Third Conference on African History and Archaeology: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 3-7 July 1961 || A Report on the Conference

A Report on the ConferenceAuthor(s): Richard GraySource: The Journal of African History, Vol. 3, No. 2, Third Conference on African Historyand Archaeology: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 3-7 July1961 (1962), pp. 175-191Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/179737 .

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Journal of African History, III, 2 (1962), pp. 175-191

A REPORT ON THE CONFERENCE

By RICHARD GRAY

SURROUNDED by botanists, serologists, and geographers, in addition to the anthropologists, linguists, and archaeologists to whom he had been introduced by previous Conferences, a historian, accustomed to pursue his Muse amongst the written evidence of former times, can perhaps be

pardoned if he sometimes felt dismayed at the depths to which She was now beckoning him. Yet few people who attended the third Conference on African History and Archaeology can fail to have been stimulated by this encounter of disciplines, this common search for clues to the African

past. The first two mornings were devoted to a survey of pre-nineteenth

century Africa, with reports of progress achieved since I957 and discussion of the major problems arising from current research. A similar survey during the last two mornings covered nineteenth-and-twentieth century Africa. Both surveys gave a valuable and unique impression of the breadth of the front on which research is now proceeding. The afternoon sessions were, however, the highlight of the Conference. For it was here most notably that the specialists of different disciplines began to grapple in detailed discussion with some of the principal problems of the early history of Africa: the origins and development of sub-Saharan agriculture, the penetration of the forests, the influence of Indonesia and the first homelands of the Bantu.

DISCUSSION ON THE ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY OF AFRICA

BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

(Chairman: Dr Oliver)

In the opening moments of the Conference its attention was drawn to what proved to be one of the major themes: the problem of constructing a chronology for the early history of West Africa. Commenting on the urgent necessity of excavations in Nubia in the brief period which remains before flooding, Professor Shinnie, who was planning to lead expeditions from Ghana to this area during the next two seasons, stressed the opportunity this presented of obtaining a firmly based chronological framework for Meroitic and Christian Nubia-a framework which, he felt, was vitally important in view of the region's probable influence on areas of tropical Africa to the west and south of it. Examples of this westward influence were the Christian pottery sherds found at Ain Farah in Darfur which were described by Dr Arkell, the medieval Christian Nubian sherd found by



RICHARD GRAY

Dr Bivar on the eastern side of Lake Chad, and possibly the iron slag and sherd from Buchianga near Tungur described by Dr Mauny and the pottery of the Sao area found by Dr Lebeuf.

Influences penetrating southwards from this area of the Nile Valley were referred to by Professor Leclant in his account of recent excavations in Ethiopia. Work on Axumite sites, in particular that undertaken by M. Anfray at Yeha, Matara, and Adulis, had brought to light two scarabs and other signs of contact with Meroe, besides of course much evidence of contact with South Arabia and even with India-two terracottas and Kushan coins. Dr Lewis and Dr Mathew both stressed the importance of extending this archaeological work into Somalia and especially to Mait and other ancient inland towns.

From East Africa Mr Chittick reported on his work at Kilwa, and in particular on the discovery of a structure very closely related to a form of Abbasid mosque tank found in the Harran-Damascus area. As this structure is the earliest building yet identified in Kilwa, its discovery might confirm the literary sources which appeared to go back to the tenth century. It also tended to contradict, at least as far as Kilwa is concerned, Dr Mathew's and Dr Kirkman's view that exotic stone-built settlements dated only from the thirteenth century, and that earlier Arab trade with the region had been carried on directly with the indigenous inhabitants of the coastal belt.

Turning to the interior of East Africa, Dr Oliver drew attention to Dr Posnansky's work at Bigo, and in particular to the help given to the archaeologist by oral tradition-a point which was to be stressed again in connexion with West Africa. For it was this traditional evidence which had led to the discovery in I958 of Ankole capital sites, similar to and probably derived from that at Bigo, and hence to a clearer understanding of Bigo itself. Traditional evidence was, and would always remain, the basic evidence for dating sites of this type and period. The Bigo excavation of I960 established the existence of two occupation levels, an old Bahima type of royal capital lying below a Nilotic Babito reconstruction-a fact which also corresponds exactly to the oral tradition.

