AFRICAN BEGINNINGS, Olivia Vlahos, Fawcett, Greenich, Conn., 1967

This pretty good popularization of a vast and complex topic, this
well-written, easy to read survey of African prehistory, history
and ethnography begins by drawing to the reader's attention the
inaccuracy of the current view of Africa, the accomplishments and
complexity of the continent's people and the recent realization
Africa may well contain the location of the origin of the human
species.

Chapter One, "Stones and Bones and Pictures" (pp. 9-24), begins
with prehistoric geography, the evolution of species, the Leakeys
and Olduvai Gorge, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Australopithecines,
and modern man.

   They were mighty hunters, these new men, with weapons and
   techniques equal to the most formidable of animals. So efficient
   were they in their work that they may have depleted the game. Of
   course, we can only guess about that. All we know for certain is
   that after the high hunting period, men began to fashion tiny
   blades and points of stone (microliths), used, it would seem, in
   arrows meant to bring down smaller animals and birds, or perhaps
   to be daubed with poison. p. 13

The author proceeds to the weather, to the Sahara teeming with
varied peoples, Saharan rock art of cattle and herders, Saharan
drying and migration, and the diversity, ethnic and linguistic of
Africa. The four great linguistic groupings: Afro-Asiatic,
Nilo-Saharan, Congo-Kordofanian and Khoisan, are mentioned.

Chapter Two, "Egypt and Africa" (pp. 27-43), starts by contrasting
idealistic images of Egypt with the ordinary, practical men exposed
by the deciphering of the hieroglyphs. It continues with the
uncovering of the seemingly greater antiquity of civilization in
Mesopotamia and by underlining the distinctiveness of Egypt. There's
a look at agriculture down the Nile and in the Sahara. There's a
question as to possible Saharan influence on early Egyptian art.

The concluding pages offer a glimpse of ancient Egypt's connection
to the lands south, to Nubia, Napata, Meroe, Kush, Axum.

Chapter Three, "The West African Kings" (pp. 47-62), begins with
Ghana, not modern Ghana, but the old kingdom lying between the
source of the Niger and the Sahara with Koumbi, its capital, near
Oualata, Mauritania.

   To this city in the tenth century came Moslem writers and
   explorers, traveling by overland caravans. Ibn Haukel and after
   him El Bekri were both astonished by the wealth of Ghana's
   ruler, from whose royal title the country took its name. p. 47

They were also impressed by the royal stone palace and the regal
processions.

   The royal cathedral was a grove of trees so large as nearly to
   surround the city. Here were buried all the former kings of
   Ghana. Here each reigning monarch could himself expect to be
   laid to rest. Here, too, would go his mother and sister, in death
   as in life of nearly as much importance as he. Heir to Ghana's
   gold and glory was always a royal nephew, never a royal son.
   p. 48

The author mentions this area, West Africa, in connection with the
invention of agriculture in Africa. When George Murdock sought the
area where most native African crops were cultivated, this proved to
centre on the Upper Niger.

This leads to the discovery of the Nok culture (c. 1,000 B.C.E. to
200 C.E.) near Jos, Nigeria.

   The Nok people were farmers. Grains of their millet have been
   found (and age tested). They were artists, too. Beautiful little
   heads of fired clay found all through the site prove this beyond
   a doubt. They suggest even more. They suggest a long artistic
   tradition among the Nok people and a society with enough means,
   enough leisure time to allow such a tradition to develop. p. 51

This tradition is seen as spreading through many centuries to and
along the coast, resulting in much superb work. And, it was evident,
in Dahomey, the powerful kingdon between modern Ghana and Nigeria.
It was founded c. 1625 and only fell to France in 1892. There's
reference to the power and influence of the king, but also the
co-operative nature of workers and the importance of work leaders.

As the Great Inca, the King of Dahomey, was concerned with the
counting of his people:

   Pebbles in sacks gave the numbers, pictures on the sacks told the
   village, and color of sack and various emblems supplied the other
   information. The count of children was kept in two sets of
   ingenious boxes--one for boys, one for girls--thirteen boxes to a
   set. Pebbles were put into the first boxes as births were
   reported and removed as deaths occurred or yearly as all
   graduated to the next higher box. After thirteen, girls became
   marriageable and boys subject to the "draft," and their pebbles
   were sent along to fill adult bags elsewhere.

