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III. ETHNOLOGY In attempting a review of the races and tribes which inhabit Africa, their distribution, movements and culture, it is advisable that three points be borne in mind. The first of these is the comparative absence of natural barriers in the interior, owing to which intercommunication between tribes, the dissemination of culture and tribal migration have been considerably facilitated. Hence the student must be prepared to find that, for the most part, there are no sharp divisions to mark the extent of the various races composing the population, but that the number of what may be termed ``transitional'' peoples is unusually large. The second point is that Africa, with the exception of the lower Nile valley and what is known as Roman Africa (see AFRICA, ROMAN), is, so far as its native inhabitants are concerned, a continent practically without a history, and possessing no records from which such a history might be reconstructed. The early movements of tribes, the routes by which they reached their present abodes, and the origin of such forms of culture as may be distinguished in the general mass of customs, beliefs, &c. , are largely matters of conjecture. The negro is essentially the child of the moment; and his memory, both tribal and individual, is very short. The third point is that many theories which have been formulated with respect to such matters are unsatisfactory owing to the small amount of information concerning many of the tribes in the interior.

Excluding the Europeans who have found a home in various parts of Africa, and the Asiatics, Chinese and natives of India introduced by them (see section History below), the population of Africa consists of the following elements: —the Bushman, the Negro, the Eastern Hamite, the Libyan and the Semite, from the intermingling of which in various proportions a vast number of ``transitional'' tribes has arisen. The Bushmen (q. v. ), a race of short yellowish-brown nomad hunters, inhabited, in the earliest times of which there is historic knowledge, the land adjoining the southern and eastern borders of the Kalahari desert, into which they were gradually being forced by the encroachment of the Hottentots and Bantu tribes. But signs of their former presence are not wanting as far north as Lake Tanganyika, and even, it is rumoured, still farther north. With them may be classed provisionally the Hottentots, a pastoral people of medium stature and yellowish-brown complexion. who in early times shared with the Bushmen the whole of what is now Cape Colony. Though the racial affinities of the Hottentots have been disputed, the most satisfactory view on the whole is that they represent a blend of Bushman, Negroid and Hamitic elements. Practically the rest of Africa, from the southern fringe of the Sahara and the upper valley of the Nile to the Cape, with the exception of Abyssinia and Galla and Somali-lands, is peopled by Negroes and the ``transitional'' tribes to which their admixture with Libyans on the north, and Semites (Arabs) and Hamites on the north-east and east, has given rise. A slight qualification of the last statement is necessary, in so far as, among the Fula in the western Sudan, and the Ba-Hima, &c. , of the Victoria Nyanza, Libyan and Hamitic elements are respectively stronger than the Negroid. Of the tracts excepted, Abyssinia is inhabited mainly by Semito-Hamites (though a fairly strong negroid element can be found), and Somali and Galla-lands by Hamites. North of the Sahara in Algeria and Morocco are the Libyans (Berbers, q. v. ), a distinctively white people, who have in certain respects (e. g. religion) fallen under Arab influence. In the north-east the brown-skinned Hamite and the Semite mingle in varied proportions. The Negroid peoples, which inhabit the vast tracts of forest and savanna between the areas held by Bushmen to the south and the Hamites, Semites and Libyans to the north, fall into two groups divided by a line running from the Cameroon (Rio del Rey) crossing the Ubangi river below the bend and passing between the Ituri and the Semliki rivers, to Lake Albert and thence with a slight southerly trend to the coast. North of this line are the Negroes proper, south are the Bantu.

The division is primarily philological. Among the true Negroes the greatest linguistic confusion prevails; for instance, in certain parts of Nigeria it is possible to find half-a-dozen villages within a comparatively small area speaking, not different dialects, but different languages, a fact which adds greatly to the difficulty of political administration. To the south of the line the condition of affairs is entirely different; here the entire population speaks one or another dialect of the Bantu Languages (q. v...) As said before, the division is primarily linguistic and, especially upon the border line, does not always correspond with the variations of physical type. At the same time it is extremely convenient and to a certain extent justifiable on physical and psychological grounds; and it may be said roughly that while the linguistic uniformity of the Bantu is accompanied by great variation of physical type, the converse is in the main true of the Negro proper, especially where least affected by Libyan and Hamitic admixture, e. g. on the Guinea coast. The variation of type among the Bantu is due probably to a varying admixture of alien blood, which is more apparent as the east coast is approached. This foreign element cannot be identified with certainty, but since the Bantu seem to approach the Hamites in those points where they differ from the Negro proper, and since the physical characteristics of Hamites and Semites are very similar, it seems probable that the last two races have entered into the composition of the Bantu, though it is highly improbable that Semitic influence should have permeated any distance from the east coast.

