts" of the North American
aborigines, and by the prehistoric rock carvings in Upper Egypt, the
first step was a _pictograph_, the actual figure, say, of a man,
standing for a given man, and then for any man or human being. Then this
figure, more or less reduced or conventionalised, served to indicate not
only the term _man_, but the full sound _man_, as in the word
_manifest_, and in the modern rebus. At this stage it becomes a
_phonogram_, or _phonoglyph_, which, when further reduced beyond all
recognition of its original form, may stand for the syllable _ma_ as in
_ma-ny_, without any further reference either to the idea or the sound
man. The phonogram has now become the symbol of a monosyllable, which is
normally made up of two elements, a consonant and a vowel, as in the
Devanagari, and other syllabic systems.
Lastly, by dropping the second or vowel element the same symbol, further
modified or not, becomes a _letter_ representing the sound _m_, that is,
one of the few ultimate elements of articulate speech. A more or less
complete set of such characters, thus worn down in form and meaning,
will then be available for indicating more or less completely all the
phonetic elements of any given language. It will be a true _alphabet_,
the wonderful nature of which may be inferred from the fact that only
two, or possibly three, such alphabetic systems are known with absolute
certainty to have ever been independently evolved by human
ingenuity[112]. From the above exposition we see how inevitably the
Phoenician parent of nearly all late alphabets expressed at first the
consonantal sounds only, so that the vowels or vowel marks are in all
cases later developments, as in Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, the
Italic group, and the Runes.
In primitive systems, such as the Egyptian, Sumerian, Chinese,
Maya-Quiche and Mexican, one or more of the various transitional steps
may be developed and used simultaneously, with a constant tendency to
advance on the lines above indicated, by gradual substitution of the
later for the earlier stages. A comparison of the Sumerian cuneiform and
Egyptian hieroglyphic systems brings out some curious results. Thus at
an extremely remote epoch, some millenniums ago, the Sumerians had
already got rid of the pictorial, and to a great extent of the
ideographic, but had barely reached the alphabetic phase. Consequently
their cuneiform groups, although possessing phonetic value, mainly
express full syllables, scarcely ever letters, and rarely complete
words. Ideographs had given place first to phonograms and then to mere
syllables, "complex syllables in which several consonants may be
distinguished, or simple syllables composed of only one consonant and
one vowel or _vice versa_[113]."
The Egyptians, on the other hand, carried the system right through the
whole gamut from pictures to letters, but retained all the intermediate
phases, the initial tending to fall away, the final to expand, while the
bulk of the hieroglyphs represented in various degrees the several
transitional states. In many cases they "had kept only one part of the
syllable, namely a mute consonant; they detached, for instance, the
final _u_ from _bu_ and _pu_, and gave only the values _b_ and _p_ to
the human leg [Hieroglyph Symbol] and to the mat [Hieroglyph Symbol].
The peoples of the Euphrates stopped half way, and admitted actual
letters for the vowel sounds _a_, _i_ and _u_ only[114]."
In the process of evolution, metaphor and analogy of course played a
large part, as in the evolution of language itself. Thus a lion might
stand both for the animal and for courage, and so on. The first essays
in phonetics took somewhat the form of a modern rebus, thus: [Hieroglyph
Symbol] = _khau_ = sieve, [Hieroglyph Symbol] = _pu_ = mat; [Hieroglyph
Symbol] = _ru_ = mouth, whence [Hieroglyph Symbol] = _kho-pi-ru_ = to
be, where the sounds and not the meaning of the several components are
alone attended to[115].
By analogous processes was formed a true alphabet, in which, however,
each of the phonetic elements was represented at first by several
different characters derived from several different words having the
same initial syllable. Here was, therefore, an _embarras de richesses_,
which could be got rid of only by a judicious process of elimination,
that is, by discarding all like-sounding symbols but one for the same
sound. When this final process of reduction was completed by the
scribes, in other words, when all the phonetic signs were rejected
except 23, _i.e._ one for each of the 23 phonetic elements, the
Phoenician alphabet as we now have it was completed. Such may be taken
as the real origin of this system, whether the scribes in question were
Babylonians, Egyptians, Minaeans, or Europeans, that is, whether the
Phoenician alphabet had a cuneiform, a hieroglyphic, a South Arabian, a
Cretan (Aegean), Ligurian or Iberian origin, for all these and perhaps
other peoples have been credited with the invention. The time is not
yet ripe for deciding between these rival claimants[116].
But whatever be the source of the Phoenician, that of the Persian system
current under the Achaemenides is clear enough. It is a true alphabet of
37 characters, derived by some selective process directly from the
Babylonian cuneiforms, without any attempt at a modification of their
shapes. Hence although simple compared with its prototype, it is clumsy
enough compared with the Phoenician script, several of the letters
requiring groups of as many as four or even five "wedges" for their
expression. None of the other cuneiform systems also derived from the
Sumerian (the Assyrian, Elamite, Vannic, Medic) appear to have reached
the pure alphabetic state, all being still encumbered with numerous
complex syllabic characters. The subjoined table, for which I have to
thank T. G. Pinches, will help to show the genesis of the cuneiform
combinations from the earliest known pictographs. These pictographs
themselves are already reduced to the merest outlines of the original
pictorial representations. But no earlier forms, showing the gradual
transition from the primitive picture writing to the degraded
pictographs here given, have yet come to light[117].
Here it may be asked, What is to be thought of the already-mentioned
pebble-markings from the Mas-d'Azil Cave at the close of the Old Stone
Age? If they are truly phonetic, then we must suppose that palaeolithic
man not only invented an alphabetic writing system, but did this right
off by intuition, as it were, without any previous knowledge of letters.
At least no one will suggest that the Dordogne cave-dwellers were
already in possession of pictographic or other crude systems, from which
the Mas-d'Azil "script" might have been slowly evolved. Yet E. Piette,
who groups these pebbles, painted with peroxide of iron, in the four
categories of numerals, symbols, pictographs, and alphabetical
characters, states, in reference to these last, that 13 out of 23
Phoenician characters were equally Azilian graphic signs. He even
suggests that there may be an approach to an inscription in one group,
where, however, the mark indicating a stop implies a script running
Semitic-fashion from right to left, whereas the letters themselves seem
to face the other way[118]. G. G. MacCurdy[119], who accepts the
evidence for the existence of writing in Azilian, if not in Magdalenian
times, notes the close similarity between palaeolithic signs and
Phoenician, ancient Greek and Cypriote letters. But J. Dechelette[120],
reviewing (pp. 234, 236) the arguments against Piette's claims, points
out in conclusion (p. 320) the impossibility of admitting that the
population of Gaul could suddenly lose so beneficial a discovery as that
of writing. Yet thousands of years elapse before the earliest appearance
of epigraphic monuments.
[Illustration: EVOLUTION OF THE SUMERIAN CUNEIFORMS.]
A possible connection has been suggested by Sergi between the Mas-d'Azil
signs and the markings that have been discovered on the megalithic
monuments of North Africa, Brittany, and the British Isles. These are
all so rudimentary that resemblances are inevitable, and of themselves
afford little ground for necessary connections. Primitive man is but a
child, and all children bawl and scrawl much in the same way.
Nevertheless C. Letourneau[121] has taken the trouble to compare five
such scrawls from "Libyan inscriptions" now in the Bardo Museum, Tunis,
with similar or identical signs on Brittany and Irish dolmens. There is
the familiar circle plain and dotted [Symbol] [Symbol], the cross in its
simplest form [Symbol], the pothook and segmented square [Symbol], all
of which recur in the Phoenician, Keltiberian, Etruscan, Libyan or
Tuareg systems. Letourneau, however, who does not call them letters but
only "signes alphabetiformes," merely suggests that, if not phonetic
marks when first carved on the neolithic monuments, they may have become
so in later times. Against this it need only be urged that in later
times all these peoples were supplied with complete alphabetic systems
from the East as soon as they required them. By that time all the
peoples of the culture-zone were well-advanced into the historic period,
and had long forgotten the rude carvings of their neolithic forefathers.
Armed with a nearly perfect writing system, and the correlated cultural
appliances, the higher races soon took a foremost place in the general
progress of mankind, and gradually acquired a marked ascendancy, not
only over the less cultured populations of the globe, but in large
measure over the forces of nature herself. With the development of
navigation and improved methods of locomotion, inland seas, barren
wastes, and mountain ranges ceased to be insurmountable obstacles to
their movements, which within certain limits have never been arrested
throughout all recorded time.
Thus, during the long ages following the first peopling of the earth by
pleistocene man, fresh settlements and readjustments have been
continually in progress, although wholesale displacements must be
regarded as rare events. With few exceptions, the later migrations,
whether hostile or peaceful, were, for reasons already stated[122],
generally of a partial character, while certain insular regions, such as
America and Australia, remained little affected by such movements till
quite recent times. But for the inhabitants of the eastern hemisphere
the results were none the less far-reaching. Continuous infiltrations
could not fail ultimately to bring about great modifications of early
types, while the ever-active principle of convergence tended to produce
a general uniformity amongst the new amalgams. Thus the great varietal
divisions, though undergoing slow changes from age to age, continued,
like all other zoological groups, to maintain a distinct regional
character.
Flinders Petrie has acutely observed that the only meaning the term
"race" now can have is that of a group of human beings, whose type has
become unified by their rate of assimilation exceeding the rate of
change produced by foreign elements[123]. We are also reminded by
Gustavo Tosti that "in the actual state of science the word 'race' is a
vague formula, to which nothing definite may be found to correspond. On
the one hand, the original races can only be said to belong to
palaeontology, while the more limited groups, now called races, are
nothing but peoples, or societies of peoples, brethren by civilization
more than by blood. The race thus conceived ends by identifying itself
with nationality[124]." Hence it has been asked why, on the principle of
convergence, a fusion of various races, if isolated long enough in a
given area, may not eventually lead to a new racial type, without
leaving any trace of its manifold origin[125].
Such new racial types would be normal for the later varietal groups,
just as the old types were normal for the earlier groups, and a general
application might be given to Topinard's famous dictum that _les peuples
seuls sont des realites_[126], that is, peoples alone--groups occupying
definite geographical areas--have an objective existence. Thus, the
notion of race, as a zoological expression in the sense of a pure breed
or strain, falls still more into the background, and, as Virchow aptly
remarks, "this term, which always implied something vague, has in recent
times become in the highest degree uncertain[127]."
Hence Ehrenreich treats the present populations of the earth rather as
zoological groups which have been developed in their several
geographical domains, and are to be distinguished not so much by their
bony structure as by their external characters, such as hair, colour,
and expression, and by their habitats and languages. None of these
factors can be overlooked, but it would seem that the character of the
hair forms the most satisfactory basis for a classification of mankind,
and this has therefore been adopted for the new edition of the present
work. It has the advantage of simplicity, without involving, or even
implying, any particular theory of racial or geographical origins. It
has stood the test of time, being proposed by Bory de Saint Vincent in
1827, and adopted by Huxley, Haeckel, Broca, Topinard and many others.
The three main varieties of hair are the _straight_, the _wavy_ and the
so-called _woolly_, termed respectively _Leiotrichous_, _Cymotrichous_
and _Ulotrichous_[128]. Straight hair usually falls straight down,
though it may curl at the ends, it is generally coarse and stiff, and is
circular in section. Wavy hair is undulating, forming long curves or
imperfect spirals, or closer rings or curls, and the section is more or
less elliptical. Woolly hair is characterised by numerous, close, often
interlocking spirals, 1-9 mm. in diameter, the section giving the form
of a lengthened ellipse. Straight hair is usually the longest, and
woolly hair the shortest, wavy hair occupying an intermediate position.
SCHEME OF CLASSIFICATION.
I. ULOTRICHI (Woolly-haired).
1. The African Negroes, Negrilloes, Bushmen.
2. The Oceanic Negroes: Papuans, Melanesians in part, Tasmanians,
Negritoes.
II. LEIOTRICHI (Straight-haired).
1. The Southern Mongols.
2. The Oceanic Mongols, Polynesians in part.
3. The Northern Mongols.
4. The American Aborigines.
III. CYMOTRICHI (Curly or Wavy-haired).
1. The Pre-Dravidians: Vedda, Sakai, etc., Australians.
2. The "Caucasic" peoples:
A. Southern Dolichocephals: Mediterraneans, Hamites, Semites,
Dravidians, Indonesians, Polynesians in part.
B. Northern Dolichocephals: Nordics, Kurds, Afghans, some
Hindus.
C. Brachycephals: Alpines, including the short Cevenoles
of Western and Central Europe, and tall Adriatics or
Dinarics of Eastern Europe and the Armenians of Western
Asia.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Thus Lucretius:
"Posterius ferri vis est aerisque reperta,
Sed prior aeris erat quam ferri cognitus usus."
[67] J. Dechelette points out that the term Copper "Age" is not
justified for the greater part of Europe, as it suggests a demarcation
which does not exist and also a more thorough chemical analysis of early
metals than we possess. He prefers the term aeneolithic (_aeneus_,
copper, [Greek: lithos], stone), coined by the Italians, to denote the
period of transition, dating, according to Montelius, from about 2500
B.C. to 1900 B.C. _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, II. 1, _Age du
Bronze_, 1910, pp. 99-100, 105.
[68] _Eth._, Chap. XIII.
[69] See G. Elliot Smith, _The Ancient Egyptians_, 1911, pp. 97-8.
[70] Paper on "The Transition from Pure Copper to Bronze," etc., read at
the Meeting of the Brit. Assoc. Liverpool, 1896.
[71] _Loc. cit._ p. 3. But cf. H. R. Hall, _The Ancient History of the
Near East_, 1912, pp. 33 and 90 _n._ 2.