Lacustrine tradition, however, merely provides a chronological framework for the last five or six hundred years. Further archaeological work might open up the history of earlier Bantu states in the area, as is happening already farther to the south. Professor Hiernaux, for instance, said he had found a succession of two early types of pottery on sites in Ruanda and Burundi. The earliest (Iron Age A) was similar to the Dimple-based pottery of Kenya, found along the central spine of Africa with, as Professor Mortel- mans has shown, possible influences reaching as far as the lower Congo west of Leopoldville. The carbon dating of these sites in Ruanda and Burundi is now in progress. Iron Age B in this area was quite different, but its culture showed similarities with that of Bigo. Farther south, in the Baluba area, where oral traditions cover the last three hundred and fifty to

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four hundred years, recent work had revealed the existence of dense, and technologically advanced, Iron Age populations at a much earlier period. At Sanga, in the Lualaba Valley, an extensive early Iron Age site had yielded a vast amount of pottery and many elaborate copper ornaments: in several tombs over two to three hundred very small copper crosses had been found.1 A second site, farther south near Bugamba, had revealed a different and possibly later culture with a large number of shells from the area of the Indian Ocean. Both these cultures were quite different from that of the modern Luba, and two radio-carbon dates obtained from bones from Sanga, which had still to be checked by dates obtained from charcoal, gave A.D. 900 and A.D. 750.

Dr J. D. Clark reported on the recent progress in fixing a chronological framework for the Iron Age in Rhodesia, and in particular for the Chan- nelled ware pottery, which both he and Professor Hiernaux believed was closely related to the Dimple-based ware. Its earliest appearance (on sites in Southern Barotseland) seemed to have been between 200 B.C. and A.D. I00, and its terminal phase was around A.D. IIoo. Work in progress in the Rhodesias included Mr Fagan's excavations of the Kalomo mounds, which were possibly derived in part from the old Channelled ware culture, and in the future it was hoped that this work would be extended to the ancestral Tonga sites. A recently excavated burial mound from just below the Kariba Dam had yielded gold beads, copper from the Katanga, and pottery showing some connexion with that of Mapungubwe. In Southern Rhodesia, apart from the Zimbabwe excavations,2 Mr A. Whitty had distinguished and dated three main styles of walling, while Mr Grant-Cook had analysed three principal styles of rock-painting in Matabeleland.

This relatively well-dated area and period in Bantu Africa is in strong contrast to the picture at present revealed of the forest area of West Africa. Professor Shinnie described the extraordinary difficulties of distinguishing a stratigraphy in conditions such as that encountered by him on a Dagomba site, and quoted Mr Willett's experience of 'walls, floors and sub-soil merging into a single surface of laterite in a single season at Ife'. There were still all too few archaeologists working in West Africa, and Professor Shinnie felt it would be a very long time before clear-cut results could be achieved.

This pessimism was questioned by Dr Clark who instanced the immense difference which he had witnessed recently in Rhodesia once public interest was awakened and amateur assistants trained and enrolled; and other members of the Conference suggested various techniques which might prove valuable in solving the problem of West African chronology. On the question of stratigraphy Mr Thurstan Shaw suggested that an ultra-violet lamp, where practicable, might reveal strata invisible to the naked eye in

1 Nenquin, J., 'Une importante contribution du Musee a la connaissance des cultures protohistoriques du Congo', Congo Tervuren (1959), I, I-5.

2 Summers, R., 'The Southern Rhodesian Iron Age', Journal of African History II, I (196I).

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conditions such as those found in the Benin sand. Mr B. Fagg reported that a series of pottery fragments from Ife, Nok, Benin, and Gazara had been submitted to an American laboratory in the hope that some results

might be obtained through the thermo-luminescent method of dating. Mr Shaw said that he had sent some glass beads from the Igbo-Ukwu excavation to the Corning Museum of Glass in New York where they were

working on a new technique of counting the iridescent layers on buried

glass.3 In connexion with his work at Ife Mr Willett was reported to be

working also on the typology of pottery. Another point of chronological significance touched on at the Conference was whether Africans had smoked hemp, datura, or other materials prior to the introduction of tobacco; Dr Lebeuf brought up this question as he had found pipes on

apparently tenth-century sites, and Dr Mauny was anxious to trace any references to pipes in the pre-Columban period and especially in the Roman world.

Two other major sources of evidence-oral tradition and contemporary documents-have an obvious contribution to make to the early history of West Africa. The Conference heard of progress in both fields. Although the original attempt at the integration of research in the Benin scheme had had to be modified, each participant was reported to be engaged in writing up his material, and a site over part of what used to be the Oba's palace was due to be excavated shortly. In Ghana the new Institute of African Studies intends to work on oral tradition among other subjects. Mr Wilks's

publications on the history of Akwamu have demonstrated how much information can be drawn from European contemporary documents and how this can be used to control oral traditional evidence. Professor Shinnie said that plans had been made to excavate the Akwamu capital and also the site of Begho, at the southern terminus of a major trade route from the Niger. At Abidjan M. Person has assembled an important archive of recorded oral tradition.