An extremely interesting section of the population not hitherto mentioned is constituted by the Pygmy tribes inhabiting the densely forested regions along the equator from Uganda to the Gabun and living the life of nomadic hunters. The affinities of this little people are undecided, owing to the small amount of knowledge concerning them. The theories which connected them with the Bushmen do not seem to be correct. It is more probable that they are to be classed among the Negroids, with whom they appear to have intermingled to a certain extent in the upper basin of the Ituri, and perhaps elsewhere. As far as is known they speak no language peculiar to themselves but adopt that of the nearest agricultural tribe. They are of a dark brown complexion, with very broad noses, lips but slightly everted, and small but usually sturdy physique, though often considerably emaciated owing to insufficiency of food. Another peculiar tribe, also of short stature, are the Vaalpens of the steppe region of the north Transvaal. Practically nothing is known of them except that they are said to be very dark in colour and live in holes in the ground, and under rock shelters.

Having indicated the chief races of which in various degrees of purity and intermixture the population of Africa is formed, it remains to consider them in greater detail, particularly from the cultural standpoint. This is hardly possible without drawing attention to the main physical characters of the continent, as far as they affect the inhabitants. For ethnological purposes three principal zones may be distinguished; the first two are respectively a large region of steppes and desert in the north, and a smaller region of steppes and desert in the south. These two zones are connected by a vertical strip of grassy highland lying mainly to the east of the chain of great lakes. The third zone is a vast region of forest and rivers in the west centre, comprising the greater part of the basin of the Congo and the Guinea coast. The rainfall, which also has an important bearing upon the culture of peoples, will be found on the whole to be greatest in the third zone and also in the eastern highlands, and of course least in the desert, the steppes and savannas standing midway between the two. As might be expected these variations are accompanied by certain variations in culture. In the best-watered districts agriculture is naturally of the greatest importance, except where the density of the forest renders the work of clearing too arduous.

The main portion therefore of the inhabitants of the forest zone are agriculturists, save only the nomad Pygmies, who live in the inmost recesses of the forest and support themselves by hunting the game with which it abounds. Agriculture, too, flourishes in the eastern highlands, and throughout the greater part of the steppe and savanna region of the northern and southern zones, especially the latter. In fact the only Bantu tribes who are not agriculturists are the Ova-Herero of German South-West Africa, whose purely pastoral habits are the natural outcome of the barren country they inhabit. But the wide open plains and slopes surrounding the forest area are eminently suited to cattle-breeding, and there are few tribes who do not take advantage of the fact. At the same time a natural check is imposed upon the desire for cattle, which is so characteristic of the Bantu peoples. This is constituted by the tsetse fly, which renders a pastoral life absolutely impossible throughout large tracts in central and southern Africa. In the northern zone this check is absent, and the number of more essentially pastoral peoples, such as the eastern Hamites, Masai, Dinka, Fula, &c. , correspondingly greater. The desert regions yield support only to nomadic peoples, such as the Tuareg, Tibbu, Bedouins and Bushmen, though the presence of numerous oases in the north renders the condition of life easier for the inhabitants. Upon geographical conditions likewise depend to a large extent the political conditions prevailing among the various tribes. Thus among the wandering tribes of the desert and of the heart of the forests, where large communities are impossible, a patriarchal system prevails with the family as the unit. Where the forest is less dense and small agricultural communities begin to make their appearance, the unit expands to the village with its headman. Where the forest thins to the savanna and steppe, and communication is easier, are found the larger kingdoms and ``empires'' such as, in the north those established by the Songhai, Hausa, Fula, Bagirmi, Ba-Hima, &c. , and in the south the states of Lunda, Kazembe, the Ba-Rotse, &c.

