266. Africa
Africa is the second largest of the continents, the most compact and least indented, and, except for Australia, the most deficient in great mountain systems and the most arid. The only considerable forested area lies in its west central portion; the remainder ranges from parkland through steppe to desert. The population is the densest of any continent reckoned as prevailingly uncivilized: a hundred and twenty-five millions or more, some ten to a dozen souls to the square mile.
As regards its races, it is important to remember that the northern third or half of Africa is inhabited by native “whites.” There is much confusion on this point. We tend to say African when we mean Negro. Until recently the word Moor in north European countries often meant Negro, although it denotes Mauretanians, Moroccans, who are Caucasians. It is true that almost across the breadth of Africa there is a transition zone in which it is arbitrary to classify the population as definitely Negro or Caucasian. But over the vaster bulk of the continent, there is never doubt as to the substantial distinctness of the racial stocks.
The oldest stone age is well represented. Implements of Chellean type in particular have been discovered in a number of areas. Whether these are contemporary with the Chellean remains of Europe is not wholly certain, since they are generally surface finds. An Upper Palæolithic phase, the Capsian, with three sub-periods, is well established for North Africa (§ [215]). It was approximately coeval with the Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and probably Azilian of western Europe, and influenced them. Syria and Spain were largely Capsian in culture. The Neolithic is less well marked as a distinctive phase in Africa; and evidences of a separate Bronze Age, other than in Egypt, have nowhere been discerned. There is a bronze art with casting in lost molds in Benin. This is of undetermined origin. It may be ancient; but so far as can be told to-day, iron came into use in much of Africa as early as bronze, and is worked by modern tribes who do not know bronze. Dolmens and other megalithic monuments are abundant in north Africa, absent south of the Sahara. Some of them are later than the similar European megaliths, since iron horse-bits have been found associated with them. It is evident from this summary that Europe and Africa have been closely associated in their prehistoric culture, especially in its remote stages. Two sets of fossil human remains corroborate the connection: Grimaldi man of Italy was pre-Negroid in type, Rhodesian man more or less Neandertaloid.
Iron is smelted, worked, and used throughout Africa except among the dwarf tribes. Apparatus and technique are usually simple, but efficient. Smiths often constitute a caste, sometimes a wandering one. Some tribes rank them highly, others repute them wizards, nearly all accord them a special social position. There is no other area so large and culturally so backward as Africa south of the Mohammedan belt, in which an iron industry flourishes. The existence of the art therefore raises a problem. Some have thought that its origin was indigenous, that perhaps even Egypt derived its knowledge of iron from Negro peoples. On the whole, however, it is much more probable that the reverse holds. In the more than three thousand years since iron was worked in Egypt, the process could readily have been transmitted through the continent. The long lapse of time, the distances traversed, the comparative cultural backwardness of central and south Africa, would allow for, in fact would almost dictate, both the simplicity and the specializations of the technique.