African Art. Maurice Delafosse
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could not have taken place, or above all be prolonged, without resulting in mixtures and unions between the prehistoric whites of North Africa and the Negro immigrants succeeding the Negrillos or already partly mixed with them. It is very probable that to these far-off unions, to these very ancient mixtures, it is necessary to seek in greater part for the origins of those peoples or divisions of peoples, sometimes called Negroid, who are met with in an almost continuous line along the southern limit of the present desert zone and sometimes even farther to the north, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, and who appear to us sometimes as populations of the white race strongly crossed with Negro blood (Bishari, Somali, Galla, Danakil, Sidama, etc.), sometimes as populations of the black race more or less mixed with white blood (Masai, Nuba, Tubu, Kanuri, Hausa, Songhoy, Sarakolle, Tukulors, Wolofs), the traces of hybridisation revealing themselves in the anatomical or physiological aspect, sometimes in the intellectual aptitudes, sometimes in the language, or in all three elements at once. It is even possible that the elements of the white race which incontestably manifest themselves among certain Fulani families indicate by this circumstance an appreciable part of their origin. It is also possible that to the same cause must be attributed the very ancient traces of Negro blood revealed as much among the Egyptians of the epoch of the Pharaohs as among the modern Abyssinians and among many Berber and Arabo-Berber tribes, independently of the hybrids produced subsequently by unions with Negro slaves.
Statue (Sokoto), c. 400 BCE.
Terracotta, height: 74 cm.
Kathrin and Andreas Lindner Collection.
The conical shape of this terracotta implies that it may have once been used as a cover for a funeral urn. The heavy eyelids constitute one of the archetypes of the terracottas found north of Nigeria in the Sokoto region.
To sum up, in remaining within the limits of our study, this is more or less how one may suppose that the peopling of Sub-Saharan Africa took place, at least in its broad lines. To the south of the Equator, the Negroes of the first wave of invasion settled almost everywhere, conserving in their midst islets of Negrillos who remained almost pure, and remaining themselves almost free from all crossing with the Negrillos as well as with the Negroes of the second invasion and with the autochthonous whites of the north: these are the Negroes of the type called Bantu. To the north of the Equator, in the southern part of Sudan and along the Gulf of Guinea, the Negroes of the second migration, more or less mixed with the Negrillos and with the most advanced elements of the Bantu, have constituted the extremely varied type that we call the Negroes of Guinea. Farther to the north again, Negroes coming equally from the second wave of invasion, by mixing with the Negrillos and with the autochthonous Mediterranean race, formed the type, also highly varied, which we designate as Sudanese. In many regions the passage from one of these three primordial types to the other takes place by gradations which are often imperceptible, giving birth to a great number of intermediate types which are very difficult to define.
Many facts corroborate the hypothesis which tends to relate the first formation of the Sudanese populations known as Negroid to an epoch far more remote than that which is generally assigned to it and to attribute to the prehistoric peoples who preceded the Egyptians, the Libyan Berbers and the Semites in North Africa, the influence which has often been accorded to these latter. It does not follow that the role of the Egyptians, the Libyan Berbers, and the Semites has been of no consequence in the definitive constitution of certain Negroid peoples labeled, the one as Chamites or Hamites, the other as Sudanese. But if this role cannot be denied in the development of the civilisation of such peoples, or in a certain measure regarding the evolution of their languages, it seems very likely that it has been much less important, from the physiological point of view, than the role played by the most ancient populations of whom, after all, it must be remembered, we know almost nothing except that they already existed before the epoch of the first Egyptian dynasty.
In general we have a tendency to place much too near to us facts whose date we ignore and to put into periods with whose history we are approximately familiar, events which generally have preceded these periods by many centuries or even by many thousands of years and which, moreover, have required several centuries or even several millennia for their integral development. This tendency may be remarked in many authors who deal with the formation of countries or peoples, and it is necessary to react against such an unfortunate habit.
It seems indeed that the Sahara has not always been the desert that it is today, but its drying up probably occurred no more quickly than the transformation into dry land of the ancient sea which extended where now the Isle of France is found. We should not forget that the limits assigned by Herodotus to the arable portion of Libya about five centuries BCE were sensibly the same as those which we observe today in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripolitania, and in Cyrenaica. In the same way, the little that the Egyptian monuments reveal to us of the Negro populations of Africa tends to establish that these were nearly in the same condition and that they occupied nearly the same territories six thousand years ago as today. In reality, the formation of the Negro and Negroid peoples must have been accomplished in its broad lines at the time of Sesostris and perhaps even still earlier.
Changes have assuredly intervened since then. Groups have been built up, others have become dissociated. Portions of them have moved from one point to another, and conquests and migrations have taken place, which have caused the disappearance of ancient tribes and the birth of new ones. States have appeared and crumbled away. In a word, Negro Africa has lived like all other parts of the human world. But without any doubt, it had already arrived at adulthood long before the epoch of the first historic document that has come down to us.
On the whole, the civilisation of the Negroes themselves does not appear to have undergone very profound modifications during thousands of years. Even in our day, there exist more or less numerous Negro peoples whose material development seems to have remained at the same stage where we find it at the time of the Pharaohs; their garments, arms, and utensils being identical with the garments, arms and utensils carried by the Negroes represented on the paintings and bas-reliefs of ancient Egypt.
However, in this matter evolution has been inevitably more marked than in the domain of physical anthropology. It has also been very much aided by contact with superior civilisations which developed in North Africa at the historical epoch and, if certain Negro elements have not been able or have not known how to profit from this contact, others, indeed, have certainly benefited from it.
Detail of a funerary statue (Dakakari).
Terracotta, height: 73 cm.
Private collection.
The marks on the face of this terracotta are characteristic of the Afo people from Nigera. This statue was honoured once a year with ritual libations from its placement on the grave of an important person.
Eyema Byeri statue (Fang).
Cameroon.
Wood, brass, mirror, black patina, height: 50 cm.
ABG Collection.
All of the communities among the several groups which make up the “Fang” area practised the same ancestral worship. These groups are comprised of people from the three countries of the African Atlantic Equatorial and were named after the 19th century population of the North-Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Their worship consists of preserving the skulls of the dead which are symbolically guarded by wooden statues and include several levels of initiation, as found in So.
Between the Nyong and Lokounjué rivers, north of the Ntumu area in Southern Cameroon, many Beti populations (Ewondo, Ngumba, Eton) and their coastal neighbours (Mabea) developed. The geometric stylisation of their original statues is easily recognisable with rounded shoulders, conical breasts, and an abundance of metal adornment. The round head, reflective heart-shaped eyes, hat of shells, and remarkable femininity make this particular Byeri effigy among the most beautiful examples of the Ngumba style.
The Negroes of Africa at the Time of Herodotus
I have said above that it would perhaps be proper to attribute the local