But if ease of communication is favourable to the rise of large states and the cultural progress that usually accompanies it, it is, nevertheless, often fatal to the very culture which, at first, it fostered, in so far as the absence of natural boundaries renders invasion easy. A good example of this is furnished by the history of the western Sudan and particularly of East and South-East Africa. From its geographical position Africa looks naturally to the east, and it is on this side that it has been most affected by external culture both by land (across the Sinaitic peninsula) and by sea. Though a certain amount of Indonesian and even aboriginal Indian influence has been traced in African ethnography, the people who have produced the most serious ethnic disturbances (apart from modern Europeans) are the Arabs. This is particularly the case in East Africa, where the systematic slave raids organized by them and carried out with the assistance of various warlike tribes reduced vast regions to a state of desolation. In the north and west of Africa, however, the Arab has had a less destructive but more extensive and permanent influence in spreading the Mahommedan religion throughout the whole of the Sudan.

The fact that the physical geography of Africa affords fewer natural obstacles to racial movements on the side most exposed to foreign influence, renders it obvious that the culture most characteristically African must be sought on the other side. It is therefore in the forests of the Congo, and among the lagoons and estuaries of the Guinea coast, that this earlier culture will most probably be found. That there is a culture distinctive of this area, irrespective of the linguistic line dividing the Bantu from the Negro proper, has now been recognized. Its main features may be summed as follows: —-a purely agricultural life, with the plantain, yam and manioc (the last two of American origin) as the staple food; cannibalism common; rectangular houses with ridged roofs; scar-tattooing; clothing of bark-cloth or palm-fibre; occasional chipping or extraction of upper incisors; bows with strings of cane, as the, principal weapons, shields of wood or wickerwork; religion, a primitive form of fetishism with the belief that death is due to witchcraft; ordeals, secret societies, the use of masks and anthropomorphic figures, and wooden gongs. With this may be contrasted the culture of the Bantu peoples to the south and east, also agriculturists, but in addition, where possible, great cattle-breeders, whose staple food is millet and milk.

These are distinguished by circular huts with domed or conical roofs; clothing of skin or leather; occasional chipping or extraction of lower incisors; spears as the principal weapons, bows, where found, with a sinew cord, shields of hide or leather; religion, ancestor-worship with belief in the power of the magicians as rain-makers. Though this difference in culture may well be explained on the supposition that the first is the older and more representative of Africa, this theory must not be pushed too far. Many of the distinguishing characteristics of the two regions are doubtless due simply to environment, even the difference in religion. Ancestor-worship occurs most naturally among a people where tribal organization has reached a fairly advanced stage, and is the natural outcome of patriotic reverence for a successful chief and his councillors. Rain-making, too, is of little importance in a well-watered region, but a matter of vital interest to an agricultural people where the rainfall is slight and irregular.

Within the eastern and southern Bantu area certain cultural variations occur; beehive huts are found among the Zulu-Xosa and Herero, giving place among the Bechuana to the cylindrical variety with conical roof, a type which, with few exceptions, extends north to Abyssinia. The tanged spearhead characteristic of the south is replaced by the socketed variety towards the north. Circumcision, characteristic of the Zulu-Xosa and Bechuana, is not practised by many tribes farther north; tooth-mutilation, on the contrary, is absent among the more southern tribes. The lip-plug is found in the eastern area, especially among the Nyasa tribes, but not in the south. The head-rest common in the south-east and the southern fringe of the forest area is not found far north of Tanganyika until the Horn of Africa is reached.