   The population boxes and sacks were kept in a long, low building
   with many doors and many rooms, each representing a king's reign.
   After an old king's death, always his favorits son and successor
   was brought first to the house of the census. Priests guided him
   from room to room, showing him Dahomeans in their numbers, reign
   by reign. "Make the numbers grow," he was told. "Protect them,
   nourish them, make them great." p. 56

There is reference to the supervisory role of the "mothers," the
wives of the king, to royal messengers running in relays ninety
miles in three days, to temples and gods, to the honouring of
ancestors, and to the rights of women who could earn, inherit and
control money. The chapter closes with mention of Dahomey's role in
the slave trade.

Chapter Four, "East African Kings" (pp. 63-79), begins with the
importance of cattle and the hierarchy of Tutsi, Hutu and Twa.

   Farming, of course, was beneath contempt. That was the business
   of the Hutu, who were forbidden to own cows other than malformed
   or barren ones. Even farm foods were publicly scorned.
   Self-respecting Tutsi professed to live entirely on a liquid
   diet--the milk and butter (and perhaps in older days the blood)
   of their herds. Of course, they were not above a social pot of
   beer made from Hutu millet or Hutu bananas. And one may suppose
   that a good deal of porridge was consumed in private. p. 66

The Twa, the original inhabitants, were hunters who also entertained
their Tutsi lords. The Hutu were farmers, doctors, tailors, smiths,
drummers and magicians. Although lords, the Tutsi had learned the
language of the more numerous Hutu.

Then there's reference to the kingdom of Ankole and the mysterious
Chwezi passing through, but leaving behind knowledge of governing
and the royal drum and beaded veil.

   Addressed as "He," housed and warmed and provided with a consort
   drum, tended by a clan whose members were devoted to "His" care,
   the drum was thought to be as royal as a living king and a good
   deal more compassionate. p. 72

The king made the rounds, staying with his supporting subordinates.
He also assisted those in need. It was an heroic society with
warriors, cattle raids and praise poetry, often composed on the spot
by the victorious warrior.

The king was seen as the personification of the kingdom.

   He could not bend a knee lest the territory shrink. He could not
   suffer illness or show age. Whatever a mother's feeling, whatever
   a sister's pride, the nation came first, and it could not be
   allowed to weaken with its monarch's advancing years. At the
   first sign of a wrinkle or grey hair his reign came to an end.
   Some say he died by poison self-administered. Some say he was
   strangled by those who loved him best. p. 76

There's reference to the deposit of the royal body in the sacred
forest, to the intense competition of the possible heirs until one
lived in the land and to that one, for the only time in his life,
pounding victoriously on the royal drum.

Chapter Five, "Kings of Central Africa" (pp. 81-96), begins with the
Portuguese arrival in the Great Kingdom of Kongo in 1482, perhaps
three centuries after its founding. Close ties were established
between Kongo and Portugual, and Kongolese princes travelled to
Europe. There were other kingdoms further inland, some outlasting
the 16th Century demise of Kongo.

   All the way across the continent in that great swath of central
   savanah lying below the jungle these kingdoms could be found.
   They were, every one, kingdoms with much governmental machinery
   and a high regard for art. No cattle aristocrats here and no
   cattle either, for this was the domain of the tsetse fly,
   transmitter of sleeping sickness to cattle and to men. Kings of
   the central savanah were solid farmers who might dabble a bit in
   trade. And like king, like people. p. 82

These are Bantu ("men") and the issue of the Bantu homeland in the
Camerouns highlands is raised. There's reference to crops introduced
from Southeast Asia (bananas, yams, taros), to iron, to Bantu
migration, to characteristics of Kongo-Kordofanian languages, to
inheritance from maternal uncles, and then a look at the Bemba. The
royal Crocodile Clan ran things, sometimes providing replacements
for kings dictatorial enough to provoke civil war.

The Lozi come next with their similarities to ancient Egyptians and
their sincerely beloved kings.

