Africa

differences. Here the cylindrical type of hut prevails; clothing is of skin

or leather but is very scanty; iron ornaments are worn in profusion; arrows

are not feathered; shields of hide, spears with leather sheaths are found

and also fighting bracelets. Certain small differences appear between the

eastern and western portions, the dividing line being formed by the

boundary between Bornu and Hausaland. Characteristic of the east are the

harp and the throwing-club and throwing-knife, the last of which has

penetrated into the forest area. Typical of the west are the bow and the

dagger with the ring hilt. The tribes of the upper Nile are somewhat

specialized, though here, too, are found the cylindrical hut, iron

ornaments, fighting bracelets, &c., characteristic of the Sudanese tribes.

Here the removal of the lower incisors is common, and circumcision entirely

absent. Throughout the rest of the Sudan is found Semitic culture

introduced by the Arabized Libyan. Circumcision, as is usual among

Mahommedan tribes, is universal, and tooth-mutilation absent; of other

characteristics, the use of the sword has penetrated to the northern

portion of the forest area. The culture prevailing in the Horn of Africa

is, naturally, mainly Hamito-Semitic; here are found both cyhnddcal and bee-

hive huts, the sword (which has been adopted by the Masai to the south),

the lyre (which has found its way to some of the Nilotic tribes) and the

head-rest. Circumcision is practically universal.

As has been said earlier, the history of Africa reaches back but a short

distance, except, of course, as far as the lower Nile valley and Roman

Africa is concerned; elsewhere no records exist, save tribal traditions,

and these only relate to very recent events. Even archaeology, which can

often sketch the main outlines of a people's history, is here practically

powerless, owing to the insufficiency of data. It is true that stone imple.

ments of palaeolithic and neolithic types are found sporadically in the

Nile valley, Somaliland, on the Zambezi, in Cape Colony and the northern

portions of the Congo Free State, as well as in Algeria and Tunisia; but

the localities are far too few and too widely separated to warrant the

inference that they are to be in any way connected. Moreover, where stone

implements are found they are, as a rule, very near, even actually on, the

surface of the earth; nothing occurs resembling the regular stratification

of Europe, and consequently no argument based on geological grounds is

possible.

The lower Nile valley, however, forms an exception; flint implements of a

palaeolithic type have been found near Thebes. not only on the surface of

the ground, which for several thousand years has been desert owing to the

contraction of the river-bed, but also in stratified gravel of an older

date. References to a number of papers bearing on the discussion to which

then discovery has given rise may be found in an article by Mr H. R. Hall

in Man, 1905, No. 19. The Egyptian and also the Somali land finds appear to

be true palaeoliths in type and remarkably similar to those found in

Europe. But evidence bearing on the Stone age in Africa, if the latter

existed apart from the localities mentioned, is so slight that little can

be said save that from the available evidence the palaeoliths of the Nile

valley alone can with any degree of certainty be assigned to a remote

period of antiquity, and that the chips scattered over Mashonaland and the

regions occupied within historic times by Bushmen are the most recent;

since it has been shown that the stone flakes were used by the medieval

Makalanga to engrave their hard pottery and the Bushmen were still using

stone implements in the 19th century. Other early remains, but of equally

uncertain date, are the stone circles of Algeria, the Cross river and the

Gambia. The large system of ruined forts and ``cities'' in Mashonaland, at

Zimbabwe and elsewhere, concerning which so many ingenious theories have

been woven, have been proved to date from medieval times.

Origin and spread of the racial stocks.

Thus while in Europe there is a Stone age. divided into periods according

to various types of implement disposed in geological strata, and followed

in orderly succession by the ages of Bronze and Iron, in Africa can be

found no true Stone age and practically no Bronze at all. The reason is not

far to seek; Africa is a country of iron, which is found distributed widely

throughout the continent in ores so rich that the metal can be extracted

with very little trouble and by the simplest methods. Iron has been worked

from time immemorial by the Negroid peoples, and whole tribes are found

whose chief industry is the smelting and forging of the metal. Under such

conditions, questions relating to the origin and spread of the racial

stocks which form the population of Africa cannot be answered with any

certainty; at best only a certain amount of probability can be attained.

Five of these racial stocks have been mentioned: Bushman, Negro, Hamite,

Semite, Libyan, the last three probably related through some common

ancestor. Of these the honour of being considered the most truly African

belongs to the two first. It is true that people of Negroid type are found

elsewhere, principally in Melanesia, but as yet their possible connexion

with the African Negro is little more than theoretical, and for the present

purposes it need not be considered.

The origin of the Bushman is lost in obscurity, but he may be conceived

as the original inhabitant of the southern portion of the continent. The

original home of the Negro, at first an agriculturist, is most probably to

be found in the neighbourhood of the great lakes, whence he penetrated

along the fringe of the Sahara to the west and across the eastern highlands

southward. Northerly expansion was prevented by the early occupation of the

Nile valley, the only easy route to the Mediterranean, but there seems no

doubt that the population of ancient Egypt contained a distinct Negroid

element. The question as to the ethnic affinities of the pre-dynastic

Egyptians is still unsolved; but they may be regarded as, in the main,

Hamitic, though it is a question how far it is just to apply a name which

implies a definite specialization in what may be comparatively modern times

to a people of such antiquity.

The Horn of Africa appears to have been the centre from which the Hamites

spread, and the pressure they seem to have applied to the Negro tribes,

themselves also in process of expansion, sent forth larger waves of

emigrants from the latter. These emigrants, already affected by the Hamitic

pastoral culture, and with a strain of Hamitic blood in their veins, passed

rapidly down the open tract in the east, doubtless exterminating their

predecessors, except such few as took refuge in the mountains and swamps.

The advance-guard of this wave of pastoral Negroids, in fact primitive

Bantu, mingled with the Bushmen and produced the Hottentots. The

penetration of the forest area must certainly have taken longer and was

probably accomplished as much from the south-east, up the Zambezi valley,

as from any other quarter. It was a more peaceful process, since natural

obstacles are unfavourable to rapid movements of large bodies of

immigrants, though not so serious as to prevent the spread of language and

culture. A modern parallel to the spread of Bantu speech is found in the

rise of the Hausa language, which is gradually enlarging its sphere of

influence in the western and central Sudan. Thus those qualities, physical

and otherwise, in which the Bantu approach the Hamites gradually fade as we

proceed westward through the Congo basin, while in the east, among the

tribes to the west of Tanganyika and on the upper Zambezi, ``transitional''

forms of culture are found. In later times this gradual pressure from the

south-east became greater, and resulted, at a comparatively recent date, in

the irruption of the Fang into the Gabun.

The earlier stages of the southern movement must have been accompanied by

a similar movement westward between the Sahara and the forest; and,

probably, at the same time, or even earlier, the Libyans crossing the

desert had begun to press upon the primitive Negroes from the north. In

this way were produced the Fula, who mingled further with the Negro to give

birth to the Mandingo, Wolof and Tukulor. It would appear that either

Libyan (Fula) or, less probably, Hamitic, blood enters into the composition

of the Zandeh peoples on the Nile-Congo watershed. These Libyans or

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