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.
267. Egyptian Radiations
Ancient Egyptian influences have penetrated Africa more significantly than has generally been thought. It is only recently that a beginning has been made in tracing them out in detail in the Nile Sudan. For so intensive a civilization as that of Egypt to exist in juxtaposition to the southeastern Hamitic tribes and the Negroes for five or six thousand years without radiating innumerable elements of culture into their life would be unparalleled. In fact the dynastic Egyptians used materials like ostrich feathers that were imported from far south, and depicted Negroid physical types. The trade and association involved must have flowed both ways. The elements most typical of Egyptian civilization, and its fabric and organization, need by no means have been imparted along with the elements that were transmitted. The fact that they were not seems to be what has delayed wide recognition of Egyptian influence in Negro Africa. The general character of the culture of a modern central African tribe and of the ancient Egyptians being so profoundly different, diffused culture ingredients would therefore often appear among the Negroes in a different form, and always in a different setting, thus tending to disguise their historic connection. The failure of certain Egyptian traits to seep through Africa is also readily accounted for. A backward population broken up into small communities without much stability would have difficulty fitting such an art as writing into their scheme of life, in fact would find it useless. It is therefore not surprising that none of the un-Mohammedanized tribes of the continent write. Similarly, masonry would be needless, perhaps economically unfeasible, under the prevailing social conditions of central Africa. On the other hand, so obviously utilitarian an art as iron working might be quickly taken up, once it had been brought into a simple technique. In the same way, an adaptable domestic animal or plant would tend to be accepted and diffused, while a concomitant scheme of political organization or elaborated religious system might fail to make even a beginning of penetration. It is in this way that several animals of Asiatic origin came to be kept through considerable parts or almost the whole of Africa; the horse, camel, sheep, fowl, for instance, of which at least the first two entered through the gateway of Egypt.
This does not mean that all constituents of African culture have their origin in Egypt; still less that the colors or patterns of African cultures can be derived from that country. However great a bulk of culture may be absorbed by one people from another, the organization which is given this, the stamp put upon it, is necessarily more or less distinctive, because the introduced constituents meet others already established; and especially because the recipient culture, even if low, already possesses a form of its own into which it unconsciously attempts to fit the new content, and into which, unless the influx is sudden and great, it usually succeeds in fitting the imports for a time. However, any specific culture trait common to ancient Egypt and the modern Negroes is suspect of a common origin, which ordinarily—though not universally—would mean an Egyptian or more remote origin. Yet the resolution of such a suspicion is not always easy. Much depends on the extent and continuity of the geographical distribution of the trait, and on the actuality and specificity of the resemblance. On these points the necessary information is often still incomplete.
The general relation of Africa as a whole to Egypt is paralleled by the relation of western Europe of four thousand years ago to the Orient. The bronze, cereals, tamed animals, and many other culture elements of Europe, including religious traits like the ax cult, can be derived from the Near East. But the cities, monarchies, temples, inscriptions, astronomy, and art of the Orient had not penetrated to farther Europe. Moreover, European Bronze Age culture was not merely Oriental civilization with half or three-fourths its content omitted. It enjoyed an organization of its own, followed local and at least partly original trends, possessed what might metaphorically be called an organic unity as great as that of any Oriental culture.
268. The Influence of Other Cultures
Two other great cultural influences have long affected Africa. As far back as the strictly historic period extends, its Mediterranean shore has been generally under the control of peoples belonging to Western civilization—Carthaginians, Romans, or Arabs. As in the case of Egypt, it is unthinkable that the cultures thus planted in the north could have been wholly without effect on the remoter parts of the continent. In fact, for the Arabs, who both penetrated the farthest and are the most recent comers, influence far into the Sudan is manifest. The other exposure was toward the east, and here, as might be expected, Indian influences, chiefly sea-borne through Arab restlessness, have been potent. Eastern Africa has hump-backed cattle, cotton, the pit-loom, perhaps the fowl, from this source. Madagascar, though mainly Negro in race, is Malaysian in speech and prevailingly Malaysian in culture as the result of similar maritime influences from the east.
In these lights, much of African culture which cannot yet be definitely traced to an extra-African source and which until recently was generally assumed to be of purely native origin, may prove to be due to transmission from Asia or Europe. The powerful kingdoms repeatedly established by successful leaders among both Sudan and Bantu Negroes, kingdoms embracing diverse tribes and sometimes continuing under the same dynasty for several centuries, may be due to Egyptian or Mohammedan example. The same can be said for the prevalence of slavery, which is both more widespread and more important economically in Africa than in any other large region of similarly retarded cultural level. Possibly the frequency of polygyny belongs in the same category. It is true that Negro economic life is generally so organized that wives represent investment and create wealth. This fact might be the result of the influence of old economic tendencies upon introduced polygyny. Or the form of marriage might be the outcome of the economic scheme of life characteristic of Africa. Yet even in the latter case an indirect foreign causation can be suspected, since primitive peoples, at any rate those unquestionably beyond the influences of the Eur-Asian civilizations, like the Australians and Americans, generally do not place heavy social stress on wealth. The African point of view as regards economic success, with the African attitude toward marriage as a consequence, may therefore be partly due to extra-African stimulus and example.
Such stimulus seems more easily demonstrable for the proverbs and riddles which abound in Africa, since proverbs were completely and riddles almost wholly wanting in the western hemisphere, and are therefore not the native and spontaneous outflow of the human mind which our own familiarity with them might tempt us to take for granted (§ [90]).