In the regions outside the western area occupied by the Negro proper, exclusive of the upper Nile, the similarities of culture outweigh the differences. Here the cylindrical type of hut prevails; clothing is of skin or leather but is very scanty; iron ornaments are worn in profusion; arrows are not feathered; shields of hide, spears with leather sheaths are found and also fighting bracelets. Certain small differences appear between the eastern and western portions, the dividing line being formed by the boundary between Bornu and Hausaland. Characteristic of the east are the harp and the throwing-club and throwing-knife, the last of which has penetrated into the forest area. Typical of the west are the bow and the dagger with the ring hilt. The tribes of the upper Nile are somewhat specialized, though here, too, are found the cylindrical hut, iron ornaments, fighting bracelets, &c. , characteristic of the Sudanese tribes. Here the removal of the lower incisors is common, and circumcision entirely absent. Throughout the rest of the Sudan is found Semitic culture introduced by the Arabized Libyan. Circumcision, as is usual among Mahommedan tribes, is universal, and tooth-mutilation absent; of other characteristics, the use of the sword has penetrated to the northern portion of the forest area. The culture prevailing in the Horn of Africa is, naturally, mainly Hamito-Semitic; here are found both cyhnddcal and bee-hive huts, the sword (which has been adopted by the Masai to the south), the lyre (which has found its way to some of the Nilotic tribes) and the head-rest. Circumcision is practically universal.

As has been said earlier, the history of Africa reaches back but a short distance, except, of course, as far as the lower Nile valley and Roman Africa is concerned; elsewhere no records exist, save tribal traditions, and these only relate to very recent events. Even archaeology, which can often sketch the main outlines of a people's history, is here practically powerless, owing to the insufficiency of data. It is true that stone imple. ments of palaeolithic and neolithic types are found sporadically in the Nile valley, Somaliland, on the Zambezi, in Cape Colony and the northern portions of the Congo Free State, as well as in Algeria and Tunisia; but the localities are far too few and too widely separated to warrant the inference that they are to be in any way connected. Moreover, where stone implements are found they are, as a rule, very near, even actually on, the surface of the earth; nothing occurs resembling the regular stratification of Europe, and consequently no argument based on geological grounds is possible.

The lower Nile valley, however, forms an exception; flint implements of a palaeolithic type have been found near Thebes. not only on the surface of the ground, which for several thousand years has been desert owing to the contraction of the river-bed, but also in stratified gravel of an older date. References to a number of papers bearing on the discussion to which then discovery has given rise may be found in an article by Mr H. R. Hall in Man, 1905, No. 19. The Egyptian and also the Somali land finds appear to be true palaeoliths in type and remarkably similar to those found in Europe. But evidence bearing on the Stone age in Africa, if the latter existed apart from the localities mentioned, is so slight that little can be said save that from the available evidence the palaeoliths of the Nile valley alone can with any degree of certainty be assigned to a remote period of antiquity, and that the chips scattered over Mashonaland and the regions occupied within historic times by Bushmen are the most recent; since it has been shown that the stone flakes were used by the medieval Makalanga to engrave their hard pottery and the Bushmen were still using stone implements in the 19th century. Other early remains, but of equally uncertain date, are the stone circles of Algeria, the Cross river and the Gambia. The large system of ruined forts and ``cities'' in Mashonaland, at Zimbabwe and elsewhere, concerning which so many ingenious theories have been woven, have been proved to date from medieval times. Thus while in Europe there is a Stone age. divided into periods according to various types of implement disposed in geological strata, and followed in orderly succession by the ages of Bronze and Iron, in Africa can be found no true Stone age and practically no Bronze at all. The reason is not far to seek; Africa is a country of iron, which is found distributed widely throughout the continent in ores so rich that the metal can be extracted with very little trouble and by the simplest methods. Iron has been worked from time immemorial by the Negroid peoples, and whole tribes are found whose chief industry is the smelting and forging of the metal. Under such conditions, questions relating to the origin and spread of the racial stocks which form the population of Africa cannot be answered with any certainty; at best only a certain amount of probability can be attained.

Five of these racial stocks have been mentioned: Bushman, Negro, Hamite, Semite, Libyan, the last three probably related through some common ancestor. Of these the honour of being considered the most truly African belongs to the two first. It is true that people of Negroid type are found elsewhere, principally in Melanesia, but as yet their possible connexion with the African Negro is little more than theoretical, and for the present purposes it need not be considered.

