"With regard to its Negro population, Africa in contemporary opinion offers no historical enigma which calls for a solution, because from all the information supplied by our explorers and ethnologists, the history of civilization proper in the continent begins, as far as concerns its inhabitants, only with the Mohammedan invasion.
"Before the introduction of a genuine faith and a higher standard of culture by the Arabs, the nations had neither political organization nor, strictly speaking, any religion, nor any industrial development. None but the most primitive instincts determine the lives and conduct of the Negroes who lack every kind of ethical inspiration. Every judicial observer and critic of alleged African culture must once for all make up his mind to renounce the charm of poetry and wizardry of fairy lore, all those things which in other parts of the world remind us of a past fertile in legend and song; that is to say, must bid farewell to the attractions offered by the Beyond of History, by the hope of eventually realizing the tangible impalpable realm conjured up in the distance which time has veiled within its mists, and by the expectation of ultimately wresting some relics of antiquity every now and again from the lap of the earth.
"If the soil of Africa is turned up today by the colonist's plough share, no ancient weapon will lie in the furrow; if the virgin soil be cut by a canal, its excavation will reveal no ancient tomb; and if the ax effects a clearing in the primeval forest, it will nowhere ring upon the foundations of an old world palace. Africa is poorer in record history than can be imagined. 'Black Africa' is a continent which has no mystery, nor history!"
But now this view of Black Africa and its peoples so widespread and well established a generation ago is being slowly dissipated and a new and revolutionary view of the mysterious contents is building itself in its stead. The facts and forces bringing about this great change fall into three main classes; they are of an historical, archaeological and ethnological character.
The real beginning of this change of opinion may be said to date from the capture of the old African city of Benin by the British military forces in the year 1897. The economic and political aspects of the incident do not concern us here, but from an anthropological point of view it proved to be one of the most important incidents of the nineteenth century. For as Ling Roth,[2] the noted traveler and ethnologist, has said, "the taking of Benin City opened up to us the knowledge of the existence of hitherto unknown African craft, the productions of which will hold their own among some of the best specimens of antiquity of modern times."
Many of these objects of art were carried away from Benin by the members of the invading expedition to Europe, where they created a profound impression and astounding surprise in scientific circles throughout the continent. C. H. Read, in a paper before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, on the "Art of Benin City," the year following their discovery, says: "It need scarcely be said that at the first sight of these remarkable works of art we were at once astounded at such an unexpected find."[3]
Just about this time, and continuing down to the present day, a number of Oriental scholars began to bring out modern language translations of the works of numerous Arab writers bearing upon African history—chief among them being the works of El Bekri, Ibn Batuta and Ibn Khaldoun. The most important, however, at least from one angle, was a translation of the Tarikh es Sudan, or The History of the Sudan, which is not the work of an Arab at all, but the joint work of several Sudanese blacks. In its original form it was written both in Arabic and in the Songhay languages. The book was translated into French by M. Houdas, the eminent French professor of the Oriental School of Languages of Paris.
"The book," says Lugard,[4] "is a wonderful document, the narrative of which deals mainly with the modern history of the Songhay Empire, relating the rise of this black civilization there in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and its decadence up to the middle of the seventeenth century.... But it is not merely an authentic narrative. It is for the unconscious light which it sheds upon the life, manners, politics and literature of the country that it is valuable. Above all, it possesses the crowning quality displayed usually in creative poetry alone, of presenting a vivid mind picture of the character of the men with whom it deals. It has been called the 'Epic of the Sudan.' It lacks the charm of form, but in all else the description is well merited. Its pages are a treasure house of information for the careful student, and the volume may be read many times without extracting from it more than a small part of all that it contains."
Barth, who obtained some fragments of an Arabic copy when he was on his way to Timbuctoo, goes so far as to say that the book forms "one of the most important additions that the present age has made to the history of mankind."[5] Like the unknown culture which the Benin bronzes revealed, the translation of these documents brought to the attention of the learned and academic circles of the Western World, in a more available form, surprising accounts of the sometime existence of powerful and age-old kingdoms and empires in the heart of Black Africa, which hitherto had scarcely been suspected.
Following close upon this was the cursory but illuminating report of Une mission archeologique au Sudan francais, headed by the soldier-ethnologist, Lieutenant Louis Desplaynes. The report, Le Plateau Central Nigirien, Paris, 1907, brought to Europe much valuable information bearing upon the past cultures of the practically unknown Nigerian plateau regions.
Passing over a few very important ethnological studies bearing for the most part upon present-day cultures, we come last of all to what is in the truest sense of the word the wonderful and astounding revelations regarding the pre-historic culture of an ancient Negro race on the West Coast of Africa. These revelations were brought to light as the result of the publications by Leo Frobenius of his Der Afrika Sprach in Berlin in 1913.[6] This was a popular account of the experiences and findings of the German Inner African Exploration Expedition during its travels in the Nigerian area for the years 1910-1912. As important as are the ethnological and archaeological finds of this expedition, which will be considered further on, one of its most significant features was its bold advocacy and support of an idea which has been hesitantly advanced in a few circles ever since the study of the Benin bronzes and the Nubian monuments, namely, the existence of a genuinely superior type of culture in Central Africa in pre-classical and pre-Christian times.
Such, then, by way of introduction is the nature of the sources from which comes the influence which is slowly and haltingly, yet surely, bringing about the change in current opinion regarding "Black Africa" as is evidenced by the timely but hitherto unsuccessful effort of Harvard University to treat the records of the African peoples scientifically in keeping with the standard set in the first volume of the Varia Africana. This paper, however, as may be inferred from its title, does not undertake to survey the facts covering the whole field, but restricts itself to materials of a more or less archaeological character, that is, to the architecture, tombs and the arts and crafts of a small section of this ancient land.