   For almost as far back as the Lozi can trace their royal house,
   they remember specific acts of kindness, care, and thoughtful
   planning. They remember how one king provided for the families of
   men killed in war, how another saw to it that taxes were
   collected fairly, how still another personally rescued this man
   and that from debt. Unlike the rulers of many African states,
   Lozi kings adamantly refused to deal with slave traders. p. 93

Chapter Six, "South African Kings" (pp. 97-110), begins with the
cattle people below the region of the tsetse fly. Clannish,
hierarchical, male supremicist, warlike (The Zulu Chaka is
mentioned) and more diplomatic (The Swazi king and mother are
presented). There is reference to the Swazi Incwala festival.

   It was at once a pledge of allegiance, an affirmation of faith,
   and the glue that bound the people together. In it the king was
   purified and revitilized for another year, "doctored" with sea
   water from the Indian Ocean, and protected against all harm. For
   his health was (and is) the strength of the Swazi nation and its
   future. During the Incwala the king took a bite from the first
   ripened fruits of the year and blessed the harvest and the
   planting ahead. He watched as the sacred history of the Swazi was
   sung and mimed. And he steadfastly endured as--instead of praise
   and adoration--his people offered scorn and threats and, in
   dance, attacked him. pp. 105-106

It was a ritual focus, neutralizing negative attitudes.

Chapter Seven, "The Kings of Zimbabwe" (pp. 111-121), begins with
the famous ruins, with gold mining, with Arab traders and the
Portuguese. There is the alleged conversion of the king in 1561 and
the quick death of the Jesuit responsible. There is the mistreatment
of the king's people by the Portuguese and the use of military force
against the Europeans. There is politics, internal and external,
with at last the arrival of the British and the White Man's arrogant
supposition that any of many remote peoples must have left those
ruins, but surely not the people living here.

   In the 1940s, when archaeology and the old traditions were at
   last brought together--notably by H.A. Wieschhoff, a German
   archaeologist--there was a quick about face. Outside influences
   took a back seat to native invention. Zimbabwe, it was decided,
   had been conceived in Africa, for Africans, and built with
   African labor. p. 117

Chapter Eight, "A King Who is a Queen" (pp. 123-139), looks at the
Lovedu and their queen so renouned for her weather magic. Her rule
enhanced respect for women in the realm.

   The Lovedu valued all those qualities which help people to live
   together pleasantly: willingness to compromise, moderation,
   geniality, having neither more nor less than anybody else. p. 128

They did not rely on military strength, but even the great Zulu
warrior Chaka came petitioning the Lovedu queen for rain. And so
this land whose rightful queen alone could open the door to her
shield and spear on the death of her predecessor endured in the
midst of warrior kingdoms.

Chapter Nine, "Of Elephants and Men" (pp. 137-155), looks at
hunters, Bushmen and Pygmy. Once widespread, as bones and rock art
from Tanzania to the Cape attest, the Bushmen have been squeezed
into the Kalahari:

   Besides describing the Bushmen and their old way of life, the
   paintings in South Africa unfold much of the Bushman's
   tragedy--by now almost forgotten even by the Bushman himself.
   Impossible to place in time, unclear about the tribal identities
   of invading groups, the pictures are nevertheless very specific
   as to color and as to action. They tell how tall black men came
   down from the north driving cattle, and how, when the Bushman
   hunted those cattle (thinking them another, though quiter sort of
   game), he was punished for his mistake. The paintings tell, too,
   how tall white men came up from the south, also driving cattle,
   and riding horses, how they appropriated the Bushman's wells,
   raided his honey trees, closed in his traps, and killed the
   Bushman for defending his own. p. 139

There is a description of the plight of Bushmen, of their way of
life with such things as marital harmony being enhanced by the young
adult hunter taking in betrothal an eight year old and providing for
her, though the marriage awaits her womanhood, of men staying with
the wife's family until the birth of three children, of the
Bushman's independence and hardiness in so severe a climate.

Pygmies in the jungle trade with the Bantu, and often do much to
accommodate the villagers so sure of superiority, but so aware the
forest is the Pygmy's.

   The Mbuti Pygmies favor two styles of hunting. There are the
   archer bands, whose territories lie in the eastern part of the
   Ituri forest. They hunt with dogs (who never bark), use bows and
   poison-tipped arrows, sometimes ambush game, move ever silently
   on the trail. And there are the net hunters around the Epulu
   River. Each married man owns a net a hundred feet or so long.
   Once on likely hunting grounds, these hunters spread their nets
   in a wide semicircle and wait for their women and children,
   singing and clapping loudly, to drive game into the nets, where
   it is promptly speared. p. 150

Lone hunters prove their skill by hunting an elephant, then eaten by
the whole band. The forest provides much: vegetable food, honey,
bark, vines, poisons, medicines, shelter, etc. Marriage requires the
groom to balance the wife he takes with a female relative who'll
marry a male relative of his wife. There's reference to the women's
group, the men's group, the forest as divine and tubes that trumpet
wakefulness and thanks to that divinity.

