Papers in African Pre-history
The prehistoric origins of African culture
Remarkable and exciting discoveries that have been made in Africa during the last five years suggests that it was here that tool-making first appeared in the geological record, and that it was then carried to other continents by hominid forms, the discovery of which has necessitated completely new thinking about the biological development of man. In the same way the discovery undreamed of twenty years ago, of urban centres in the near east, dating to as early as the eighth millennium BCE, is providing unique details of life in early Neolithic times and causing pre-historians to look back ever further into the past, almost to the close of the last glacial period, for the first signs of the domestication of plants and animals and settled village life.
Such discoveries are fundamental to the study of the origins and growth of social and economic life and increasing use is being made of the archaeological record by the cultural and anthropologist and ethno-historian, although there is still in places a lingering tendency to consider that prehistory has nothing to offer the student of present-day culture. The success of collaboration between anthropologists, linguists, historians and archaeologists has, however, already been amply demonstrated in several African countries. While, therefore, it is now obvious that archaeology can provide some if the best source material for the reconstruction of cultural antecedents, population movements, and even of the origins of some social and religious practices on a factual basis, it is the new ways in which the archaeologist is using his data that render the results and potential so valuable. The artefacts in the Bed I Living-sites show that there can be little doubt that the east African australopithecines were working stone for use as tools. Indeed, their Pliocene ancestors had been using tools for millions of years. Archaeologists have discovered a stone hand-axe dating back millions of years in a site in Sheikh, Somalia.
Elliot Smith, though basically in with G. Sergi, was inclined to accord independent status to the Nordic or Teutonic races, and wanted to add to the Euro-Africans; the ancient Sumerians, the Arab Dravidians, and other dwellers on the shores of the Indian Ocean, forming a new but very loosely defined entity called the Brown race ‘in reference to the distinctive colours of their skin.’ The
Mediterranean and Hamites are sub-groups of their race. (pp 110) The introduction of political and social organisation on a wilder scale than the tribes is credited to the Hamites, although it should perhaps be made clear that the position which appears proper to assign to the Hamites is not due to a mere belief in the inherent superiority of the Hamite element; as Greenberg puts it, but to their actual and potential abilities as demonstrated by factual evidence. Any ethno-types which lack chief-ship or Hamitic patriliny may be excluded from consideration as civilisers. The Somali and Oromo, rather than the Egyptians, are to be regarded as the source whence ideas of political growth spread westwards, i.e. these are to be considered the civilisers.
Africa created cereal sorghums long before India, which used African types as parents. The present writer has shown that the term was borrowed from the Hamitic languages; Somali is the cradle of cereal cultivation. (Papers in African prehistory, pp 126)
Emmer wheat and barley were known very early in other centres of civilisation in old world – in Mesopotamia by 7000 BCE (Jamo) and in Egypt in about 4500 BCE (Merimte) moreover, the existence of considerable contact among the ancient centres is increasingly known and documented. Though direct contact between highland Ethiopia and Egypt has not been proved for times predating the Semitic invasion, it is a real possibility. Already about 2600 BCE, the pharaoh Sneferu dispatched to Phoenicia a fleet of forty vessels to obtain cedar logs, which indicates a considerable skill in navigation.
By the time of Sahure (c. 2488-2475 BCE) there are reports of an Egyptian fleet reaching the land of (punt, Hafoon also known as God’s land), a contact which was reaffirmed in other inscriptions, such as that telling of the famous expedition of queen Hatshepsut in 1496 BCE.
It has generally been believed hitherto that the pastoral and agricultural economist of Africa were originally quite distinct, that pastoralism was racial characteristic (Bauman for instance, used cattle-herding as irrefragable evidence for his presence of his eastern Hamites) and even, that the pastoralists were responsible for transmission of the elements of higher culture to negro peoples and for the construction of complex political systems the route sometimes suggested, from Arabia across the horn, is ruled out by absence of all but the most primitive cultures of south Arabia until the first millennium BCE and in Somali until the Christian era. Moreover, the word for cow in a great variety of Sudanese and east African languages can be referred to the Nubian form Ti (pp. 59-69).
The civilisations of Africa are the civilisations of the Hamites, it is the history record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the negro and the bushman, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilised Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and the Somali. The incoming Hamites were pastoral. 35000 years ago or 35000 BCE; there is quite a possibility that this might have been so, for in East Africa, certainly, the later blade and burin industries were the work of populations of this physical type, largely identified today with the Hamites or Cushites of the Horn of Africa.
[4]: Black Athena: The Afro-asiatic roots of classical civilization Volume I: The fabrication of ancient
Greece 1785-1985
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