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.
Physical Characters.
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.
Mental Characters.
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.