Chapter Ten, "The Village Universe" (pp. 157-170), begins with the
Amba Bantu village neighbour of the Ituri Pygmies. The traditional
concept divided people into only two categories, relatives and
enemies. Unhostile villages unrelated by blood would pretend to be,
and traders venturing afar would become blood brothers. "One did not
marry relatives" (p. 159). Also, sickness and misfortune at home was
proof of relatives using witchcraft. This leads to a discussion of
witchcraft, African and Western.

Next she looks at the Tonga along the Zambesi with larger
settlements and broader outlook than the Amba hemmed in by the
forest. Tonga inheritance was from the maternal uncle. The first
settling family was especially important.

   The living head of such a founding family was called sikatomgo,
   and he was reponsible for the spiritual well-being of the whole
   neighborhood. It was he who owned the local shrine. It was he who
   interceded with the spirits (often thought of as ancestors so old
   as to be nearly forgotten) to bring rain. It was his duty to get
   the annual cycle of agricultural activities under way in the
   right order and with due regard for tradition. And, as
   representative of the first settler, it was to him that the
   neighborhood farmers brought "first fruits," earliest samples of
   the harvest. p. 167

There is reference to the shades of ancestors being inherited, along
with a deceased's obligations and entitlements. And, the chapter
closes with the submerging of the Tonga country under the waters of
the Kariba dam.

Chapter Eleven, "Kin and Cattle" (pp. 173-188), begins with the
Nilotes and their connection to and dependence on their cattle.
These are a mobile people, conscious of individual honor, of the
lessening ties as one proceeds from close kinship outwards and of
the influence of rainmakers.


There is mention of the Karamojong and cattle raids right up to
recent times. Then in the southwest there are the Hottentots and
Herero, both devastated by Europeans. Some Herero fled to
Bechaunoland. There an anthropologist studied them remarking on the
sacred first tasting of milk, on women praying to their husband's
ancestors, and on the importance of the matrileneal line and the
consequences of this.

Chapter Twelve, "Age Grades and Graduations" (pp. 191-200), begins
with the Kikuyu, mentioning initiation of girls at thirteen and boys
at eighteen. There is then the natural progression through the
stages of warrior, apprentice elder, elder, peace elder and
religious elder. Welcomed into the land by Bushmen, taught about
cattle by the Masai, the Kikuyu honoured the land. There is
reference to polygyny, to the near absence of jealousy, to the
penalty of sticking out and being accused of witchcraft.

Chapter Thirteen, "Peers and Neighbors" (pp 201-212), begins with
the Yakyusa who separate the generations. Boys from about 11 to 18
live separately in huts close to the parental abode where they eat.
Girls married when they became women, but men waited for possession
of cattle, and were hence generally a decade older. The Yakyusa had
kings of wholly spiritual function, presiding at the sacred spots,
ensuring rain, good crops, health and happiness. There are also more
mundane chiefs. Those to become chiefs lived in a darkened dwelling
studying, and emerged to power in the simultaneous moving up of
their generation to control throughout the territory. On this
emergence a grove was planted which became the chief's burial grove.

   The Nakyusa New Year is the time of throwing out rubbish, the
   time when fires are extinguished and the old ashes--the ashes by
   which too many ancestral shades have lingered, in which perhaps
   too many witches  have cooked forbidden food--are scattered. Now
   must the people acknowledge their anger and any resentments which
   they may harbor secretly against a friend. Now do they dance and
   fight mock battles, letting out the bad feelings inside, the
   angry feelings, so that they may be dispatched. Now do they
   kindle new fires on the swept hearths. It is a time of
   purification and beginning again... p. 211

Chapter Fourteen, "Uniforms and Fancy Dress" (pp. 213-225), looks at
the complexity of clubs and groups among the Bamileke in the
Camerouns highlands, a possible homeland of the Bantu.