The origin of the Bushman is lost in obscurity, but he may be conceived as the original inhabitant of the southern portion of the continent. The original home of the Negro, at first an agriculturist, is most probably to be found in the neighbourhood of the great lakes, whence he penetrated along the fringe of the Sahara to the west and across the eastern highlands southward. Northerly expansion was prevented by the early occupation of the Nile valley, the only easy route to the Mediterranean, but there seems no doubt that the population of ancient Egypt contained a distinct Negroid element. The question as to the ethnic affinities of the pre-dynastic Egyptians is still unsolved; but they may be regarded as, in the main, Hamitic, though it is a question how far it is just to apply a name which implies a definite specialization in what may be comparatively modern times to a people of such antiquity.

The Horn of Africa appears to have been the centre from which the Hamites spread, and the pressure they seem to have applied to the Negro tribes, themselves also in process of expansion, sent forth larger waves of emigrants from the latter. These emigrants, already affected by the Hamitic pastoral culture, and with a strain of Hamitic blood in their veins, passed rapidly down the open tract in the east, doubtless exterminating their predecessors, except such few as took refuge in the mountains and swamps. The advance-guard of this wave of pastoral Negroids, in fact primitive Bantu, mingled with the Bushmen and produced the Hottentots. The penetration of the forest area must certainly have taken longer and was probably accomplished as much from the south-east, up the Zambezi valley, as from any other quarter. It was a more peaceful process, since natural obstacles are unfavourable to rapid movements of large bodies of immigrants, though not so serious as to prevent the spread of language and culture. A modern parallel to the spread of Bantu speech is found in the rise of the Hausa language, which is gradually enlarging its sphere of influence in the western and central Sudan. Thus those qualities, physical and otherwise, in which the Bantu approach the Hamites gradually fade as we proceed westward through the Congo basin, while in the east, among the tribes to the west of Tanganyika and on the upper Zambezi, ``transitional'' forms of culture are found. In later times this gradual pressure from the south-east became greater, and resulted, at a comparatively recent date, in the irruption of the Fang into the Gabun.

The earlier stages of the southern movement must have been accompanied by a similar movement westward between the Sahara and the forest; and, probably, at the same time, or even earlier, the Libyans crossing the desert had begun to press upon the primitive Negroes from the north. In this way were produced the Fula, who mingled further with the Negro to give birth to the Mandingo, Wolof and Tukulor. It would appear that either Libyan (Fula) or, less probably, Hamitic, blood enters into the composition of the Zandeh peoples on the Nile-Congo watershed. These Libyans or Berbers, included by G. Sergi in his ``Mediterranean Race, '' were active on the north coast of Africa in very early times, and had relations with the Egyptians from a prehistoric period. For long these movements continued, always in the same direction, from north to south and from east to west; though, of course, more rapid changes took place in the open country, especially in the great eastern highway from north to south, than in the forest area. Large states arose in the western Sudan; Ghana flourished in the 7th century A. D. , Melle in the 11th, Songhai in the 14th, and Bornu in the 16th.

Meanwhile in the east began the southerly movement of the Bechuana, which was probably, spread over a considerable period. Later than they, hut proceeding faster, came the Zulu-Xosa (``Kaffir'') peoples, who followed a line nearer the coast and outflanked them, surrounding them on the south. Then followed a time of great ethnical confusion in South Africa, during which tribes flourished, split up and disappeared; but ere this the culture represented by the ruins in Rhodesia had waxed and waned. It is uncertain who were the builders of the forts and ``cities, '' but it is not improbable that they may be found to have been early Bechuana. The Zulu-Xosa, Bechuana and Herero together form a group which may conveniently be termed ``Southern Bantu. ',