[72] G. A. Reisner, _The Early Cemeteries of Naga-ed-der_ (University of
California Publications), 1908, and _Report of the Archaeological Survey
of Nubia_, 1907-8.
[73] "Campagnes de 1907-8," _Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_, 1908, p. 373.
[74] Cf. J. Dechelette, _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, II. 1,
_Age du Bronze_, 1910, pp. 53-4.
[75] Cf. L. W. King, _A History of Sumer and Akkad_, 1910, p. 26.
[76] G. Coffey, _The Bronze Age in Ireland_, 1913, p. 6.
[77] _L'Anthropologie_, 1896, p. 526 sq. This antiquary aptly remarks
that "l'expression age de cuivre a une signification bien precise comme
s'appliquant a la partie de la periode de la pierre polie ou les metaux
font leur apparition."
[78] _L'Anthropologie_, 1896, p. 526 sq.
[79] In _Die Kupferzeit in Europa_, 1886.
[80] "Neuere Studien ueber die Kupferzeit," in _Zeitschr. f. Eth._ 1896,
No. 2.
[81] Otto Helm, "Chemische Untersuchungen vorgeschichtlicher Bronzen,"
in _Zeitschr. f. Eth._ 1897, No. 2. This authority agrees with Hampel's
view that further research will confirm the suggestion that in
Transylvania (Hungary) "eine Kupfer-Antimonmischung vorangegangen,
welche zugleich die Bronzekultur vorbereitete" (_ib._ p. 128).
[82] _Proc. Soc. Bib. Archaeol._ 1892, pp. 223-6.
[83] For the chronology of the Copper and Bronze Ages see p. 27.
[84] Copper and tin are found together in abundance in Southern China,
but this is archaeologically speaking an unknown land; "to search for
the birth-place of bronze in China is therefore barren of positive
results," _British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age_,
1904, p. 10.
[85] T. Rice Holmes, _Ancient Britain_, 1907, pp. 483-498.
[86] _British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age_, 1904,
p. 10.
[87] J. de Morgan, _Les Premieres Civilisations_, 1909, pp. 169, 337 ff.
[88] J. Dechelette, _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, II. 1, _Age du
Bronze_, 1910, pp. 98 and 397 ff.
[89] J. Dechelette, _loc. cit._ p. 63 _n._
[90] G. Coffey, _The Bronze Age in Ireland_, 1913, pp. V, 78.
[91] J. Dechelette, _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, II. 1, _Age du
Bronze_, 1910, p. 355 _n._
[92] _Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ (British Museum),
1905, p. 2.
[93] Wainwright, "Pre-dynastic iron beads in Egypt," _Man_, 1911, p.
177. See also H. R. Hall, "Note on the early use of iron in Egypt,"
_Man_, 1903, p. 147.
[94] W. Belck attributes the introduction of iron into Crete in 1500
B.C. to the Phoenicians, whom he derives from the neighbourhood of the
Persian Gulf. He suggests that these traders were already acquainted
with the metal in S. Arabia in the fourth millennium, and that it was
through them that a piece found its way into Egypt in the fourth
dynasty. "Die Erfinder des Eisentechnik," _Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie_,
1910. See also F. Stuhlmann, _Handwerk und Industrie in Ostafrika_,
1910, p. 49 ff., who on cultural grounds derives the knowledge of iron
in Africa from an Asiatic source.
[95] E. Meyer, "Aegyptische Chronologie," _Abh. Berl. Akad._ 1904, and
"Nachtraege," _ib._ 1907. This chronology has been adopted by the Berlin
school and others, but is unsatisfactory in allowing insufficient time
for Dynasties XII to XVIII, which are known to contain 100 to 200
rulers. Flinders Petrie therefore adds another Sothic period (1461
years, calculated from Sothis or Sirius), thus throwing the earlier
dynasties a millennium or two further back. Dynasty I, according to this
computation starts in 5546 B.C. and Dynasty XII at 3779. H. R. Hall,
_The Ancient History of the Near East_, 1912, p. 23.
[96] L. W. King, _The History of Sumer and Akkad_, 1910, and
"Babylonia," Hutchinson's _History of the Nations_, 1914.
[97] C. H. Hawes and H. Boyd Hawes, _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_,
1909.
[98] J. Dechelette, _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, II. 1, _Age du
Bronze_, 1910, p. 61.
[99] J. Dechelette, _loc. cit._ p. 105 ff. based on the work of O.
Montelius and P. Reinecke.
[100] The Dynasty of Akkad is often dated a millennium earlier, relying
on the statement of Nabonidus (556-540 B.C.) that Naram-Sin (the
traditional son of Sargon of Akkad) reigned 3200 years before him; but
this statement is now known to be greatly exaggerated. See the section
on chronology in the Art. "Babylonia," in _Ency. Brit._ 1910.
[101] _Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ (British Museum),
1905, p. 1.
[102] Cf. J. Dechelette, _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, II. 2,
_Premier Age du Fer_, 1913, pp. 546, 562-3.
[103] _The Early Age of Greece_, 1900, pp. 594-630.
[104] "Die Hallstattperiode," _Ass. francaise p. l'av. des sciences_,
1905, p. 278, and _Kultur der Urzeit_, III. _Eisenzeit_, 1912, p. 54.
[105] "Ein Schaedel aus der aelteren Hallstattzeit," in _Verhandl. Berlin.
Ges. f. Anthrop._ 1896, pp. 243-6.
[106] _Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ (British Museum),
1905, p. 8.
[107] Hans Seger, "Figuerliche Darstellungen auf schlesischen
Graebgefaessen der Hallstattzeit," _Globus_, Nov. 20, 1897.
[108] _Ibid._ p. 297.
[109] Homer's [Greek: hemitheon genos andron], _Il._ XII. 23, if the
passage is genuine.
[110] Such as the Greek _Andreas_, the "First Man," invented in
comparatively recent times, as shown by the intrusive _d_ in [Greek:
andres] for the earlier [Greek: aneres], "men." Andreas was of course a
Greek, sprung in fact from the river Peneus and the first inhabitant of
the Orchomenian plain (Pausanias, IX. 34, 5).
[111] For instance, the flooding of the Thessalian plain, afterwards
drained by the Peneus and repeopled by the inhabitants of the
surrounding mountains (rocks, stones), whence the myth of Deucalion and
Pyrrha, who are told by the oracle to repeople the world by throwing
behind them the "bones of their grandmother," that is, the "stones" of
mother Earth.
[112] Such instances as George Guest's Cherokee system, and the crude
attempt of a Vei (West Sudanese) Negro, if genuine, are not here in
question, as both had the English alphabet to work upon. A like remark
applies to the old Irish and Welsh Ogham, which are more curious than
instructive, the characters, mostly mere groups of straight strokes,
being obvious substitutes for the corresponding letters of the Roman
alphabet, hence comparable to the cryptographic systems of Wheatstone
and others.
[113] Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilisation_, 1898, p. 728.
[114] _Ibid._
[115] _Ibid._ p. 233.
[116] See P. Giles, Art. "Alphabet," _Ency. Brit._ 1910.
[117] See A. J. Booth, _The Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual
Cuneiform Inscriptions_, 1902.
[118] _L'Anthr_. XV. 1904, p. 164.
[119] _Recent Discoveries bearing on the Antiquity of Man in Europe_
(Smithsonian Report for 1909), 1910, p. 566 ff.
[120] _Manuel d'Archeologie prehistorique_, I. 1908.
[121] "Les signes libyques des dolmens," _Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop._ 1896, p.
319.
[122] _Eth._ Chap. XIII.
[123] _Address_, Meeting British Assoc. Ipswich, 1895.
[124] _Amer. J. of Sociology_, Jan. 1898, pp. 467-8.
[125] A. Vierkandt, _Globus_, 72, p. 134.
[126] _Elements d'Anthropologie Generale_, p. 207.
[127] _Rassenbildung u. Erblichkeit_; _Bastian-Festschrift_, 1896, p. 1.
[128] From Gk. [Greek: leios], smooth, [Greek: kuma], wave, [Greek:
oulos], fleecy, and [Greek: thrix], [Greek: trichos], hair. J. Deniker
(_The Races of Man_, 1900, p. 38) distinguishes four classes, the
Australians, Nubians etc. being grouped as _frizzy_. He gives the
corresponding terms in French and German:--straight, Fr. _droit_,
_lisse_, Germ. _straff_, _schlicht_; wavy, Fr. _onde_, Germ. _wellig_;
frizzy, Fr. _frise_, Germ. _lockig_; woolly, Fr. _crepu_, Germ. _kraus_.
CHAPTER III
THE AFRICAN NEGRO: I. SUDANESE
Conspectus--The Negro-Caucasic "Great Divide"--The Negro Domain--
Negro Origins--Persistence of the Negro Type--Two Main Sections:
Sudanese and Bantus--Contrasts and Analogies--Sudanese and Bantu
Linguistic Areas--The "Drum Language"--West Sudanese Groups--_The
Wolofs_: Primitive Speech and Pottery; Religious Notions--_The
Mandingans_: Culture and Industries; History; the Guine and Mali
Empires--_The Felups_: Contrasts between the Inland and Coast
Peoples; Felup Type and Mental Characters--_Timni_--African
Freemasonry--_The Sierra Leonese_--Social Relations--_The
Liberians_--_The Krumen_--_The Upper Guinea Peoples_--Table of the
Gold Coast and Slave Coast Tribes--Ashanti Folklore--Fetishism; its
true inwardness--Ancestry Worship and the "Customs"--The Benin
Bronzes--_The Mossi_--African Agnostics--Central Sudanese--General
Ethnical and Social Relations--_The Songhai_--Domain--Origins--
Egyptian Theories--Songhai Records--_The Hausas_--Dominant Social
Position--Speech and Mental Qualities--Origins--_Kanembu_; _Kanuri_;
_Baghirmi_; _Mosgu_--Ethnical and Political Relations in the Chad
Basin--The Aborigines--Islam and Heathendom--Slave-Hunting--Arboreal
Strongholds--Mosgu Types and Contrasts--The Cultured Peoples of
Central Sudan--Kanem-Bornu Records--Eastern Sudanese--Range of the
Negro in Eastern Sudan--_The Mabas_--Ethnical Relations in Wadai--
_The Nubas_--The Nubian Problem--Nubian Origins and Affinities--
The Negro Peoples of the Nile-Congo Watersheds--Political
Relations--Two Physical Types--_The Dinka_--Linguistic Groups--
Mental Qualities--Cannibalism--The African Cannibal Zone--Arts and
Industries--High Appreciation of Pictorial Art--Sense of Humour.
CONSPECTUS OF SUDANESE NEGROES.
#Present Range.# _Africa south of the Sahara, less Abyssinia, Galla,
Somali and Masai lands; Tripolitana, Mauritania and Egypt sporadically;
several of the southern United States; West Indies; Guiana; parts of
Brazil and Peru._
#Hair#, _always black, rather short, and crisp, frizzly or woolly, flat
in transverse section_; #skin-colour#, _very dark brown or chocolate and
blackish, never quite black_; #skull#, _generally dolichocephalous_
(_index 72_); #jaws#, _prognathous_; #cheek-bone#, _rather small,
moderately retreating, rarely prominent_; #nose#, _very broad at base,
flat, small, platyrrhine_; #eyes#, _large, round, prominent, black with
yellowish cornea_; #stature#, _usually tall, 1.78 m. (5 ft. 10 in.)_;
#lips#, _often tumid and everted_; #arms#, _disproportionately long_;
#legs#, _slender with small calves_; #feet#, _broad, flat, with low
instep and larkspur heel_.
#Temperament#, _sensuous, indolent, improvident_; _fitful, passionate
and cruel, though often affectionate and faithful_; _little sense of
dignity, and slight self-consciousness, hence easy acceptance of yoke of
slavery_; _musical_.
#Speech#, _almost everywhere in the agglutinating state, generally with
suffixes_.
#Religion#, _anthropomorphic_; _spirits endowed with human attributes,
mostly evil and more powerful than man_; _ancestry-worship, fetishism,
and witchcraft very prevalent_; _human sacrifices to the dead a common
feature_.
#Culture#, _low_; _cannibalism formerly rife, perhaps universal, still
general in some regions_; _no science or letters_; _arts and industries
confined mainly to agriculture, pottery, wood-carving, weaving, and
metallurgy_; _no perceptible progress anywhere except under the
influence of higher races_.
Main[129] Divisions.
#West Sudanese#: _Wolof_; _Mandingan_; _Felup_; _Timni_; _Kru_; _Sierra
Leonese_; _Liberian_; _Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba_; _Ibo_; _Efik_; _Borgu_;
_Mossi_.
#Central Sudanese#: _Songhai_; _Hausa_; _Mosgu_; _Kanembu_; _Kanuri_;
_Baghirmi_; _Yedina_.
#East Sudanese#: _Maba_; _Fur_; _Nuba_; _Shilluk_; _Dinka_; _Bari_;
_Abaka_; _Bongo_; _Mangbattu_; _Zandeh_; _Momfu_; _Base_; _Barea_.
* * * * *
From the anthropological standpoint Africa falls into two distinct
sections, where the highest (Caucasic) and the lowest (Negro) divisions
of mankind have been conterminous throughout all known time. Mutual
encroachments and interpenetrations have probably been continuous, and
indeed are still going on. Yet so marked is the difference between the
two groups, and such is the tenacity with which each clings to its
proper domain, that, despite any very distinct geographical frontiers,
the ethnological parting line may still be detected. Obliterated at one
or two points, and at others set back always in favour of the higher
division, it may be followed from the Atlantic coast along the course of
the Senegal river east by north to the great bend of the Niger at
Timbuktu; then east by south to Lake Chad, beyond which it runs nearly
due east to Khartum, at the confluence of the White and Blue Niles.
