Several palæethnologists go so far as to think that the iron industry was imported into Europe from Africa. At all events skilful smiths (Fig. [135]) are found in the centre of Africa among Negro tribes somewhat backward in other respects.
Historic data are lacking in regard to most of the peoples of Africa, especially for remote periods, except in Egypt. However, combining the various historic facts known to us with the recent data of philology and those, still more recent, of anthropology, we may assume with sufficient probability the following superposition of races and peoples in Africa.
The primitive substratum of the population is formed of Negroes, very tall and very black, in the north; of Negrilloes, brown-skinned dwarfs, in the centre; of Bushmen, short, yellow, and steatopygous, in the south. On this substratum was deposited at a distant but indefinite period the so-called Hamitic element of European or Asiatic origin, the supposed continuators of the Cro-Magnon race.[484] This element has been preserved in a comparatively pure state among the Berbers, and perhaps has been transformed by interminglings with the Negroes, into a new race, analogous to the Ethiopian, with which we must probably connect the ancient Egyptians. The Berbers drove back the Negroes towards the south, while the Ethiopians, a little later, filtered through the Negroid mass from east to west. This infiltration continues at the present day.
A new wave of migration followed that of the Hamites. These were the southern Semites or Himyarites who crossed from the other side of the Red Sea. Probably as far back as the Egyptian neolithic period they began the slow but sure process of modifying the Berbers, Ethiopians, and Negroes of the north-east of Africa.
The Negro populations driven back towards the south were obliged to intermingle with the Negrillo pygmies, the Ethiopians, and Hottentot-Bushmen, and gave birth to the Negro tribes composing to-day the great linguistic family called Bantu. Bantu migrations, at first from the north to the south, then in the opposite direction and towards the west, have been authenticated.[485] As a consequence of the interminglings due to these migrations, the Negrilloes and the Hottentots have been absorbed to a great extent by the Bantus, and the rare representatives of these races, still existing in a state of relative purity, are to-day driven back into the most unhealthy and inhospitable regions of Central and Southern Africa. The last important invasion of alien peoples into Africa was that of the Northern Semites or Arabs. It was, rather, a series of invasions, ranging from the first century B.C. to the fifteenth century, when the climax was reached. The Arab tribes have profoundly modified certain Berber and Ethiopian populations from the somatic point of view as well as the ethnic. Moreover, the Arab influence under the form of Islamism continues to the present time its onward march over the dark continent, making from the north-east to the south-west. The Guinea coast, the basin of the Congo, and Southern Africa alone have as yet remained untouched by this influence. Let us note in conclusion the Malay-Indonesian migration towards Madagascar, and the European colonisation begun in the seventeenth century.
FIG. 135.—Arts and crafts among the Kafirs.
To the left, pottery making (coiling method);
to the right, smiths and a breaker of iron ore;
in the middle, woman playing a harp.
(Drawing by P. Moutet, partly after Wood.)
EXISTING POPULATIONS OF AFRICA.
Putting on one side the Madagascar islanders and the European and other colonists,[486] the thousands of peoples and tribes of the “dark continent” may be grouped, going from north to south, into six great geographical, linguistic, and, in part, anthropological units: 1st, the Arabo-Berbers or Semito-Hamites; 2nd, the Ethiopians or Kushito-Hamites; 3rd, the Fulah-Zandeh; 4th, the Negrilloes or Pygmies; 5th, the Nigritians or Sudanese-Guinea Negroes; 6th, the Bantus; 7th, the Hottentot-Bushmen.[487]