   Nearly every club has its own clubhouse and its own drums. These
   are pounded to call the meetings together, and every member knows
   which drum is calling whom.

   Best of all, every two years each club stages a big dance for the
   local chief. Nonmembers watch and admire as the clubmen show off
   their fancy uniforms, their masks and sacred carvings, and their
   headdresses. p. 216

There are clubs for many and diverse reasons. They have ranks and
degrees. They include invitations to pay entrance fees, hobnobbing
with the chief or royal mother (who alone of women was honorary
member of every male club), or chief's first wife, and offering
political or military advice.

Chapter Fifteen, "Arabs in East Africa" (pp. 229-240), mentions the
antiquity of contact with Africa's eastern coast, the Trade Winds,
Queen Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt, the early Arab slave traders,
Christian Axum, the spread of Islam, Swahili and the great trading
centres along the coast and islands.

There is a look at Zanzibar and the many peoples who have come
there, including the Omanis who defeated the Portuguese in the mid
Seventeenth Century.

   They did not then occupy neighboring Pemba but many years later
   received a hospitable invitation to do so. The Swahili Pemba
   wanted to depose an unpopular local dynasty and applied to the
   Oman sultan for help. He was only too glad to oblige. The wily
   Pemba chiefs, however, insisted on drawing up a treaty in which
   the sultan had to agree to certain conditions of faith and good
   treatment of his future subjects. All parties then "exchanged
   blood" in the old-fashioned African way to make the pact truly
   binding. The Oman-Pemba treaty served its purpose, apparently,
   for the people of Pemba were not deprived of their lands or
   enslaved. Neither were the treatyless Hadimu of Zanzibar. p. 235

There is reference to the practise of magic, the worship of spirits
and the distance of Allah in the conceptions of many of these
nominal Muslims with little Arabic literacy. Then comes Sultan
Said's move to Zanzibar in 1840 and the focus on growing cloves.

Chapter Sixteen, "Arabs in North Africa" (pp. 241-259), makes the
contrast of the traders to East Africa with the Koran-enthused
armies that swept across the North in the Seventh Century C.E.
There's mention of Taureg and Teda, of the camel introduced in the
mid First Century B.C.E., of the overall indifference of North
Africans to Islam, and the emergence of Ibn Yacin and the
Almoravids. One force of fanatics struck Spain, the other pagan
Ghana. Koumbi was destroyed in 1062 C.E.

This leads to a look at the Taureg in more recent times,
highlighting some differences with Arab Muslims: the Taureg man
marries only one woman, and noble Taureg ladies retain their
property and play the major role in the transmission of oral and
literary culture. The Taureg inherits name and rank maternally and
possessions paternally.

Next comes a look at Mali's capital Timbuctoo, and the famous
pilgrimmage in 1324 of its ruler, Mansa Musa. Ibn Battuta's visit in
the succeeding reign follows, and the increased size of Mali. The
tributary state of Songhai also produced a pilgrim king, one who
waged war with fellow Muslims and with unbelievers alike. In 1590
the Moroccan sherif sent a force armed with firearms across the
desert. Timbuctoo has declined and places such as Kano, Nigeria
risen.

This leads to a look at the Hausa.

   The Hausa had been converts to Islam since the fourteenth
   century, and having borrowed the Arabic alphabet, had written
   down the remembered records of their past. These were the famous
   Kano Chronicles, which were later to be largely destroyed or
   lost, during the last of the great Jihads or Moslem crusades.
   p. 252

The kingdom of Tekrur is mentioned and its possible place as the
homeland of the Fulani. Then comes the extent of Fulani migration,
the coolness of the Hausa in the matter of Islam, the Fulani zealot
Usuman don Fodio and the sweep of Fulani warriors. This is followed
by reference to a mid-Twentieth Century anthropologist, cattle, male
supremecy, the influence of Islam and the continuation of African
ways (polygyny, ancestor worship, witchcraft) within, or
notwithstanding, the over-arching Faith.

The book closes with a little fable as told by a story teller about
elephants coming to a land, complaining about the conditions there,
trying to improve the ways there, going home and still complaining.

This is a superb popularization, very richly illustrated, of the
enormously varied and complex theme of African prehistory, early
history and more recent (though no closer than the second third of
the Twentieth Century) anthropology.

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