From this point the now isolated Negro groups (Base and Barea), on the
northern slope of the Abyssinian plateau, show that the original
boundary was at first continued still east to the Red Sea at or about
Massowa. But for many ages the line appears to have been deflected from
Khartum along the White Nile south to the Sobat confluence, then
continuously south-eastwards round by the Sobat Valley to the Albert
Nyanza, up the Somerset Nile to the Victoria Nyanza, and thence with a
considerable southern bend round Masailand eastwards to the Indian Ocean
at the equator.
All the land north of this irregular line belongs to the Hamito-Semitic
section of the Caucasic division, all south of it to the western
(African) section of the Ulotrichous division. Throughout this
region--which comprises the whole of Sudan from the Atlantic to the
White Nile, and all south of Sudan except Abyssinia, Galla, Somali and
Masai lands--the African Negro, clearly, distinguished from the other
main groups by the above summarised physical[130] and mental qualities,
largely predominates everywhere and in many places exclusively. The
route by which he probably reached these intertropical lands, where he
may be regarded as practically indigenous, has been indicated in
_Ethnology_, Chs. X. and XI.
As regards the date of this occupation, nothing can be clearly proved.
"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 implements of
palaeolithic and neolithic types are found sporadically in the Nile
Valley[131], Somaliland, on the Zambesi, 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," and they are rarely, if ever, found in
association with bones of extinct animals. "Nothing occurs resembling
the regular stratification of Europe, and consequently no argument based
on geological grounds is possible[132]." The exceptions are the lower
Nile and Zambesi where true palaeoliths have been found not only on the
surface (which in this case is not inconsistent with great antiquity)
but also in stratified gravel. Implements of palaeolithic _type_ are
doubtless common, and may be compared to Chellean, Mousterian and even
Solutrian specimens[133], but primitive culture is not necessarily
pleistocene. Ancient forms persisted in Egypt down to the historic
period, and even patination is no sure test of age, so until further
evidence is found the antiquity of man in Africa must remain
undecided[134].
Yet since some remote if undated epoch the specialised Negro type, as
depicted on the Egyptian monuments some thousands of years ago[135], has
everywhere been maintained with striking uniformity. "Within this wide
domain of the black Negro there is a remarkably general similarity of
type.... If you took a Negro from the Gold Coast of West Africa and
passed him off amongst a number of Nyasa natives, and if he were not
remarkably distinguished from them by dress or tribal marks, it would
not be easy to pick him out[136]."
Nevertheless considerable differences are perceptible to the practised
eye, and the contrasts are sufficiently marked to justify ethnologists
in treating the _Sudanese_ and the _Bantu_ as two distinct subdivisions
of the family. In both groups the relatively full-blood natives are
everywhere very much alike, and the contrasts are presented chiefly
amongst the mixed or Negroid populations. In Sudan the disturbing
elements are both Hamitic (Berbers and Tuaregs) and Semitic (Arabs);
while in Bantuland they are mainly Hamitic (Galla) in all the central
and southern districts, and Arabs on the eastern seaboard from the
equator to Sofala beyond the Zambesi. To the varying proportions of
these several ingredients may perhaps be traced the often very marked
differences observable on the one hand between such Sudanese peoples as
the Wolof, Mandingans, Hausa, Nubians, Zandeh[137], and Mangbattu, and
on the other between all these and the Swahili, Baganda, Zulu-Xosa,
Be-Chuana, Ova-Herero and some other Negroid Bantu.
But the distinction is based on social, linguistic, and cultural, as
well as on physical grounds, so that, as at present constituted, the
Sudanese and Bantu really constitute two tolerably well-defined branches
of the Negro family. Thanks to Muhammadan influences, the former have
attained a much higher level of culture. They cultivate not only the
alimentary but also the economic plants, such as cotton and indigo; they
build stone dwellings, walled towns, substantial mosques and minarets;
they have founded powerful states, such as those of the Hausa and
Songhai, of Ghana and Bornu, with written records going back a thousand
years, although these historical peoples are all without exception
half-breeds, often with more Semitic and Hamitic than Negro blood in
their veins.
No such cultured peoples are anywhere to be found in Bantuland except on
the east coast, where the "Moors" founded great cities and flourishing
marts centuries before the appearance of the Portuguese in the eastern
seas. Among the results of the gold trade with these coastal settlements
may be classed the Zimbabwe monuments and other ruins explored by
Theodore Bent in the mining districts south of the Zambesi. But in all
the Negro lands free from foreign influences no true culture has ever
been developed, and here cannibalism, witchcraft, and sanguinary
"customs" are often still rife, or have been but recently suppressed by
the direct action of European administrations.
Numberless authorities have described the Negro as unprogressive, or, if
left to himself, incapable of progress in his present physical
environment. Sir H. H. Johnston, who knows him well, goes much further,
and speaks of him as a fine animal, who, "in his wild state, exhibits a
stunted mind and a dull content with his surroundings, which induces
mental stagnation, cessation of all upward progress, and even
retrogression towards the brute. In some respects I think the tendency
of the Negro for several centuries past has been an actual retrograde
one[138]."
There is one point in which the Bantu somewhat unaccountably compare
favourably with the Sudanese. In all other regions the spread of culture
has tended to bring about linguistic unity, as we see in the Hellenic
world, where all the old idioms were gradually absorbed in the "common
dialect" of the Byzantine empire, again in the Roman empire, where Latin
became the universal speech of the West, and lastly in the Muhammadan
countries, where most of the local tongues have nearly everywhere,
except in Sudan, disappeared before the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish
languages.
But in Negroland the case is reversed, and here the less cultured Bantu
populations all, without any known exception, speak dialects of a single
mother-tongue, while the greatest linguistic confusion prevails amongst
the semi-civilised as well as the savage peoples of Sudan.
Although the Bantu language may, as some suppose[139], have originated
in the north and spread southwards to the Congo, Zambesi, and Limpopo
basins, it cannot now be even remotely affiliated to any one of the
numerous distinct forms of speech current in the Sudanese domain. Hence
to allow time for its diffusion over half the continent, the initial
movement must be assigned to an extremely remote epoch, and a
corresponding period of great duration must be postulated for the
profound linguistic disintegration that is everywhere witnessed in the
region between the Atlantic and Abyssinia. Here agglutination, both with
prefixed and postfixed particles, is the prevailing morphological order,
as in the Mandingan, Fulah, Nubian, Dinkan, and Mangbattu groups. But
every shade of transition is also presented between true agglutination
and inflection of the Hamito-Semitic types, as in Hausa, Kanuri, Kanem,
Dasa or Southern and Teda or Northern Tibu[140].
Elsewhere, and especially in Upper Guinea, the originally agglutinating
tongues have developed on lines analogous to those followed by Tibetan,
Burmese, Chinese, and Otomi in other continents, with corresponding
results. Thus the Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba, surviving members of a now
extinct stock-language, formerly diffused over the whole region between
Cape Palmas and the Niger Delta, have become so burdened with
monosyllabic homophones (like-sounding monosyllables), that to indicate
their different meanings several distinguishing tones have been evolved,
exactly as in the Indo-Chinese group. In Ewe (Slave Coast) the root
_do_, according as it is toned may mean to put, let go, tell, kick, be
sad, join, change, grow big, sleep, prick, or grind. So great are the
ravages of phonetic decay, that new expedients have been developed to
express quite simple ideas, as in Tshi (Gold Coast) _addanmu_, room
(_addan_ house, _mu_ interior); _akwancherifo_, a guide (_akwan_ road,
_cheri_ to show, _fo_ person); _ensahtsiabah_, finger (_ensah_ hand,
_tsia_ small, _abbah_ child = hand's-little-child); but middle-finger =
"hand's-little-chief" (_ensahtsiahin_, where _ehin_ chief takes the
place of _abbah_ child[141]).
Common both to Sudanese and Bantus, especially about the western
borderlands (Upper Guinea, Cameruns, etc.) is the "drum-language," which
affords a striking illustration of the Negro's musical faculty. "Two or
three drums are usually used together, each producing a different note,
and they are played either with the fingers or with two sticks. The
lookers-on generally beat time by clapping the hands. To a European,
whose ear and mind are untrained for this special faculty, the rhythm
of a drum expresses nothing beyond a repetition of the same note at
different intervals of time; but to a native it expresses much more. To
him the drum can and does speak, the sounds produced from it forming
words, and the whole measure or rhythm a sentence. In this way, when
company drums are being played at an _ehsadu_ [palaver], they are made
to express and convey to the bystanders a variety of meanings. In one
measure they abuse the men of another company, stigmatising them as
fools and cowards; then the rhythm changes, and the gallant deeds of
their own company are extolled. All this, and much more, is conveyed by
the beating of drums, and the native ear and mind, trained to select and
interpret each beat, is never at fault. The language of drums is as well
understood as that which they use in their daily life. Each chief has
his own call or motto, sounded by a particular beat of his drums. Those
of Amankwa Tia, the Ashanti general who fought against us in the war of
1873-4, used to say _P[)i]r[)i]h[=u]h_, hasten. Similar mottoes are also
expressed by means of horns, and an entire stranger in the locality can
at once translate the rhythm into words[142]."
Similar contrasts and analogies will receive due illustration in the
detailed account here following of the several more representative
Sudanese groups.
WEST SUDANESE.
_Wolofs._ Throughout its middle and lower course the Senegal river,
which takes its name from the Zenaga Berbers, forms the ethnical
"divide" between the Hamites and the Sudanese Negroes. The latter are
here represented by the Wolofs, who with the kindred _Jolofs_ and
_Serers_ occupy an extensive territory between the Senegal and the
Gambia rivers. Whether the term "Wolof" means "Talkers," as if they
alone were gifted with the faculty of speech, or "Blacks" in contrast to
the neighbouring "Red" Fulahs, both interpretations are fully justified
by these Senegambians, at once the very blackest and amongst the most
garrulous tribes in the whole of Africa. The colour is called "ebony,"
and they are commonly spoken of as "Blacks of the Black." They are also
very tall even for Negroes, and the Serers especially may claim to be
"the Patagonians of the Old World," men six feet six inches high and
proportionately muscular being far from rare in the coast districts
about St Louis and Dakar.
Their language, which is widespread throughout Senegambia, may be taken
as a typical Sudanese form of speech, unlike any other in its peculiar
agglutinative structure, and unaffected even in its vocabulary by the
Hamitic which has been current for ages on the opposite bank of the
Senegal. A remarkable feature is the so-called "article," always
postfixed and subject to a two-fold series of modifications, first in
accordance with the initial consonant of the noun, for which there are
six possible consonantal changes (_w_, _m_, _b_, _d_, _s_, _g_), and
then according as the object is present, near, not near, and distant,
for which there are again four possible vowel changes (_i_, _u_, _o_,
_a_), or twenty-four altogether, a tremendous redundancy of useless
variants as compared with the single English form _the_. Thus this
Protean particle begins with _b_, _d_ or _w_ to agree with _baye_,
father, _digene_, woman, or _fos_, horse, and then becomes _bi_, _bu_,
_bo_, _ba_; _di_, _du_ etc.; _wi_, _wu_ etc. to express the presence and
the varying distances of these objects: _baye-bi_ = father-the-here;
_baye-bu_ = father-the-there; _baye-bo_ = father-the-yonder; _baye-ba_ =
father-the-away in the distance.
All this is curious enough; but the important point is that it probably
gives us the clue to the enigmatic alliterative system of the Bantu
languages as explained in _Ethnology_, p. 273, the position of course
being reversed. Thus as in Zulu _in_- kose requires _en_- kulu, so in
Wolof _baye_ requires _bi_, _di_gene _di_, and so on. There are other
indications that the now perfected Bantu grew out of analogous but less
developed processes still prevalent in the Sudanese tongues.
Equally undeveloped is the Wolof process of making earthenware, as
observed by M. F. Regnault amongst the natives brought to Paris for the
Exhibition of 1895. He noticed how one of the women utilised a somewhat
deep bowl resting on the ground in such a way as to be easily spun round
by the hand, thus illustrating the transition between hand-made and
turned pottery. Kneading a lump of clay, and thrusting it into the
bowl, after sprinkling the sides with some black dust to prevent
sticking, she made a hollow in the mass, enlarging and pressing it
against the bowl with the back of the fingers bent in, the hand being
all the time kept in a vertical position. At the same time the bowl was
spun round with the left palm, this movement combined with the pressure
exerted by the right hand causing the sides of the vessel to rise and
take shape. When high enough it was finished off by thickening the clay
to make a rim. This was held in the right hand and made fast to the
mouth of the vessel by the friction caused by again turning the bowl
with the left hand. This transitional process is frequently met with in
Africa[143].
Most of the Wolofs profess themselves Muhammadans, the rest Catholics,
while all alike are heathen at heart; only the former have charms with
texts from the Koran which they cannot read, and the latter medals and
scapulars of the "Seven Dolours" or of the Trinity, which they cannot
understand. Many old rites still flourish, the household gods are not
forgotten, and for the lizard, most popular of tutelar deities, the
customary milk-bowl is daily replenished. Glimpses are thus afforded of
the totemic system which still survives in a modified form amongst the
Be-Chuana, the Mandingans, and several other African peoples, but has
elsewhere mostly died out in Negroland. The infantile ideas associated
with plant and animal totem tokens have been left far behind, when a
people like the Serers have arrived at such a lofty conception as
Takhar, god of justice, or even the more materialistic Tiurakh, god of
wealth, although the latter may still be appealed to for success in
nefarious projects which he himself might scarcely be expected to
countenance. But the harmony between religious and ethical thought has
scarcely yet been reached even amongst some of the higher races.