Finally began a movement hitherto unparalleled in the history of African migration; certain peoples of Zulu blood began to press north, spreading destruction in their wake. Of these the principal were the Matabele and Angoni. The movement continued as far as the Victoria Nyanza. Here, on the border-line of Negro, Bantu and Hamite, important changes had taken place. Certain of the Negro tribes had retired to the swamps of the Nile, and had become somewhat specialized, both physically and culturally (Shilluk, Dinka, Alur, Acholi, &c. ). These had blended with the Hamites to produce such races as the Masai and kindred tribes. The old Kitwara empire, which comprised the plateau land between the Ruwenzori range and Kavirondo, had broken up into small states, usually governed by a Hamitic (Ba-Hima) aristocracy. The more extensive Zang (Zenj) empire, of which. the name Zanzibar (Zanguebar) is a lasting memorial, extending along the sea-board from Somaliland to the Zambezi, was also extinct. The Arabs had established themselves firmly on the coast, and thence made continual slave-raids into the interior, penetrating later to the Congo. The Swahili, inhabiting the coast-line from the equator to about 16 deg. S. , are a somewhat heterogeneous mixture of Bantu with a tinge of Arab blood. In the neighbourhood of Victoria Nyanza, where Hamite, Bantu, Nilotic Negro and Pygmy are found in close contact, the ethnic relations of tribes are often puzzling, but the Bantu not under a Hamitic domination have been divided by F. Stuhlmann into the Older Bantu (Wanyamwezi, Wasukuma, Wasambara, Waseguha, Wasagara, Wasaramo, &c. ) and the Bantu of Later Immigration (Wakikuyu, Wakamba, Wapokomo, Wataita, Wachaga, &c. ), who are more strongly Hamitized and in many cases have adopted Masai customs. These peoples, from the Victoria Nyanza to the Zambezi, may conveniently be termed the ``Eastern Bantu. '' Turning to the Congo basin in the south, the great Luba and Lunda peoples are found stretching nearly across the continent, the latter, from at any rate the end of the 16th century until the close of the 19th century, more or less united under a single ruler, styled Muata Yanvo. These seem to have been the most recent immigrants from the south-east, and to exhibit certain affinities with the Barotse on the upper Zambezi. Among the western Baluba, or Bashilange, a remarkable politico-religious revolution took place at a comparatively recent date, initiated by a secret society termed Bena Riamba or ``Sons of Hemp, '' and resulted in the subordination of the old fetishism to a cult of hemp, in accordance with which all hemp-smokers consider themselves brothers, and the duty of mutual hospitality, &c. , is acknowledged. North of these, in the great bend of the Congo, are the Balolo, &c. , the Balolo a nation of iron-workers; and westward, on the Kasai, the Bakuba, and a large number of tribes as yet imperfectly known. Farther west are the tribes of Angola, many of whom were included within the old ``Congo empire, '' of which the kingdom of Loango was an offshoot. North of the latter lies the Gabun, with a large number of small tribes dominated by the Fang who are recent arrivals from the Congo. Farther to the north are the Bali and other tribes of the Cameroon, among whom many primitive Negroid elements begin to appear.

Eastward are the Zandeh peoples of the Welle district (primitive Negroids with a Hamitic or, more probably, Libyan strain), with whom the Dor trine of Nilotes on their eastern border show certain affinities; while to the west along the coast are the Guinea Negroes of primitive type. Here, amidst great linguistic confusion, may be distinguished the tribes of Yoruba speech in the Niger delta and the east portion of the Slave Coast; those of Ewe speech, in the western portion of the latter; and those of Ga and Tshi speech, on the Gold Coast. Among the last two groups respectively may be mentioned the Dahomi and Ashanti. Similar tribes are found along the coast to the Bissagos Islands, though the introduction in Sierra Leone and Liberia of settlements of repatriated slaves from the American plantations has in those places modified the original ethnic distribution. Leaving the forest zone and entering the more open country there are, on the north from the Niger to the Nile, a number of Negroids strongly tinged with Libyan blood and professing the Mahommedan religion. Such are the Mandingo, the Songhai, the Fula, Hausa, Kanuri, Bagirmi, Kanembu, and the peoples of Wadai and Darfur; the few aborigines who persist, on the southern fringe of the Chad basin, are imperfectly known.

The island of Madagascar, belonging to the African continent, still remains for discussion. Here the ethnological conditions are people were the Hova, a Malayo-Indonesian people who must have come from the Malay Peninsula or the adjacent islands. The date of their immigration has been line subject of a good deal of dispute, but it may be argued that their arrival must have taken place in early times, since Malagasy speech, which is the language of the island, is principally Malayo-Polynesian in origin, and contains no traces of Sanskrit. Such traces, introduced with Hinduism, are present in all the cultivated languages of Malaysia at the present day. The Hova occupy the table-land of Imerina and form the first of the three main groups into which the population of Madagascar may be divided. They are short, of an olive-yellow complexion and have straight or faintly wavy hair. On the east coast are the Malagasy, who in physical characteristics stand halfway between the Hova and the Sakalava, the last occupying the remaining portion of the island and displaying almost pure Negroid characteristics.

