[Anthropology by Robert Marett]@TWC D-Link bookAnthropology CHAPTER IV 30/43
The negroes did not have Africa, that is, Africa south of the Sahara, all to themselves.
In and near the equatorial forest-region of the west the pure type prevails, displaying agricultural pursuits such as the cultivation of the banana, and, farther north, of millet, that must have been acquired before the race was driven out of the more open country.
Elsewhere occur mixtures of every kind with intrusive pastoral peoples of the Mediterranean type, the negro blood, however, tending to predominate; and thus we get the Fulahs and similar stocks to the west along the grassland bordering on the desert; the Nilotic folk amongst the swamps of the Upper Nile; and throughout the eastern and southern parkland the vigorous Bantu peoples, who have swept the Bushmen and the kindred Hottentots before them down into the desert country in the extreme south-west.
It may be added that Africa has a rich fauna and flora, much mineral wealth, and a physical configuration that, in respect to its interior, though not to its coasts, is highly diversified; so that it may be doubted whether the natives have reached as high a pitch of indigenous culture as the resources of the environment, considered by itself, might seem to warrant.
If the use of iron was invented in Africa, as some believe, it would only be another proof that opportunity is nothing apart from the capacity to grasp it. Of the Australian aborigines something has been said already.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|