_Mandingans._ In the whole of Sudan there is scarcely a more numerous or
widespread people than the Mandingans, who--with their endless
ramifications, _Kassonke_, _Jallonke_, _Soninke_, _Bambara_, _Vei_ and
many others--occupy most of the region between the Atlantic and the
Joliba (Upper Niger) basin, as far south as about 9 deg. N. latitude. Within
these limits it is often difficult to say who are, or who are not
members of this great family, whose various branches present all the
transitional shades of physical type and culture grades between the true
pagan Negro and the Muhammadan Negroid Sudanese.
Even linguistic unity exists only to a limited extent, as the numerous
dialects of the Mande stock-language have often diverged so greatly as
to constitute independent tongues quite unintelligible to the
neighbouring tribes. The typical Mandingans, however--Faidherbe's
Malinka-Soninke group--may be distinguished from the surrounding
populations by their more softened features, broader forehead, larger
nose, fuller beard, and lighter colour. They are also distinguished by
their industrious habits and generally higher culture, being rivalled by
few as skilled tillers of the soil, weavers, and workers in iron and
copper. They thus hold much the same social position in the west that
the Hausa do in the central region beyond the Niger, and the French
authorities think that "they are destined to take a position of ever
increasing importance in the pacified Sudan of the future[144]."
Thus history brings about its revenges, for the Mandingans proper of the
Kong plateau may fairly claim, despite their late servitude to the Fulah
conquerors and their present ready acceptance of French rule, to be a
historical people with a not inglorious record of over 1000 years, as
founders of the two great empires of Melle and Guine, and of the more
recent states of Moasina, Bambara, Kaarta, Kong, and others about the
water-parting between the head-streams of the Niger, and the rivers
flowing south to the Gulf of Guinea. Here is the district of Manding,
which is the original home of the _Manding'ke_, _i.e._ "People of
Manding," as they are generally called, although _Mande_ appears to be
the form used by themselves[145]. Here also was the famous city of Mali
or Melle, from which the Upper Niger group take the name of _Mali'nke_,
in contradistinction to the _Soni'nke_ of the Senegal river, the
_Jalo'nke_ of Futa-Jallon, and the _Bamana_ of Bambara, these being the
more important historical and cultured groups.
According to native tradition and the annals of Ahmed Baba, rescued from
oblivion by Barth[146], the first Mandingan state of Guine (Ghana,
Ghanata), a name still surviving in the vague geographical term
"Guinea," goes back to pre-Muhammadan times. Wakayamangha, its legendary
founder, is supposed to have flourished 300 years before the Hejira, at
which date twenty-two kings had already reigned. Sixty years after that
time the Moslem Arabs or Berbers are said to have already reached West
Sudan, where they had twelve mosques in Ghana, first capital of the
empire, and their chief stronghold till the foundation of Jinni on the
Upper Niger (1043 A.D.).
Two centuries later (1235-60) the centre of the Mandingan rule was
transferred to Mali, which under the great king Mansa-Musa (1311-31)
became the most powerful Sudanese state of which there is any authentic
record. For a time it included nearly the whole of West Sudan, and a
great part of the western Sahara, beside the Songhai State with its
capital Gogo, and Timbuktu. Mansa-Musa, who, in the language of the
chronicler, "wielded a power without measure or limits," entered into
friendly relations with the emperor of Morocco, and made a famous
pilgrimage to Mecca, the splendours of which still linger in the memory
of the Mussulman populations through whose lands the interminable
procession wound its way. He headed 60,000 men of arms, says Ahmed Baba,
and wherever he passed he was preceded by 500 slaves, each bearing a
gold stick weighing 500 mitkals (14 lbs.), the whole representing a
money value of about L4,000,000 (?). The people of Cairo and Mecca were
dazzled by his wealth and munificence; but during the journey a great
part of his followers were seized by a painful malady called in their
language _tuat_, and this word still lives in the Oasis of Tuat, where
most of them perished.
Even after the capture of Timbuktu by the Tuaregs (1433), Mali long
continued to be the chief state in West Nigritia, and carried on a
flourishing trade, especially in slaves and gold. But this gold was
still supposed to come from the earlier kingdom of Guine, which word
consequently still remains associated with the precious metal in the
popular belief. About the year 1500 Mali was captured by the Songhai
king, Omar Askia, after which the empire fell to pieces, and its memory
now survives only in the ethnical term _Mali'nke_.
_Felups._ From the semi-civilised Muhammadan negroid Mandingans to the
utterly savage full-blood Negro Felups the transition is abrupt, but
instructive. In other regions the heterogeneous ethnical groups crowded
into upland valleys, as in the Caucasus, have been called the "sweepings
of the plains." But in West Sudan there are no great ranges towering
above the lowlands, and even the "Kong Mountains" of school geographies
have now been wiped out by L. G. Binger[147]. Hence the rude aborigines
of the inland plateau, retreating before the steady advance of Islam,
found no place of refuge till they reached the indented fjord-like
Atlantic seaboard, where many still hold their ground. This is the
explanation of the striking contrasts now witnessed between the interior
and so many parts of the West Coast; on the one hand powerful political
organisations with numerous, more or less homogeneous, and
semi-civilised negroid populations, on the other an infinite tangle of
ethnical and linguistic groups, all alike weltering in the sheerest
savagery, or in grades of barbarism even worse than the wild state.
Even the _Felups_, whose territory now stretches from the Gambia to the
Cacheo, but formerly reached the Geba and the Bissagos Islands, do not
form a single group. Originally the name of an obscure coast-tribe, the
term Felup or Fulup has been extended by the Portuguese traders to all
the surrounding peoples--_Ayamats_, _Jolas_, _Jigushes_, _Vacas_,
_Joats_, _Karons_, _Banyuns_, _Banjars_, _Fuluns_, _Bayots_ and some
others who amid much local diversity, presented a sufficiently general
outward resemblance to be regarded as a single people by the first
European settlers. The Felups proper display the physical and mental
characters of the typical Negro even in an exaggerated form--black
colour, flat nose, wide nostrils, very thick and everted lips, red on
the inner surface, stout muscular frame, correlated with coarse animal
passions, crass ignorance, no arts, industry, or even tribal
organisation, so that every little family group is independent and
mostly in a state of constant feud with its neighbours. All go naked,
armed with bow and arrow, and live in log huts which, though strongly
built, are indescribably filthy[148].
Mother-right frequently prevails, rank and property being transmitted in
the female line. There is some notion of a superhuman being vaguely
identified with the sky, the rain, wind or thunderstorm. But all live in
extreme terror of the medicine-man, who is openly courted, but inwardly
detested, so that whenever it can be safely done the tables are turned,
the witch-doctor is seized and tortured to death.
_Timni, Kru, Sierra-Leonese, Liberians._ Somewhat similar conditions
prevail all along the seaboard from Sierra Leone to, and beyond, Cape
Palmas, disturbed or modified by the Liberian intruders from the North
American plantations, and by the slaves rescued in the thirties and
forties by the British cruisers and brought to Sierra Leone, where their
descendants now live in settled communities under European influences.
These "coloured" citizens of Sierra Leone and Liberia, who are so often
the butt of cheap ridicule, and are themselves perhaps too apt to scorn
the kindred "niggers" of the bush, have to be carefully distinguished
from these true aborigines who have never been wrenched from their
natural environment.
In Sierra Leone the chief aboriginal groups on the coastlands are the
_Timni_ of the Rokelle river, flanked north and south by two branches of
the _Bulams_, and still further south the _Gallinas_, _Veys_ and
_Golas_; in the interior the _Lokkos_, _Limbas_, _Konos_, and _Kussas_,
with _Kurankos_, _Mendis_, _Hubus_, and other Mandingans and Fulahs
everywhere in the Hinterland.
Of all these the most powerful during the British occupation have always
been the Timni (Timani, Temne), who sold to the English the peninsula on
which now stands Freetown, but afterwards crying off the bargain,
repeatedly tried to drive the white and coloured intruders into the
sea. They are a robust people of softened Negro type, and more
industrious farmers than most of the other natives. Like the Wolofs they
believe in the virtue both of Christian and Moslem amulets, but have
hitherto lent a deaf ear to the preachers of both these religions.
Nevertheless the Protestant missionaries have carefully studied the
Timni language, which possesses an oral literature rich in legends,
proverbs, and folklore[149].
The Timni district is a chief centre of the so-called _porro_
fraternity[150], a sort of secret society or freemasonry widely diffused
throughout the coastlands, and possessing its own symbols, skin
markings, passwords, and language. It presents curious points of analogy
with the brotherhoods of the Micronesian islanders, but appears to be
even more potent for good and evil, a veritable religious and political
state within the state. "When their mandates are issued all wars and
civil strife must cease, a general truce is established, and bloodshed
stopped, offending communities being punished by bands of armed men in
masks. Strangers cannot enter the country unless escorted by a member of
the guild, who is recognised by passwords, symbolic gestures, and the
like. Their secret rites are celebrated at night in the depths of the
forest, all intruders being put to death or sold as slaves[151]."
In studying the social conditions prevalent amongst the Sierra Leonese
proper, it should be remembered that they are sprung, not only from
representatives of almost every tribe along the seaboard, and even in
the far interior, but also to a large extent from the freedmen and
runaways of Nova Scotia and London, besides many maroons of Jamaica, who
were settled here under the auspices of the Sierra Leone Company towards
the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century.
Others also have in recent years been attracted to the settlements from
the Timni and other tribes of the neighbouring districts. The Sierra
Leonese are consequently not themselves a tribe, nor yet a people, but
rather a people in course of formation under the influence of a new
environment and of a higher culture. An immediate consequence of such a
sudden aggregation of discordant elements was the loss of all the native
tongues, and the substitution of English as the common medium of
intercourse. But English is the language of a people standing on the
very highest plane of culture, and could not therefore be properly
assimilated by the _disjecta membra_ of tribes at the lowest rung of the
social ladder. The resultant form of speech may be called ludicrous, so
ludicrous that the Sierra Leonese version of the New Testament had to be
withdrawn from circulation as verging almost on the blasphemous[152].
It has also to be considered that all the old tribal relations were
broken up, while an attempt was made to merge these waifs and strays in
a single community based on social conditions to which each and all were
utter strangers. It is not therefore surprising that the experiment has
not proved a complete success, and that the social relations in Sierra
Leone leave something to be desired. Although the freedmen and the
rescued captives received free gifts of land, their dislike for the
labours of the field induced many to abandon their holdings, and take to
huckstering and other more pleasant pursuits. Hence their descendants
almost monopolise the petty traffic and even the "professions" in
Freetown and the other colonial settlements. Although accused of
laziness and dishonesty, they have displayed a considerable degree of
industrial as well as commercial enterprise, and the Sierra Leone
craftsmen--smiths, mechanics, carpenters, builders--enjoy a good
reputation in all the coast towns. All are Christians of various
denominations, and even show a marked predilection for the "ministry."
Yet below the surface the old paganism still slumbers, and vodoo
practices, as in the West Indies and some of the Southern States, are
still heard of.
Morality also is admittedly at a low ebb, and it is curious to note that
this has in part been attributed to the freedom enjoyed under the
British administration. "They have passed from the sphere of native law
to that of British law, which is brought to this young community like an
article of ready-made clothing. Is it a wonder that the clothes do not
fit? Is it a wonder that kings and chiefs around Sierra Leone, instead
of wishing their people to come and see how well we do things, dread for
them to come to this colony on account of the danger to their morals? In
passing into this colony, they pass into a liberty which to them is
license[153]."
An experiment of a somewhat different order, but with much the same
negative results, has been tried by the well-meaning founders of the
Republic of Liberia. Here also the bulk of the "civilised aristocrats"
are descended of emancipated plantation slaves, a first consignment of
whom was brought over by a philanthropic American society in 1820-22.
The idea was to start them well in life under the fostering care of
their white guardians, and then leave them to work out their own
redemption in their own way. All control was accordingly withdrawn in
1848, and since then the settlement has constituted an absolutely
independent Negro state in the enjoyment of complete self-government.
Progress of a certain material kind was undoubtedly made. The original
"free citizens" increased from 8000 in 1850 to perhaps 20,000 in
1898[154], and the central administration, modelled on that of the
United States, maintained some degree of order among the surrounding
aborigines, estimated at some two million within the limits of the
Republic.
But these aborigines have not benefited perceptibly by contact with
their "civilised" neighbours, who themselves stand at much the same
level intellectually and morally as their repatriated forefathers.
Instead of attending to the proper administration of the Republic, the
"Weegee," as they are called, have constituted themselves into two
factions, the "coloured" or half-breeds, and the full-blood Negroes who,
like the "Blancos" and "Neros" of some South American States, spend most
of their time in a perpetual struggle for office. All are of course
intensely patriotic, but their patriotism takes a wrong direction, being
chiefly manifested in their insolence towards the English and other
European traders on the coast, and in their supreme contempt for the
"stinking bush-niggers," as they call the surrounding aborigines. In
1909 internal and external difficulties led to the appointment of a
Commission by President Roosevelt with the result that the American
Government took charge of the finances, military organisation,
agriculture and boundary questions, besides arranging for a loan of
L400,000. The able administration of President Barclay, a pure blooded
Negro, though not of Liberian ancestry, is perhaps the happiest augury
for the future of the Republic[155].
The _Krus_ (Kroomen, Krooboys[156]), whose numerous hamlets are
scattered along the coast from below Monrovia nearly to Cape Palmas, are
assuredly one of the most interesting people in the whole of Africa.
Originally from the interior, they have developed in their new homes a
most un-African love of the sea, hence are regularly engaged as crews by
the European skippers plying along those insalubrious coastlands.
In this service, in which they are known by such nicknames as
"Bottle-of-Beer," "Mashed-Potatoes," "Bubble-and-Squeak,"
"Pipe-of-Tobacco," and the like, their word may always be depended upon.
