We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Our present models and theories of African history and prehistory are profoundly influenced by the physical anthropologists’ perceptions of human reality in present-day Africa. Professor P. V. Tobias has suggested that the present-day people of Africa, excluding the recent arrivals from Europe and Asia, descended from a common proto-Negriform stock which gave birth first to the so-called “Khoisan” (I am using here the terminology of my source, not the historically justified Khoe and San, meaning the Hottentots and the Bushmen) and later to the Negro genetic type. Of greater importance to archaeologists, who deal mainly with the so-called pre-history, is the fact that, genetically speaking, the difference between the “Khoisan” and the Negroids is smaller than the difference between these two African racial types and all other non-African types. This realisation tends to have one consequence: the pre-historic and even historic developments are generally perceived as explainable from within Africa, without any need for external clues or explanations. Archaeological finds are thus taken for evidence of a basically internal evolution and the finds of foreign glass beads, though very frequent and spread all over Africa, are seen as belonging to the same category as Persian, Chinese, or Arab ceramics and are explained as indication of a coastal trade.
1 P. V. Tobias, "Recent human biological studies in Southern Africa, with special reference to Negroes and Khoisans," Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 40, 3 (1972), p. 116, 120; R. R. Inskeep, The Peopling of Southern Africa, Cape Town, 1978, p. 122.
2 P. S. Garlake, The Kingdoms of Africa, Oxford, 1978, p. 78.
3 Tobias, op. cit., p. 125.
4 T. N. Huffman, "The Early Iron Age and the spread of the Bantu," South African Archaeological Bulletin, 25 (1970), 3.
5 N. J. van der Merwe, "The Iron-Age: a prehistory of Bantu-speaking South Africans," Perspectives on the Southern African Past, University of Cape Town, Centre for African Studies, 1979, Occasional papers, no. 2, p. 101.
6 D. W. Phillipson, The Later Prehistory of Eastern and Southern Africa, London, 1977, p. 292.
7 Phillipson, op. cit., pp. 220, 223, 147.
8 C. Ehret, "Cattle-keeping and milking in eastern and southern Africa", Journal of African History, 8, 1 (1967), pp. 8-9; D. W. Phillipson, "Archaeology and Bantu Linguistics," World Archaeology, 8, 1 (1976), pp. 77-9.
9 T. N. Huffman, "African origins", review of Phillipson's The Later Prehis tory…, in South African Journal of Science, 75 (1979), p. 235.
10 C. A. Hrommník, Indo-Africa: Towards a New Understanding of the History of Sub-Saharan Africa, Cape Town, Juta, 1981, p. 109.
11 Phillipson, op. cit., p. 220.
12 Phillipson, op. cit., p. 214; D. Dalby, "The prehistoric implications of Guthrie's Comparative Bantu: II-problems of cultural vocabulary," J. A. H., 17, 1 (1976), pp. 24-5; J. H. Greenberg, The Languages of Africa, Bloomington, 1970, pp. 85-129.
13 Ehret, op. cit., p. 6.
14 The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, ed. by W. H. Schoff, New York, 1971, pp. 28-9; Cosmas Indicopleustes, The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk, Cambridge, 1897, 52-3.
15 H. Epstein, The Origin of the Domestic Animals of Africa, New York, 1971, 1, p. 519.
16 F. R. Allchin, "Early domestic animals in India", in The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals, ed. by P. J. Ucko and G. W. Dimbleby, London, 1969, p. 319; Epstein, op. cit., I, p. 549.
17 See T. N. Huffman, "Cattle from Mabveni", S. A. A. B., 30 (1975), pp. 23-4; and other literature on the early cattle in southern Africa.
18 Ehret, op. cit., p. 85; M. Guthrie, Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu Languages, Farnborough, 1967-71, 4 volumes, passim.
19 Hromník, op. cit., p. 118.
20 C. A. Hromnik, "Are there any Shona? A question left unanswered by historians", Mankind Quarterly, 20 (1979-80), pp. 11-34.