Though the Hova belong to a race naturally addicted to seafaring, the contrary is the case respecting the Negroid population, and the presence of the latter in the island has been explained by the supposition that they were imported by the Hova. Other authorities assign less antiquity to the Hova immigration and believe that they found the Negroid tribes already in occupation of the island.

As might be expected, the culture found in Madagascar contains two elements, Negroid and Malayo-Indonesian. The first of these two shows certain affinities with the culture characteristic of the western area of Africa, such as rectangular huts, clothing of bark and palm-fibre, fetishism, &c. , but cattle-breeding is found as well as agriculture. However, the Negroid tribes are more and more adopting the customs and mode of life of the Hova, among whom are found pile-houses, the sarong, yadi or tabu applied to food, a non-African form of bellows, &c. , all characteristic of their original home. The Hova, during the 19th century, embraced Christianity, but retain, nevertheless, many of their old animistic beliefs; their original social organization in three classes, andriana or nobles, hova or freemen, and andevo or slaves, has been modified by the French, who have abolished kingship and slavery. An Arab infusion is also to be noticed, especially on the north-east and south-east coasts.

It is impossible to give a complete list of the tribes inhabiting Africa, owing to the fact that the country is not fully explored. Even where the names of the tribes are known their ethnic relations are still a matter of uncertainty in many localities.

The following list, therefore, must be regarded as purely tentative, and liable to correction in the light of fuller information:

    IV. HISTORY

The origin and meaning of the name of the continent are discussed elsewhere (see AFRICA, ROMAN. ) The word Africa was applied originally to the country in the immediate neighbourhood of Carthage, that part of the continent first known to the Romans, and it was subsequently extended with their increasing knowledge, till it came at last to include all that they knew of the continent. The Arabs still confine the name Ifrikia to the territory of Tunisia. The valley of the lower Nile was the home in remotest antiquity of a civilized race. Egyptian culture had, however, remarkably little direct influence on the rest of the continent, a result due in large measure to the fact that Egypt is shut off landwards by immense deserts. If ancient Egypt and Ethiopia (q. v. ) be excluded, the story of Africa is largely a record of the doings of its Asiatic and European conquerors and colonizers, Abyssinia being the only state which throughout historic times has maintained its independence. The countries bordering the Mediterranean were first exploited by the Phoenicians, whose earliest settlements were made before 1000 B. C. Carthage, founded about 800 B. C. , speedily grew into a city without rival in the Mediterranean, and the Phoenicians, subduing the Berber tribes, who then as now formed the bulk of the population, became masters of all the habitable region of North Africa west of the Great Syrtis, and found in commerce a source of immense prosperity. Both Egyptians and Carthaginians made attempts to reach the unknown parts of the continent by sea. Herodotus relates that an expedition under Phoenician navigators, employed by Necho, king of Egypt, c. 600 B. C. , circumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, a voyage stated to have been accomplished in three years. Apart from the reported circumnavigation of the continent, the west coast was well known to the Phoenicians as far as Cape Nun, and c. 520 B. C. Hanno, a Carthaginian, explored the coast as far, perhaps, as the Bight of Benin, certainly as far as Sierra Leone. A vague knowledge of the Niger regions was also possessed by the Phoenicians.