But it is to be feared that this loyalty, which with them is a strict
matter of business, has earned for them a reputation for other virtues
to which they have little claim. Despite the many years that they have
been in the closest contact with the missionaries and traders, they are
still at heart the same brutal savages as ever. After each voyage they
return to the native village to spend all their gains and pilferings in
drunken orgies, and relapse generally into sheer barbarism till the next
steamer rounds the neighbouring headland. "It is not a comfortable
reflection," writes Bishop Ingham, whose testimony will not be suspected
of bias, "as we look at this mob on our decks, that, if the ship chance
to strike on a sunken rock and become unmanageable, they would rise to a
man, and seize all they could lay hands on, cut the very rings off our
fingers if they could get them in no other way, and generally loot the
ship. Little has been done to Christianise these interesting,
hard-working, cheerful, but ignorant and greedy people, who have so long
hung on the skirts of civilisation[157]."
It is only fair to the Kru to say that this unflattering picture of them
stands alone. "There is but one man of all of us who have visited West
Africa who has not paid a tribute to the Kruboy's sterling qualities,"
says Miss Kingsley. Her opinion coincides with that of the old coasters
based on life-long experience, and she waxes indignant at the
ingratitude with which Kruboy loyalty is rewarded. "They have devoted
themselves to us English, and they have suffered, laboured, fought, been
massacred and so on with us generation after generation.... Kruboys are,
indeed, the backbone of white effort in West Africa[158]."
But the very worst "sweepings of the Sudanese plateau" seem to have
gathered along the Upper Guinea Coast, occupied by the already mentioned
_Tshi_, _Ewe_, and _Yoruba_ groups[159]. They constitute three branches
of one linguistic, and probably also of one ethnical family, of which,
owing to their historic and ethnical importance, the reader may be glad
to have here subjoined a somewhat complete tabulated scheme.
The _Ga_ of the Volta delta are here bracketed with the Tshi because A.
B. Ellis, our great authority on the Guinea peoples[160], considers the
two languages to be distantly connected. He also thinks there is a
foundation of fact in the native traditions, which bring the dominant
tribes--Ashanti, Fanti, Dahomi, Yoruba, Bini--from the interior to the
coast districts at no very remote period. Thus it is recorded of the
Ashanti and Fanti, now hereditary foes, that ages ago they formed one
people who were reduced to the utmost distress during a long war with
some inland power, perhaps the conquering Muhammadans of the Ghana or
Mali empire. They were saved, however, some by eating of the _shan_,
others of the _fan_ plant, and of these words, with the verb _di_, "to
eat," were made the tribal names _Shan-di_, _Fan-di_, now _Ashanti_,
_Fanti_. The _seppiriba_ plant, said to have been eaten by the Fanti, is
still called _fan_ when cooked.
TRIBES OF TSHI TRIBES OF EWE TRIBES OF YORUBA
AND GA SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH
_Gold Coast_ _Slave Coast West_ _Slave Coast East_
_and Niger Delta_
Ashanti Dahomi Yoruba[161]
Safwhi Eweawo Ibadan
Denkera Agotine Ketu
Bekwai Anfueh Egba
Nkoranza Krepe Jebu
Adansi Avenor Remo
Assin Awuna Ode
Wassaw Agbosomi Ilorin
Ahanta Aflao Ijesa
Fanti Ataklu Ondo
Agona Krikor Mahin
Akwapim Geng Benin (Bini)
Akim Attakpami Kakanda
Akwamu Aja Wari
Kwao Ewemi Ibo[161]
Ga Appa Efik[161]
Other traditions refer to a time when all were of one speech, and lived
in a far country beyond Salagha, open, flat, with little bush, and
plenty of cattle and sheep, a tolerably accurate description of the
inland Sudanese plateaux. But then came a red people, said to be the
Fulahs, Muhammadans, who oppressed the blacks and drove them to take
refuge in the forests. Here they thrived and multiplied, and after many
vicissitudes they came down, down, until at last they reached the coast,
with the waves rolling in, the white foam hissing and frothing on the
beach, and thought it was all boiling water until some one touched it
and found it was not hot, and so to this day they call the sea _Eh-huru
den o nni shew_, "Boiling water not hot," but far inland the sea is
still "Boiling water[162]."
To A. B. Ellis we are indebted especially for the true explanation of
the much used and abused term _fetish_, as applied to the native
beliefs. It was of course already known to be not an African but a
Portuguese word[163], meaning a charm, amulet, or even witchcraft. But
Ellis shows how it came to be wrongly applied to all forms of animal and
nature worship, and how the confusion was increased by De Brosses'
theory of a primordial fetishism, and by his statement that it was
impossible to conceive a lower form of religion than fetishism, which
might therefore be assumed to be the beginning of all religion[164].
On the contrary it represents rather an advanced stage, as Ellis
discovered after four or five years of careful observation on the spot.
A fetish, he tells us, is something tangible and inanimate, which is
believed to possess power in itself, and is worshipped for itself alone.
Nor can such an object be picked up anywhere at random, as is commonly
asserted, and he adds that the belief "is arrived at only after
considerable progress has been made in religious ideas, when the older
form of religion becomes secondary and owes its existence to the
confusion of the tangible with the intangible, of the material with the
immaterial; to the belief in the indwelling god being gradually lost
sight of until the power originally believed to belong to the god, is
finally attributed to the tangible and inanimate object itself."
But now comes a statement that may seem paradoxical to most students of
the evolution of religious ideas. We are assured that fetishism thus
understood is not specially or at all characteristic of the religion of
the Gold Coast natives, who are in fact "remarkably free from it" and
believe in invisible intangible deities. Some of them may dwell in a
tangible inanimate object, popularly called a "fetish"; but the idea of
the indwelling god is never lost sight of, nor is the object ever
worshipped for its own sake. True fetishism, the worship of such
material objects and images, prevails, on the contrary, far more
"amongst the Negroes of the West Indies, who have been christianised for
more than half-a-century, than amongst those of West Africa. Hence the
belief in Obeah, still prevalent in the West Indies, which formerly was
a belief in indwelling spirits which inhabited certain objects, has now
become a worship paid to tangible and inanimate objects, which of
themselves are believed to possess the power to injure. In Europe itself
we find evidence amongst the Roman Catholic populations of the South,
that fetishism is a corruption of a former _culte_, rather than a
primordial faith. The lower classes there have confused the intangible
with the tangible, and believe that the images of the saints can both
see, hear and feel. Thus we find the Italian peasants and fishermen beat
and ill-treat their images when their requests have not been complied
with.... These appear to be instances of true fetishism[165]."
Another phase of religious belief in Upper Guinea is ancestry worship,
which has here been developed to a degree unknown elsewhere. As the
departed have to be maintained in the same social position beyond the
grave that they enjoyed in this world, they must be supplied with
slaves, wives, and attendants, each according to his rank. Hence the
institution of the so-called "customs," or anniversary feasts of the
dead, accompanied by the sacrifice of human victims, regulated at first
by the status and afterwards by the whim and caprice of chiefs and
kings. In the capitals of the more powerful states, Ashanti, Dahomey,
Benin, the scenes witnessed at these sanguinary rites rivalled in horror
those held in honour of the Aztec gods. Details may here be dispensed
with on a repulsive subject, ample accounts of which are accessible from
many sources to the general reader. In any case these atrocities teach
no lesson, except that most religions have waded through blood to better
things, unless arrested in mid-stream by the intervention of higher
powers, as happily in Upper Guinea, where the human shambles of Kumassi,
Abomeh, Benin and most other places have now been swept away.
On the capture of Benin by the English in 1897 a rare and unexpected
prize fell into the hands of ethnologists. Here was found a large
assortment of carved ivories, woodwork, and especially a series of about
300 bronze and brass plates or panels with figures of natives and
Europeans, armed and in armour, in full relief, all cast by the _cire
perdue_ process[166], some barbaric, others, and especially a head in
the round of a young negress, showing high artistic skill. Many of these
remarkable objects are in the British Museum, where they have been
studied by C. H. Read and O. M. Dalton[167], who are evidently right in
assigning the better class to the sixteenth century, and to the aid, if
not the hand, of some Portuguese artificers in the service of the King
of Benin. They add that "casting of an inferior kind continues down to
the present time," and it may here be mentioned that armour has long
been and is still worn by the cavalry, and even their horses, in the
Muhammadan states of Central Sudan. "The chiefs (_Kashellawa_) who serve
as officers under the Sultan [of Bornu] and act as his bodyguard wear
jackets of chain armour and cuirasses of coats of mail[168]." It is
clear that metal casting in a large way has long been practised by the
semi-civilised peoples of Sudan.
Within the great bend of the Niger the veil, first slightly raised by
Barth in the middle of the nineteenth century, has now been drawn aside
by L. G. Binger, F. D. Lugard and later explorers. Here the _Mossi_,
_Borgu_ and others have hitherto more or less successfully resisted the
Moslem advance, and are consequently for the most part little removed
from the savage state. Even the "Faithful" wear the cloak of Islam
somewhat loosely, and the level of their culture may be judged from the
case of the Imam of Diulasu, who pestered Binger for nostrums and charms
against ailments, war, and misfortunes. What he wanted chiefly to know
was the names of Abraham's two wives. "Tell me these," he would say,
"and my fortune is made, for I dreamt it the other night; you must tell
me; I really must have those names or I'm lost[169]."
In some districts the ethnical confusion is considerable, and when
Binger arrived at the Court of the Mossi King, Baikary, he was addressed
successively in Mossi, Hausa, Songhai, and Fulah, until at last it was
discovered that Mandingan was the only native language he understood.
Waghadugu, capital of the chief Mossi state, comprises several distinct
quarters occupied respectively by Mandingans, Marengas (Songhai),
Zang-wer'os (Hausas), Chilmigos (Fulahs), Mussulman and heathen Mossis,
the whole population scarcely exceeding 5000. However, perfect harmony
prevails, the Mossi themselves being extremely tolerant despite the long
religious wars they have had to wage against the fanatical Fulahs and
other Muhammadan aggressors[170].
Religious indifference is indeed a marked characteristic of this people,
and the case is mentioned of a nominal Mussulman prince who could even
read and write, and say his prayers, but whose two sons "knew nothing at
all," or, as we should say, were "Agnostics." One of them, however, it
is fair to add, is claimed by both sides, the Moslems asserting that he
says his prayers in secret, the heathens that he drinks _dolo_
(palm-wine), which of course no true believer is supposed ever to do.
CENTRAL SUDANESE.
In Central Sudan, that is, the region stretching from the Niger to
Wadai, a tolerably clean sweep has been made of the aborigines, except
along the southern fringe and in parts of the Chad basin. For many
centuries Islam has here been firmly established, and in Negroland Islam
is synonymous with a greater or less degree of miscegenation. The native
tribes who resisted the fiery Arab or Tuareg or Tibu proselytisers were
for the most part either extirpated, or else driven to the southern
uplands about the Congo-Chad water-parting. All who accepted the Koran
became merged with the conquerors in a common negroid population, which
supplied the new material for the development of large social
communities and powerful political states.
Under these conditions the old tribal organisations were in great
measure dissolved, and throughout its historic period of about a
millennium Central Sudan is found mainly occupied by peoples gathered
together in a small number of political systems, each with its own
language and special institutions, but all alike accepting Islam as the
State religion. Such are or were the Songhai empire, the Hausa States,
and the kingdoms of Bornu with Kanem and Baghirmi, and these jointly
cover the whole of Central Sudan as above defined.
_Songhais_[171]. How completely the tribe[172] has merged in the
people[172] may be inferred from the mere statement that, although no
longer an independent nation[172], the negroid Songhais form a single
ethnical group of about two million souls, all of one speech and one
religion, and all distinguished by somewhat uniform physical and mental
characters. This territory lies mainly about the borderlands between
Sudan and the Sahara, stretching from Timbuktu east to the Asben oasis
and along both banks of the Niger from Lake Debo round to the Sokoto
confluence, and also at some points reaching as far as the Hombori hills
within the great bend of the Niger.
Here they are found in the closest connection with the Ireghenaten
("mixed") Tuaregs, and elsewhere with other Tuaregs, and with Arabs,
Fulahs or Hausas[173], so that exclusively Songhai communities are now
somewhat rare. But the bulk of the race is still concentrated in Gurma
and in the district between Gobo and Timbuktu, the two chief cities of
the old Songhai empire.
They are a distinctly negroid people, presenting various shades of
intermixture with the surrounding Hamites and Semites, but generally of
a very deep brown or blackish colour, with somewhat regular features and
that peculiar long, black, and ringletty hair, which is so
characteristic of Negro and Caucasic blends, as seen amongst the Trarsas
and Braknas of the Senegal, the Bejas, Danakils, and many Abyssinians of
the region between the Nile and the Red Sea. Barth, to whom we still owe
the best account of this historical people, describes them as of a dull,
morose temperament, the most unfriendly and churlish of all the peoples
visited by him in Negroland.
This writer's suggestion that they may have formerly had relations with
the Egyptians[174] has been revived in an exaggerated form by M. Felix
Dubois, whose views have received currency in England through uncritical
notices of his _Timbouctou la Mysterieuse_ (Paris, 1897). But there is
no "mystery" in the matter. The Songhai are a Sudanese people, whose
exodus from Egypt is a myth, and whose Kissur language, as it is called,
has not the remotest connection with any form of speech known to have
been at any time current in the Nile Valley[175]. Nor has it any evident
affinities with any group of African tongues. H. H. Johnston regards the
Songhai as the result of the mixing of "the Libyan section of the
Hamitic peoples, reinforced by Berbers (Iberians) from Spain," with the
pre-existing Fulah type and the Negroids; as also from the far earlier
intercourse between the Fulah and the Negro[176].
