Drawings, in the strict sense of the word, are found, in Africa, only in ancient Egypt. They are more closely related to the Bushman paintings of South Africa than to the petrography of the western parts of the continent. Hamitic rock drawings, with depressed lines of contour, and tinted in the intervening surfaces, are seen in Egypt. Prehistoric and early historic figures were found in Egypt, Lesser Africa, and the Guinea Coast. In the east the lines are generally severe, while in the northwest they are rounded. The Hamitic culture zone has no plastic art, among Berber, Bisharin, Somali, Masai, and Hottentot. The Bushman who drew the beautiful rock ornaments has produced no plastic. What is found among this tribe must be considered as Carthaginian.
The primitive Hamite fears representations of the human and animal, from magic. Later the plastic representations have, however, penetrated the Hamitic boundaries, and reached the Nile. The peoples of Lesser and North Africa do not recognize what is on the rocks. The Negro is not gifted in this sense. The Hamite who does not readily see a drawing or picture, and never seems to have produced plastic art, draws well, realistically or ornamentally. The Negro is a good carver but draws very badly. Even those Negroes who recognize every photograph and carve excellently cannot draw.
Many deductions are made in studying the migration of cultures, and many parallels are shown up. One of the relationships found is that between the tattooing of the Neolithic Period of France and that of the living individual near the Niger. The lines run from the ear to the nose. Another well-known feature is the figure of the obese woman which extends from France to Malta. It is quite prevalent in Hamitic art, in the graphic productions of northern Africa, and in Egyptian plastic. Steatopygy, in the living, is natural to the South African tribes. The deduction made is that those models which seemed desirable to the artist, during the stone age of the northwest, still exist in the south. Therefore Hamitic culture must have wandered from the north, east and south.
Other stone-age elements, the stone graves, are found in the Hamitic regions. In Morocco the stone tumuli are explained as remnants of the houses of forebears. When food ran low, goes the tale, the head of the family collected all its members about him, and tore the home down, over them.
Two main types of dwellings are found in Africa, one a cave, the other a pile structure. The Hamitic culture prefers the first, the Ethiopian the latter. The oldest Hamitic "chthonic" bed is a pit. The oven and storehouse is built in the ground. The inhabitants of the Canary Islands, who are the descendants of the ancient Guanches, and most of the Kabyle tribes of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis still have artificial caves, which are, however, not generally known. In Matamata, in the south of Tunis, tunnel-shaped, honeycomb dwellings constitute the newer type of cave dwelling.
Ethiopian "telluric" architecture uses the pile in the construction of beds, huts for guards, dwelling houses, and meeting places. The edifices are round or rectangular, and thatched. Later the thatch is covered with clay. Fortresses are constructed of clay and rafters. In parts of the Soudan the walls are beautifully ornamented with reliefs of humans and animals, or geometrical figures. In the interior of the houses the clay walls are tinted and polished, and the pictures show many beautiful decorative designs.
Beatrice Bickel
A History of the United States Since the Civil War. By Ellis Paxon Oberholtzer. In five volumes. Volume II, 1868-1872. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922. Pp. XI, 649. $4.00.)
This is the second of five volumes of a history of the United States since the Civil War to be completed by this author. Covering the period from 1868 to 1872, this treatise deals in detail with the Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, international questions resulting from the Civil War, the building of railroads, and Oriental problems.