Meantime the first European colonists had planted themselves in Africa. At the point where the continent approaches nearest the Greek islands, Greeks founded the city of Cyrene (c. 631 B. C...) Cyrenaica became a flourishing colony, though being hemmed in on all sides by absolute desert it had little or no influence on inner Africa. The Greeks, however, exerted a powerful influence in Egypt. To Alexander the Great the city of Alexandria owes its foundation (332 B. C. ), and under the Hellenistic dynasty of the Ptolemies attempts were made to penetrate southward, and in this way was obtained some knowledge of Abyssinia. Neither Cyrenaica nor Egypt was a serious rival to the Carthaginians, but all three powers were eventually supplanted by the Romans. After centuries of rivalry for supremacy1 the struggle was ended by the fall of Carthage in 146 B. C. Within little more than a century from that date Egypt and Cyrene had become incorporated in the Roman empire. Under Rome the settled portions of the country were very prosperous, and a Latin strain was introduced into the land. Though Fezzan was occupied by them, the Romans elsewhere found the Sahara an impassable barrier. Nubia and Abyssinia were reached, but an expedition sent by the emperor Nero to discover the source of the Nile ended in failure. The utmost extent of geographical knowledge of the continent is shown in the writings of Ptolemy (2nd century A. D. ), who knew of or guessed the existence of the great lake reservoirs of the Nile and had heard of the river Niger. Still Africa for the civilized world remained simply the countries bordering the Mediterranean. The continual struggle between Rome and the Berber tribes; the introduction of Christianity and the glories and sufferings of the Egyptian and African Churches; the invasion and conquest of the African provinces by the Vandals in the 5th century; the passing of the supreme power in the following century to the Byzantine empire—all these events are told fully elsewhere. In the 7th century of the Christian era occurred an event destined to have a permanent influence on the whole continent.

Invading first Egypt, an Arab host, fanatical believers in the new faith of Mahomet, conquered the whole country from the Red Sea to the Atlantic and carried the Crescent into Spain. Throughout North Africa Christianity well-nigh disappeared, save in Egypt (where the Coptic Church was suffered to exist), and Upper Nubia and Abyssinia, which were not subdued by the Moslems. In the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries the Arabs in Africa were numerically weak; they held the countries they had conquered by the sword only, but in the 11th century there was a great Arab immigration, resulting in a large absorption of Berber blood. Even before this the Berbers had very generally adopted the speech and religion of their conquerors. Arab influence and the Mahommedan religion thus became indelibly stamped on northern Africa. Together they spread southward across the Sahara. They also became firmly established along the eastern sea-board, where Arabs, Persians and Indians planted flourishing colonies, such as Mombasa, Malindi and Sofala, playing a role, maritime and commercial, analogous to that filled in earlier centuries by the Carthaginians on the northern sea-board. Of these eastern cities and states both Europe and the Arabs of North Africa were long ignorant.

The first Arab invaders had recognized the authority of the caliphs of Bagdad, and the Aghlabite dynasty—founded by Aghlab, one of Haroun al Raschid's generals, at the close of the 8th century—ruled as vassals of the caliphate. However, early in the 10th century the Fatimite dynasty established itself in Egypt, where Cairo had been founded A. D. 968, and from there ruled as far west as the Atlantic. Later still arose other dynasties such as the Almoravides and Almohades. Eventually the Turks, who had conquered Constantinople in 1453, and had seized Egypt in 1517, established the regencies of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli (between 1519 and 1551), Morocco remaining an independent Arabized Berber state under the Sharifan dynasty, which had its beginnings at the end of the 13thcentury. Under the earlier dynasties Arabian or Moorish culture had attained a high degree of excellence, while the spirit of adventure and the proselytizing zeal of the followers of Islam led to a considerable extension of the knowledge of the continent. This was rendered more easy by their use of the camel (first introduced into Africa by the Persian conquerors of Egypt), which enabled the Arabs to traverse the desert. In this way Senegambia and the middle Niger regions fell under the influence of the Arabs and Berbers, but it was not until 1591 that Timbuktu—a city founded in the 11th century—became Moslem. That city had been reached in 1352 by the great Arab traveller Ibn Batuta, to whose journey to Mombasa and Quiloa (Kilwa) was due the first accurate knowledge of those flourishing Moslem cities on the east African sea-boards. Except along this sea-board, which was colonized directly from Asia, Arab progress southward was stopped by the broad belt of dense forest which, stretching almost across the continent somewhat south of 10 deg. N. , barred their advance as effectually as had the Sahara that of their predecessors, and cut them off from knowledge of the Guinea coast and of all Africa beyond. One of the regions which came latest under Arab control was that of Nubia, where a Christian civilization and state existed up to the 14th century.

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