The Songhai empire, like that of the rival Mandingans, claims a
respectable antiquity, its reputed founder Za-el-Yemeni having
flourished about 680 A.D. Za Kasi, fifteenth in succession from the
founder, was the first Muhammadan ruler (1009); but about 1326 the
country was reduced by the Mandingans, and remained throughout the
fourteenth and a great part of the fifteenth century virtually subject
to the Mali empire, although Ali Killun, founder of the new Sonni
dynasty, had acquired a measure of independence about 1335-6. But the
political supremacy of the Songhai people dates only from about 1464,
when Sonni Ali, sixteenth of the Sonni dynasty, known in history as "the
great tyrant and famous miscreant," threw off the Mandingan yoke, "and
changed the whole face of this part of Africa by prostrating the kingdom
of Melle[177]." Under his successor, Muhammad Askia[178], "perhaps the
greatest sovereign that ever ruled over Negroland[179]," the Songhai
Empire acquired its greatest expansion, extending from the heart of
Hausaland to the Atlantic seaboard, and from the Mossi country to the
Tuat oasis, south of Morocco. Although unfavourably spoken of by Leo
Africanus, Askia is described by Ahmed Baba as governing the subject
peoples "with justice and equity, causing well-being and comfort to
spring up everywhere within the borders of his extensive dominions, and
introducing such of the institutions of Muhammadan civilisation as he
considered might be useful to his subjects[180]."
Askia also made the Mecca pilgrimage with a great show of splendour. But
after his reign (1492-1529) the Songhai power gradually declined, and
was at last overthrown by Mulay Hamed, Emperor of Morocco, in 1591-2.
Ahmed Baba, the native chronicler, was involved in the ruin of his
people[181], and since then the Songhai nation has been broken into
fragments, subject here to Hausas, there to Fulahs, elsewhere to
Tuaregs, and, since the French occupation of Timbuktu (1894), to the
hated Giaur.
_Hausas._ In everything that constitutes the real greatness of a
nation, the Hausas may rightly claim preeminence amongst all the peoples
of Negroland. No doubt early in the nineteenth century the historical
Hausa States, occupying the whole region between the Niger and Bornu,
were overrun and reduced by the fanatical Fulah bands under Othman Dan
Fodye. But the Hausas, in a truer sense than the Greeks, "have captured
their rude conquerors[182]," for they have even largely assimilated them
physically to their own type, and the Hausa nationality is under British
auspices asserting its natural social, industrial and commercial
predominance throughout Central and even parts of Western Sudan.
It could not well be otherwise, seeing that the Hausas form a compact
body of some five million peaceful and industrious Sudanese, living
partly in numerous farmsteads amid their well-tilled cotton, indigo,
pulse, and corn fields, partly in large walled cities and great trading
centres such as Kano[183], Katsena, Yacoba, whose intelligent and
law-abiding inhabitants are reckoned by many tens of thousands. Their
melodious tongue, with a vocabulary containing perhaps 10,000
words[184], has long been the great medium of intercourse throughout
Sudan from Lake Chad to and beyond the Niger, and is daily acquiring
even greater preponderance amongst all the settled and trading
populations of these regions.
But though showing a marked preference for peaceful pursuits, the Hausas
are by no means an effeminate people. Largely enlisted in the British
service, they have at all times shown fighting qualities of a high order
under their English officers, and a well-earned tribute has been paid to
their military prowess amongst others by Sir George Goldie and Lieut.
Vandeleur[185]. With the Hausas on her side England need assuredly fear
no rivals to her beneficent sway over the teeming populations of the
fertile plains and plateaux of Central Sudan, which is on the whole
perhaps the most favoured land in Africa north of the equator.
According to the national traditions, which go back to no very remote
period[186], the seven historical Hausa States known as the "Hausa
bokoy" ("the seven Hausas") take their name from the eponymous heroes
_Biram_, _Daura_, _Gober_, _Kano_, _Rano_, _Katsena_ and _Zegzeg_, all
said to be sprung from the Deggaras, a Berber tribe settled to the north
of Munyo. From Biram, the original seat, the race and its language
spread to seven other provinces--_Zanfara_, _Kebbi_, _Nupe_ (_Nyffi_),
_Gwari_, _Yauri_, _Yariba_ and _Kororofa_, which in contempt are called
the "Banza bokoy" ("the seven Upstarts"). All form collectively the
Hausa domain in the widest sense.
Authentic history is quite recent, and even Komayo, reputed founder of
Katsena, dates only from about the fourteenth century. Ibrahim Maji, who
was the first Moslem ruler, is assigned to the latter part of the
fifteenth century, and since then the chief events have been associated
with the Fulah wars, ending in the absorption of all the Hausa States in
the unstable Fulah empire of Sokoto at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. With the fall of Kano and Sokoto in 1903 British supremacy was
finally established throughout the Hausa States, now termed Northern
Nigeria[187].
_Kanembu_; _Kanuri_[188]; _Baghirmi_, _Mosgu_. Round about the shores of
Lake Chad are grouped three other historical Muhammadan nations, the
Kanembu ("People of Kanem") on the north, the Kanuri of Bornu on the
west, and the Baghirmi on the south side. The last named was conquered
by the Sultan of Wadai in 1871, and overrun by Rabah Zobeir, half Arab,
half Negro adventurer, in 1890. But in 1897 Emile Gentil[189], French
commissioner for the district, placed the country under French
protection, although French authority was not firmly established until
the death of Rabah and the rout of his sons in 1901. At the same time
Kanem was brought under French control, and shortly afterwards Bornu was
divided between Great Britain, France and Germany.
In this region the ethnical relations are considerably more complex than
in the Hausa States. Here Islam has had greater obstacles to contend
with than on the more open western plateaux, and many of the pagan
aborigines have been able to hold their ground either in the
archipelagos of Lake Chad (_Yedinas, Kuri, Buduma_[190]), or in the
swampy tracts and uplands of the Logon-Shari basin (_Mosgu_, _Mandara_,
_Makari_, etc.).
It was also the policy of the Muhammadans, whose system is based on
slavery, not to push their religious zeal too far, for, if all the
natives were converted, where could they procure a constant supply of
slaves, those who accept the teachings of the Prophet being _ipso facto_
entitled to their freedom? Hence the pagan districts were, and still
are, regarded as convenient preserves, happy hunting-grounds to be
raided from time to time, but not utterly wasted; to be visited by
organised razzias just often enough to keep up the supply in the home
and foreign markets. This system, controlled by the local governments
themselves, has long prevailed about the borderlands between Islam and
heathendom, as we know from Barth, Nachtigal, and one or two other
travellers, who have had reluctantly to accompany the periodical
slave-hunting expeditions from Bornu and Baghirmi to the territories of
the pagan Mosgu people with their numerous branches (_Margi, Mandara,
Makari, Logon, Gamergu, Keribina_) and the other aborigines (_Bede,
Ngisem, So, Kerrikerri, Babir_) on the northern slopes of the Congo-Chad
water-parting. As usual on such occasions, there is a great waste of
life, many perishing in defence of their homes or even through sheer
wantonness, besides those carried away captives. "A large number of
slaves had been caught this day," writes Barth, "and in the evening a
great many more were brought in; altogether they were said to have taken
one thousand, and there were certainly not less than five hundred. To
our utmost horror, not less than 170 full-grown men were mercilessly
slaughtered in cold blood, the greater part of them being allowed to
bleed to death, a leg having been severed from the body[191]." There was
probably just then a glut in the market.
A curious result of these relations is that in the wooded districts some
of the natives have reverted to arboreal habits, taking refuge during
the raids in the branches of huge bombax-trees converted into temporary
strongholds. Round the vertical stem of these forest giants is erected a
breast-high look-out, while the higher horizontal branches, less exposed
to the fire of the enemy, support strongly-built huts and store-houses,
where the families of the fugitives take refuge with their effects,
including, as Nachtigal assures us[192], their domestic animals, such as
goats, dogs, and poultry. During the siege of the aerial fortress, which
is often successfully defended, long light ladders of withies are let
down at night, when no attack need be feared, and the supply of water
and provisions is thus renewed from _caches_ or hiding-places round
about. In 1872 Nachtigal accompanied a predatory excursion to the pagan
districts south of Baghirmi, when an attack was made on one of these
tree-fortresses. Such citadels can be stormed only at a heavy loss, and
as the Gaberi (Baghirmi) warriors had no tools capable of felling the
great bombax-tree, they were fain to rest satisfied with picking off a
poor wretch now and then, and barbarously mutilating the bodies as they
fell from the overhanging branches.
Some of these aborigines disfigure their faces by the disk-like
lip-ornament, which is also fashionable in Nyassaland, and even amongst
the South American Botocudos. The type often differs greatly, and while
some of the widespread Mosgu tribes are of a dirty black hue, with
disagreeable expression, wide open nostrils, thick lips, high
cheek-bones, coarse bushy hair, and disproportionate knock-kneed legs,
other members of the same family astonished Barth "by the beauty and
symmetry of their forms, and by the regularity of their features, which
in some had nothing of what is called the Negro type. But I was still
more astonished at their complexion, which was very different in
different individuals, being in some of a glossy black, and in others of
a light copper, or rather rhubarb colour, the intermediate shades being
almost entirely wanting. I observed in one house a really beautiful
female who, with her son, about eight or nine years of age, formed a
most charming group, well worthy of the hand of an accomplished artist.
The boy's form did not yield in any respect to the beautiful symmetry of
the most celebrated Grecian statues. His hair, indeed, was very short
and curled, but not woolly. He, as well as his mother and the whole
family, were of a pale or yellowish-red complexion, like rhubarb[193]."
There is no suggestion of albinism, and the explanation of such strange
contrasts must await further exploration in the whole of this borderland
of Negroes and Bantus about the divide between the Chad and the Congo
basins. The country has until lately been traversed only at rare
intervals by pioneers, interested more in political than in
anthropological matters.
Of the settled and more or less cultured peoples in the Chad basin, the
most important are the _Kanembu_[194], who introduce a fresh element of
confusion in this region, being more allied in type and speech to the
Hamitic Tibus than to the Negro stock, or at least taking a transitional
position between the two; the _Kanuri_, the ruling people in Bornu, of
somewhat coarse Negroid appearance[195]; and the southern _Baghirmi_,
also decidedly Negroid, originally supposed to have come from the Upper
Shari and White Nile districts[196]. Their civilisation, such as it is,
has been developed exclusively under Moslem influences, but it has never
penetrated much below the surface. The people are everywhere extremely
rude, and for the most part unlettered, although the meagre and not
altogether trustworthy Kanem-Bornu records date from the time of Sef,
reputed founder of the monarchy about 800 A.D. Duku, second in descent
from Sef, is doubtfully referred to about 850 A.D. Hame, founder of a
new dynasty, flourished towards the end of the eleventh century
(1086-97), and Dunama, one of his successors, is said to have extended
his sway over a great part of the Sahara, including the whole of Fezzan
(1221-59). Under Omar (1394-98) a divorce took place between Kanem and
Bornu, and henceforth the latter country has remained the chief centre
of political power in the Chad basin.
A long series of civil wars was closed by Ali (1472-1504), who founded
the present capital, Birni, and whose grandson, Muhammad, brought the
empire of Bornu to the highest pitch of its greatness (1526-45). Under
Ahmed (1793-1810) began the wars with the Fulahs, who, after bringing
the empire to the verge of ruin, were at last overthrown by the aid of
the Kanem people, and since 1819 Bornu has been ruled by the present
Kanemiyin dynasty, which though temporarily conquered by Rabah in 1893,
was restored under British administration in 1902[197].
EASTERN SUDANESE.
As some confusion prevails regarding the expression "Eastern Sudan," I
may here explain that it bears a very different meaning, according as it
is used in a political or an ethnical sense. Politically it is
practically synonymous with Egyptian Sudan, that is the whole region
from Darfur to the Red Sea which was ruled or misruled by the Khedivial
Government before the revolt of the Mahdi (1883-4), and was restored to
Egypt by the British occupation of Khartum in 1898. Ethnically Eastern
Sudan comprises all the lands east of the Chad basin, where the Negro or
Negroid populations are predominant, that is to say, Wadai, Darfur, and
Kordofan in the West, the Nile Valley from the frontier of Egypt proper
south to Albert Nyanza, both slopes of the Nile-Congo divide (the
western tributaries of the White Nile and the Welle-Makua affluent of
the Congo), lastly the Sobat Valley with some Negro enclaves east of the
White Nile, and even south of the equator (Kavirondo, Semliki Valley).
Throughout this region the fusion of the aborigines with Hamites and
Arabs, Tuareg, or Tibu Moslem intruders, wherever they have penetrated,
has been far less complete than in Central and Western Sudan. Thus in
Wadai the dominant Maba people, whence the country is often called
Dar-Maba ("Mabaland"), are rather Negro than Negroid, with but a slight
strain of foreign blood. In the northern districts the _Zoghawa_,
_Gura'an_, _Baele_ and _Bulala_ Tibus keep quite aloof from the blacks,
as do elsewhere; the _Aramkas_, as the Arabs are collectively called in
Wadai. Yet the _Mahamid_ and some other Bedouin tribes have here been
settled for over 500 years, and it was through their assistance that the
Mabas acquired the political supremacy they have enjoyed since the
seventeenth century, when they reduced or expelled the _Tynjurs_[198],
the former ruling race, said to be Nubians originally from Dongola. It
was Abd-el-Kerim, founder of the new Moslem Maba state, who gave the
country its present name in honour of his grandfather, _Wadai_. His
successor Kharub I removed the seat of government to Wara, where Vogel
was murdered in 1856. Abeshr, the present capital, dates only from the
year 1850. Except for Nachtigal, who crossed the frontier in 1873,
nothing was known of the land or its people until the French occupation
at the end of the last century (1899). Since that date it has been
prominent as the scene of the attack on a French column and the death of
its leader, Colonel Moll, in 1910, and the tragic murder of Lieutenant
Boyd Alexander earlier in the same year[199].
_Nubas._ As in Wadai, the intruding and native populations have been
either imperfectly or not at all assimilated in Darfur and Kordofan,
where the Muhammadan Semites still boast of their pure Arab
descent[200], and form powerful confederacies. Chief among these are the
_Baggara_ (Baqqara, "cow-herds"), cattle-keepers and agriculturalists,
of whom some are as dark as the blackest negroes, though many are
fine-looking, with regular, well-shaped features. Their form of Arabic
is notoriously corrupt. Their rivals, the _Jaalan_ (Jalin, Jahalin), are
mostly riverain "Arabs," a learned tribe, containing many scribes, and
their language is said to be closer to classical Arabic than the form
current in Egypt. These are the principal slave-hunters of the Sudan,
and the famous Zobeir belonged to their tribe. The _Yemanieh_ are
largely traders, and trace their origin from South Arabia. The
_Kababish_ are the wealthiest camel-owning tribe, perhaps less
contaminated by negro blood than any other Arab tribe in the Sudan[201].
The _Nuba_ and the _Nubians_ have been a source of much confusion, but
recent investigations in the field such as those of C. G. Seligman[202]
and H. A. MacMichael[203], and the publications of the Archaeological
Survey of Nubia conducted by G. A. Reisner, help to elucidate the
problem. We have first of all to get rid of the "Nuba-Fulah" family,
which was introduced by Fr. Mueller and accepted by some English writers,
but has absolutely no existence. The two languages, although both of the
agglutinative Sudanese type, are radically distinct in all their
structural, lexical, and phonetic elements, and the two peoples are
equally distinct. The Fulahs are of North African origin, although many
have in recent times been largely assimilated to their black Sudanese
subjects. The Nuba on the contrary belong originally to the Negro stock,
with hair of the common negro type, and are among the darkest skinned
tribes in the Sudan, their colour varying from a dark chocolate brown to
the darkest shade of brown black.
But rightly to understand the question we have carefully to avoid
confusion between the Nubians of the Nile Valley and the Negro _Nubas_,
who gave their name to the Nuba Mountains, Kordofan, where most of the
aborigines (_Kargo, Kulfan, Kolaji, Tumali, Lafofa, Eliri, Talodi_)
still belong to this connection[203]. Kordofan is probably itself a Nuba
word meaning "Land of the Kordo" (_fan_ = Arab, _dar_, land, country).
There is a certain amount of anthropological evidence to connect the
Nuba with the _Fur_ and the _Kara_ of Darfur to the west[204]. But it is
a different anthropological type that is represented in the three groups
of _Matokki_ (_Kenus_) between the First Cataract and Wadi-el-Arab, the
_Mahai_ (_Marisi_) between Korosko and Wadi-Halfa, at the Second
Cataract, and the _Dongolawi_, of the province of Dongola between
Wadi-Halfa and Jebel Deja near Meroe.
These three groups, all now Muhammadans, but formerly Christians,
constitute collectively the so-called "Nubians" of European writers, but
call themselves _Barabra_, Plural of _Berberi_, _i.e._ people of Berber,
although they do not at present extend so far up the Nile as that
town[205]. Possibly these are Strabo's "Noubai, who dwell on the left
bank of the Nile in Libya [Africa], a great nation etc.[206]"; and are
also to be identified with the _Nobatae_, who in Diocletian's time were
settled, some in the Kharga oasis, others in the Nile Valley about
Meroe, to guard the frontiers of the empire against the incursions of
the restless Blemmues. But after some time they appear to have entered
into peaceful relations with these Hamites, the present Bejas, even
making common cause with them against the Romans; but the confederacy
was crushed by Maximinus in 451, though perhaps not before crossings had
taken place between the Nobatae and the Caucasic Bejas. Then these Bejas
withdrew to their old homes, which they still occupy, between the Nile
and the Red Sea above Egypt, while the Nobatae, embracing Christianity,
as is said, in 545, established the powerful kingdom of Dongola which
lasted over 800 years, and was finally overthrown by the Arabs in the
fourteenth century, since which time the Nile Nubians have been
Muhammadans.
There still remains the problem of language which, as shown by
Lepsius[207], differs but slightly from that now current amongst the
Kordofan Nubas. But this similarity only holds in the north, and is now
shown to be due to Berberine immigration into Kordofan[208]. Recent
investigations show that the Nuba and the Barabra, in spite of this
linguistic similarity which has misled certain authors[209], are not to
be regarded as belonging to the same race[210]. "The Nuba are a tall,
stoutly built muscular people, with a dark, almost black skin. They are
predominantly mesaticephalic, for although cephalic indices under 70 and
over 80 both occur, nearly 60 per cent. of the individuals measured are
mesaticephals, the remaining being dolichocephalic and brachycephalic in
about equal proportions." The hair is invariably woolly. The Barabra, on
the contrary, is of slight, or more commonly medium build, not
particularly muscular and in skin colour varies from a yellowish to a
chocolate brown. The hair is commonly curly or wavy and may be almost
straight, while the features are not uncommonly absolutely non-Negroid.
"Thus there can be no doubt that the two peoples are essentially
different in physical characters and the same holds good on the cultural
side" (p. 611). Barabra were identified by Lepsius with the Wawat, a
people frequently mentioned in Egyptian records, and recent excavations
by the members of the Archaeological Survey of Nubia show a close
connection with the predynastic Egyptians, a connection supported also
on physical grounds. It seems strange, therefore, to meet with repeated
reference on Egyptian monuments to Negroes in Nubia when, as proved by
excavations, the inhabitants were by no means Negroes or even frankly
Negroid. Seligman's solution of the difficulty is as follows (p. 619).
It seems that only one explanation is tenable, namely that for a period
subsequent to the Middle Kingdom the country in the neighbourhood of the
Second Cataract became essentially a Negro country and may have remained
in this condition for some little time. Then a movement in the opposite
direction set in; the Negroes, diminished by war, were in part driven
back by the great conquerors of the New Empire; those that were left
mixed with the Egyptian garrisons and traders and once more a hybrid
race arose which, however, preserved the language of its Negro
ancestors. Although Seligman regards the conclusion that this race gave
rise directly to the present-day inhabitants of Nubia as "premature,"
and suggests further mixture with the Beja of the eastern deserts,
Elliot Smith recognises the essential similarity between the homogeneous
blend of Egyptian and Negro traits which characterise the Middle Nubian
people (contemporary with the Middle Empire, XII-XVII dynasties), a type
which "seems to have remained dominant in Nubia ever since then, for the
span of almost 4000 years[211]."
Before the incursions of the Nubian-Arab traders and raiders, who began
to form settlements (_zeribas_, fenced stations) in the Upper Nile
regions above Khartum about the middle of the nineteenth century, most
of the Nile-Congo divide (White Nile tributaries and Welle-Makua basin)
belonged in the strictest sense to the Negro domain. Sudanese tribes,
and even great nations reckoned by millions, had been for ages in almost
undisturbed possession, not only of the main stream from the equatorial
lakes to and beyond the Sobat junction, but also of the Sobat Valley
itself, and of the numerous south-western head-waters of the White Nile
converging about Lake No above the Sobat junction. Nearly all the Nile
peoples--the _Shilluks_ and _Dinkas_ about the Sobat confluence, the
_Bari_ and _Nuers_ of the Bahr-el-Jebel, the _Bongos_ (_Dors_), _Rols_,
_Golos_, _Mittus_, _Madis_, _Makarakas_, _Abakas_, _Mundus_, and many
others about the western affluents, as well as the _Funj_ of Senaar--had
been brought under the Khedivial rule before the revolt of the Mahdi.
The same fate had already overtaken or was threatening the formerly
powerful _Mombuttu_ (_Mangbattu_) and _Zandeh_[212] nations of the Welle
lands, as well as the _Krej_ and others about the low watersheds of the
Nile-Congo and Chad basins. Since then the Welle groups have been
subjected to the jurisdiction of the Congo Free State, while the
political destinies of the Nilotic tribes must henceforth be controlled
by the British masters of the Nile lands from the Great Lakes to the
Mediterranean.
Although grouped as Negroes proper, very few of the Nilotic peoples
present the almost ideal type of the blacks, such as those of Upper
Guinea and the Atlantic coast of West Sudan. The complexion is in
general less black, the nose less broad at the base, the lips less
everted (Shilluks and one or two others excepted), the hair rather less
frizzly, the dolichocephaly and prognathism less marked.
Apart from the more delicate shades of transition, due to diverse
interminglings with Hamites and Semites, two distinct types may be
plainly distinguished--one black, often very tall, with long thin legs,
and long-headed (_Shilluks, Dinkas, Bari, Nuers, Alur_), the other
reddish or ruddy brown, more thick-set, and short-headed (_Bongos_,
_Golos_, _Makarakas_, with the kindred _Zandehs_ of the Welle region).
No explanation has been offered of their brachycephaly, which is all the
more difficult to account for, inasmuch as it is characteristic neither
of the aboriginal Negro nor of the intruding Hamitic and Semitic
elements. Have we here an indication of the transition suspected by many
between the true long-headed Negro and the round-headed Negrillo, who is
also brownish, and formerly ranged as far north as the Nile
head-streams, as would appear from the early Egyptian records (Chap.
IV.)? Schweinfurth found that the Bongos were "hardly removed from the
lowest grade of brachycephaly[213]," and the same is largely true of the
Zandehs and their Makaraka cousins, as noticed by Junker: "The skull
also in many of these peoples approaches the round form, whereas the
typical Negro is assumed to be long-headed[214]." But so great is the
diversity of appearance throughout the whole of this region, including
even "a striking Semitic type," that this observer was driven to the
conclusion that "woolly hair, common to all, forms in fact the only sure
characteristic of the Negro[215]."
Dinka is the name given to a congeries of independent tribes spread over
a vast area, stretching from 300 miles south of Khartum to within 100
miles of Gondokoro, and reaching many miles to the west in the
Bahr-el-Ghazal Province. All these tribes according to C. G.
Seligman[216] call themselves _Jieng_ or _Jenge_, corrupted by the
Arabs into Dinka; but no Dinka nation has arisen, for the tribes have
never recognised a supreme chief, as do their neighbours, the Shilluk,
nor have they even been united under a military despot, as the Zulu were
united under Chaka. They differ in manners and customs and even in
physique and are often at war with one another. One of the most obvious
distinctions in habits is between the relatively powerful cattle-owning
Dinka and the small and comparatively poor tribes who have no cattle and
scarcely cultivate the ground, but live in the marshes in the
neighbourhood of the Sudd, and depend largely for their sustenance on
fishing and hippopotamus-hunting. Their villages, which are generally
dirty and evil-smelling, are built on ground which rises but little
above the reed-covered surface of the country. The Dinka community is
largely autonomous under leadership of a chief or headman (_bain_) who
is sometimes merely the local magician, but in one community in each
tribe he is the hereditary rain-maker whose wish is law. "Cattle form
the economic basis of Dinka society; ... they are the currency in which
bride-price and blood-fines are paid; and the desire to acquire a
neighbour's herds is the common cause of those inter-tribal raids which
constitute Dinka warfare."
Some uniformity appears to prevail amongst the languages of the
Nile-Welle lands, and from the rather scanty materials collected by
Junker, Fr. Mueller was able to construct an "Equatorial Linguistic
Family," including the Mangbattu, Zandeh, Barmbo, Madi, Bangba, Krej,
Golo and others, on both sides of the water-parting. Leo Reinisch,
however, was not convinced, and in a letter addressed to the author
declared that "in the absence of sentences it is impossible to determine
the grammatical structure of Mangbattu and the other languages. At the
same time we may detect certain relations, not to the Nilotic, but the
Bantu tongues. It may therefore be inferred that Mangbattu and the
others have a tolerably close relationship to the Bantu, and may even be
remotely akin to it, judging from their tendency to prefix
formations[217]." Future research will show how far this conjecture is
justified.
Although Islam has made considerable progress, throughout the greater
part of the Sudanese region, though not among the Nilotic tribes, the
bulk of the people are still practically pagan. Witchcraft continues to
flourish amongst the equatorial peoples, and important events are almost
everywhere attended by sanguinary rites. These are absent among the true
Nilotics. The Dinka are totemic, with ancestor-worship. The Shilluk have
a cult of divine kings.
Cannibalism however, in some of its most repulsive forms, prevails
amongst the Zandehs, who barter in human fat as a universal staple of
trade, and amongst the Mangbattu, who cure for future use the bodies of
the slain in battle and "drive their prisoners before them, as butchers
drive sheep to the shambles, and these are only reserved to fall victims
on a later day to their horrible and sickly greediness[218]."
In fact here we enter the true "cannibal zone," which, as I have
elsewhere shown, was in former ages diffused all over Central and South
Africa, or, it would be more correct to say, over the whole
continent[219], but has in recent times been mainly confined to "the
region stretching west and east from the Gulf of Guinea to the western
head-streams of the White Nile, and from below the equator northwards in
the direction of Adamawa, Dar-Banda and Dar-Fertit. Wherever explorers
have penetrated into this least-known region of the continent they have
found the practice fully established, not merely as a religious rite or
a privilege reserved for priests, but as a recognised social
institution[220]."
Yet many of these cannibal peoples, especially the Mangbattus and
Zandehs, are skilled agriculturists, and cultivate some of the useful
industries, such as iron and copper smelting and casting, weaving,
pottery and wood-carving, with great success. The form and ornamental
designs of their utensils display real artistic taste, while the temper
of their iron implements is often superior to that of the imported
European hardware. Here again the observation has been made that the
tribes most addicted to cannibalism also excel in mental qualities and
physical energy. Nor are they strangers to the finer feelings of human
nature, and above all the surrounding peoples the Zandeh
anthropophagists are distinguished by their regard and devotion for
their women and children.
In one respect all these peoples show a higher degree of intelligence
even than the Arabs and Hamites. "My later experiences," writes Junker,
"revealed the remarkable fact that certain negro peoples, such as the
Niam-Niams, the Mangbattus and the Bantus of Uganda and Unyoro, display
quite a surprising understanding of figured illustrations or pictures of
plastic objects, which is not as a rule exhibited by the Arabs and
Arabised Hamites of North-east Africa. Thus the Unyoro chief, Riongo,
placed photographs in their proper position, and was able to identify
the negro portraits as belonging to the Shuli, Lango, or other tribes,
of which he had a personal knowledge. This I have called a remarkable
fact, because it bespoke in the lower races a natural faculty for
observation, a power to recognise what for many Arabs or Egyptians of
high rank was a hopeless puzzle. An Egyptian pasha in Khartum could
never make out how a human face in profile showed only one eye and one
ear, and he took the portrait of a fashionable Parisian lady in
extremely low dress for that of the bearded sun-burnt American naval
officer who had shown him the photograph[221]." From this one is almost
tempted to infer that, amongst Moslem peoples, all sense of plastic,
figurative, or pictorial art has been deadened by the Koranic precept
forbidding the representation of the human form in any way.
The Welle peoples show themselves true Negroes in the possession of
another and more precious quality, the sense of humour, although this is
probably a quality which comes late in the life of a race. Anyhow it is
a distinct Negro characteristic, which Junker was able to turn to good
account during the building of his famous _Lacrima_ station in Ndoruma's
country. "In all this I could again notice how like children the Negroes
are in many respects. Once at work they seemed animated by a sort of
childlike sense of honour. They delighted in praise, though even a frown
or a word of reproach could also excite their hilarity. Thus a loud
burst of laughter would, for instance, follow the contrast between a
piece of good and bad workmanship. Like children, they would point the
finger of scorn at each other[222]."
One morning Ndoruma, hearing that they had again struck work, had the
great war-drum beaten, whereupon they rushed to arms and mustered in
great force from all quarters. But on finding that there was no enemy to
march against, and that they had only been summoned to resume operations
at the station, they enjoyed the joke hugely, and after a general
explosion of laughter at the way they had been taken in, laid aside
their weapons and returned cheerfully to work. Some English overseers
have already discovered that this characteristic may be utilised far
more effectively than the cruel kurbash. Ethnology has many such lessons
to teach.
FOOTNOTES:
[129] For a tentative classification of African tribes see T. A. Joyce,
Art. "Africa: Ethnology," _Ency. Brit._ 1910, p. 329.
[130] Graphically summed up in the classical description of the Negress:
"Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura,
Torta comam labroque tumens, et fusca colorem,
Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alvo,
Cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodiga planta."
[131] See H. R. Hall, papers and references in _Man_, 19, 1905.
[132] T. A. Joyce, "Africa: Ethnology," _Ency. Brit._ 1910, I. 327.
[133] J. P. Johnson, _The Prehistoric Period in South Africa_, 1912.
[134] See H. H. Johnston, "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa,"
_Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XLIII. 1913.
[135] The skeleton found by Hans Reck at Oldoway in 1914 and claimed by
him to be of Pleistocene age exhibits all the typical Negro features,
including the filed teeth, characteristic of East African negroes at the
present day, but the geological evidence is imperfect.
[136] H. H. Johnston, _British Central Africa_, 1897, p. 393.
[137] Zandeh is the name usually given to the groups of tribes akin to
Nilotics, but probably with Fulah element, which includes the _Azandeh_
or Niam Niam, _Makaraka_, _Mangbattu_ and many others. Cf. T. A. Joyce,
_loc. cit._ p. 329.
[138] _British Central Africa_, p. 472. But see R. E. Dennett, _At the
Back of the Black Man's Mind_, 1906, and A. G. Leonard, _The Lower Niger
and its Tribes_, 1906, for African mentality.
[139] For theories of Bantu migrations see H. H. Johnston, _George
Grenfell and the Congo_, 1908, and "A Survey of the Ethnography of
Africa," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Soc._ XLIII. 1913, p. 391 ff. Also F.
Stuhlmann, _Handwerk und Industrie in Ostafrika_, 1910, p. 138, f. 147,
with map, Pl. 1. B. For the date see p. 92.
[140] Even a tendency to polysynthesis occurs, as in Vei, and in Yoruba,
where the small-pox god _Shakpanna_ is made up of the three elements
_shan_ to plaster, _kpa_ to kill, and _enia_ a person = one who kills a
person by plastering him (with pustules).
[141] The Nilotic languages are to a considerable extent tonic.
[142] A. B. Ellis, _The Tshi-speaking Peoples_, etc., 1887, pp. 327-8.
Only one European, Herr R. Betz, long resident amongst the Dualas of the
Cameruns district, has yet succeeded in mastering the drum language; he
claims to understand nearly all that is drummed and is also able to drum
himself. (_Athenaeum_, May 7, 1898, p. 611.)
[143] Cf. H. S. Harrison, _Handbook to the cases illustrating stages in
the evolution of the Domestic Arts_. Part II. Horniman Museum and
Library. Forest Hill, S.E.
[144] E. T. Hamy, "Les Races Negres," in _L'Anthropologie_, 1897, p. 257
sq.
[145] "Chaque fois que j'ai demande avec intention a un Mande, 'Es-tu
Peul, Mossi, Dafina?' il me repondait invariablement, '_Je suis Mande_.'
C'est pourquoi, dans le cours de ma relation, j'ai toujours designe ce
peuple par le nom de _Mande_, qui est son vrai nom." (L. G. Binger, _Du
Niger au Golfe de Guinee_, 1892, Vol. II. p. 373.) At p. 375 this
authority gives the following subdivisions of the Mande family, named
from their respective _tenne_ (idol, fetish, totem):
1. _Bamba_, the crocodile: _Bammana_, not _Bambara_, which means kafir
or infidel, and is applied only to the non-Moslem Mande groups.
2. _Mali_, the hippopotamus: _Mali'nke_, including the Kagoros and the
Tagwas.
3. _Sama_, the elephant: _Sama'nke_.
4. _Sa_, the snake: _Sa-mokho_.
Of each there are several sub-groups, while the surrounding peoples call
them all collectively _Wakore_, _Wangara_, _Sakhersi_, and especially
_Diula_. Attention to this point will save the reader much confusion in
consulting Barth, Caillie, and other early books of travel.
[146] _Travels_, Vol. IV. p. 579 sqq.
[147] "La chaine des Montagnes de Kong n'a jamais existe que dans
l'imagination de quelques voyageurs mal renseignes," _Du Niger au Golfe
de Guinee_, 1892, I. p. 285.
[148] Bertrand-Bocande, "Sur les Floups ou Feloups," in _Bul. Soc. de
Geogr_. 1849.
[149] A full account of this literature will be found in the Rev. C. F.
Schlenker's valuable work, _A Collection of Temne Traditions, Fables and
Proverbs_, London, 1861. Here is given the curious explanation of the
tribal name, from _o-tem_, an old man, and _ne_, himself, because, as
they say, the Temne people will exist for ever.
[150] There is also a sisterhood--the _bondo_--and the two societies
work so far in harmony that any person expelled from the one is also
excluded from the other.
[151] Reclus, Keane's English ed., XII. p. 203.
[152] "Da Njoe Testament, translated into the Negro-English Language by
the Missionaries of the Unitas Fratrum," Brit. and For. Bible Soc.,
London, 1829. Here is a specimen quoted by Ellis from _The Artisan_ of
Sierra Leone, Aug. 4, 1886, "Those who live in ceiled houses love to
hear the pit-pat of the rain overhead; whilst those whose houses leak
are the subjects of restlessness and anxiety, not to mention the chances
of catching cold, _that is so frequent a source of leaky roofs_."
[153] Right Rev. E. G. Ingham (Bishop of Sierra Leone), _Sierra Leone
after a Hundred Years_, London, 1894, p. 294. Cf. H. C. Lukach, _A
Bibliography of Sierra Leone_, 1911, and T. J. Alldridge, _A Transformed
Colony_, 1910.
[154] This increase, however, appears to be due to a steady immigration
from the Southern States, but for which the Liberians proper would die
out, or become absorbed in the surrounding native populations.
[155] H. H. Johnston, _Liberia_, 1906.
[156] Possibly the English word "crew," but more probably an extension
of _Kraoh_, the name of a tribe near Settra-kru, to the whole group.
[157] _Sierra Leone after a Hundred Years_, p. 280.
[158] Mary H. Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, 1899, pp. 54-5.
[159] Since the establishment of British authority in Nigeria (1900 to
1907) much light has been thrown on ethnological problems. See among
other works C. Partridge, _The Cross River Natives_, 1905; A. G.
Leonard, _The Lower Niger and its Tribes_, 1906; A. J. N. Tremearne,
_The Niger and the Western Sudan_, 1910, _The Tailed Head-Hunters of
Nigeria_, 1912; R. E. Dennett, _Nigerian Studies_, 1910; E. D. Morel,
_Nigeria, its People and its Problems_, 1911, besides the
_Anthropological Reports_ of N. W. Thomas, 1910, 1913, and papers by J.
Parkinson in _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XXXVI. 1906, XXXVII. 1907.
[160] The services rendered to African anthropology by this
distinguished officer call for the fullest recognition, all the more
that somewhat free and unacknowledged use has been made of the rich
materials brought together in his classical works on _The Tshi-speaking
Peoples_ (1887), _The Ewe-speaking Peoples_ (1890), and _The
Yoruba-speaking Peoples_ (1894).
[161] N. W. Thomas classifies Yoruba, Edo, Ibo and Efik as four main
stocks in the Western Sudanic language group. "In the Edo and Ibo stocks
people only a few miles apart may not be able to communicate owing to
diversity of language" (p. 141). _Anthropological Report of the
Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria_, Part 1. 1913.
[162] _The Tshi-speaking Peoples_, p. 332 sq.
[163] _Feitico_, whence also _feiticeira_, a witch, _feiticeria_,
sorcery, etc., all from _feitico_, artificial, handmade, from Lat.
_facio_ and _factitius_.
[164] _Du Culte des Dieux Fetiches_, 1760. It is generally supposed that
the word was invented, or at least first introduced, by De Brosses; but
Ellis shows that this also is a mistake, as it had already been used by
Bosman in his _Description of Guinea_, London, 1705.
[165] _The Tshi-speaking Peoples_, Ch. XII. p. 194 and _passim._ See
also R. H. Nassau, _Fetichism in West Africa_, 1904.
[166] That is, from a wax mould destroyed in the casting. After the
operation details were often filled in by chasing or executed in
_repousse_ work.
[167] "Works of Art from Benin City," _Journ. Anthr. Inst._ February,
1898, p. 362 sq. See H. Ling Roth, _Great Benin, its Customs_, etc.,
1903.
[168] A. Featherman, _Social History of Mankind_, The Nigritians, p.
281. See also Reclus, French ed., Vol. XII. p. 718: "Les cavaliers
portent encore la cuirasse comme au moyen age.... Les chevaux sont
recouverts de la meme maniere." In the mythical traditions of Buganda
also there is reference to the fierce Wakedi warriors clad in "iron
armour" (Ch. IV.). Cf. L. Frobenius, _The Voice of Africa_, II. 1913,
pl. p. 608.
[169] _Du Niger au Golfe de Guinee_, 1892, I. p. 377.
[170] Early in the fourteenth century they were strong enough to carry
the war into the enemy's camp and make more than one successful
expedition against Timbuktu. At present the Mossi power is declining,
and their territory has been parcelled out between the British and
French Sudanese hinterlands.
[171] Also _Sonrhay_, _gh_ and _rh_ being interchangeable throughout
North Africa; _Ghat_ and _Rhat_, _Ghadames_ and _Rhadames_, etc. In the
mouth of an Arab the sound is that of the guttural [Symbol], _ghain_,
which is pronounced by the Berbers and Negroes somewhat like the
Northumberland _burr_, hence usually transliterated by _rh_ in
non-Semitic words.
[172] It should be noticed that these terms are throughout used as
strictly defined in _Eth._ Ch. I.
[173] Barth's account of Wulu (IV. p. 299), "inhabited by Tawarek
slaves, who are _trilingues_, speaking Temashight as well as Songhay and
Fulfulde," is at present generally applicable, _mutatis mutandis_, to
most of the Songhai settlements.
[174] As so much has been made of Barth's authority in this connection,
it may be well to quote his exact words: "It would seem as if they (the
Sonrhay) had received, in more ancient times, several institutions from
the Egyptians, with whom, I have no doubt, they maintained an
intercourse by means of the energetic inhabitants of Aujila from a
relatively ancient period" (IV. p. 426). Barth, therefore, does not
bring the people themselves, or their language, from Egypt, but only
some of their institutions, and that indirectly through the Aujila Oasis
in Cyrenaica, and it may be added that this intercourse with Aujila
appears to date only from about 1150 A.D. (IV. p. 585).
[175] Hacquard et Dupuis, _Manuel de la langue Songay, parlee de
Tombouctou a Say, dans la boucle du Niger_, 1897, _passim._
[176] "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Soc._
XLIII. 1913, p. 386.
[177] Barth, IV. pp. 593-4.
[178] The _Ischia_ of Leo Africanus, who tells us that in his time the
"linguaggio detto Sungai" was current even in the provinces of Walata
and Jinni (VI. ch. 2). This statement, however, like others made by Leo
at second hand, must be received with caution. In these districts
Songhai may have been spoken by the officials and some of the upper
classes, but scarcely by the people generally, who were of Mandingan
speech.
[179] Barth, IV. p. 414.
[180] _Ib._ p. 415.
[181] Carried captive into Marakesh, although later restored
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