Several major expeditions have worked on historic sites in the Sudanic belt. Dr Mauny reported on his visit to Niani, the site suggested by Delafosse as the capital of the Mali empire. Although nothing was visible from the air either at Niani or at the confluence of the Niger and the

Sankarem, another possible site, and although at Niani inspection on the

ground merely disclosed a few heaps of clay, it was hoped shortly to carry out excavations on the site itself. Two long-distance expeditions by lorry from Djanet to Lake Chad, through the Tenere desert, had enabled Dr

Mauny and M. Hugot of the Musee du Bardot, Algiers, to visit Neolithic and medieval sites, including Bilma, Kauwar, and Djado. In I960-I an

expedition excavated at Tegdaoust, the probable site of Awdaghost, the

capital of the Ghana empire in Mauritania which, Al Bakri records, was

destroyed around A.D. 1055. It was found that there were two completely

3 Brill, R. H., and Hood, H. P., 'A New Method for Dating Ancient Glass', Nature (7 Jan. I96I), CLXXXIX, no. 4758.

178 RICHARD GRAY




different sets of ruins: a huge medieval site, and, in the middle of it, a more recent site from which smoking pipes and Atlantic shells were collected. Green enamelled pottery, similar to that from other medieval sites in West Africa, was found in the lower levels and it is hoped to obtain a date from charcoal. Although it was still impossible to be certain that this was the site of Awdaghost, Dr Mauny felt that all the indications pointed this

way, and a further excavation is planned for 1962. In I960 an Oxford and

Cambridge expedition excavated the site of Azugui in the Adrar mountains of Mauritania.

Professor Shinnie also reported on the search made by Dr Bivar and himself for the sites of early Kanuri capitals in Bornu and in particular for that of Njimi.4 Dr Bivar visited a site thirty kilometres east of Mao mentioned by Urvoy, but the baked brick complex of some two hundred and fifty square yards, though most probably an early Kanuri site, hardly had the dimensions of a capital city, and they concluded that the site of

Njimi, if it was still to be seen, was probably east of Lake Chad. This, in fact, is where oral tradition would indicate. There remain, however, of course many sites for which at present oral tradition or documentary evidence give little definite guidance: Dr Mauny mentioned the recent

discovery of quadrated ruins at Tonedi Koire in the Niger Republic, one hundred and twenty five kilometres south-west of Niamey, and M. Person instanced fifty ditched village sites in the lagoon area of the Ivory Coast about which oral traditions were contradictory.

Finally, in view of the contribution which both Arabic and European documentary sources are likely to make to the problems of the early history, not only of West Africa, but of the Continent as a whole, the Conference set up a sub-committee to suggest steps which should be taken in the immediate future to assist in opening up these sources.

DISCUSSION ON THE HISTORY OF CROPS IN AFRICA

(Chairman: Dr Fage)

Possibly the most valuable part of the Conference was the first afternoon's discussion on the history of crops in Africa. Previous conferences have touched on the later aspects of this question and in particular on the problem of the introduction of maize and other crops into Africa by the Portuguese; this time the focus was moved back to the origin, development, and expansion of agriculture in Africa, to the food-producing revolutions which led to the Negro occupation of a great part of the continent.

Asked to open the discussion, Professor Porteres said that what he had been doing in Africa was to extend and, to some extent, modify the pioneer study begun by Vavilov. This involved the identification, by genetical (jordanian) analysis, of the areas of diversification of cultivated crops, and hence, through the superimposition of these areas, to the identification of

4 See their article in Journal of African History, III, I (1962).

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cradles of agriculture, which could be considered together with other kinds of evidence relating to the existence of past civilizations. When this was done in Africa, leaving out of account the Mediterranean zone, one could recognize three cradles of agriculture: one in West Africa; one in East Africa; and one in Abyssinia, which was the only one to have been recognized by Vavilov.

The evidence was perhaps most striking in the case of rice. The Oryza glaberrima of West Africa possessed quite different genetical characteristics from Asian rice (0. sativa). Its primary centre of diversification, essentially from the wild 0. breviligulata, was the central delta of the River Niger, and Professor Porteres suggested that the inventors of its cultivation may have been the Songhai. It was noteworthy that the indigenous names for rice among peoples who had known it before the introduction of Asian rice were all of a common pattern, -malo, maro, mano etc.; whereas elsewhere there was no common form but various adaptations of foreign, European or Arabic, names.

When a similar analysis was applied to millets, it was found firstly in

regard to sorghum that there were three fundamental African varieties each with its own cradle of origin: S. arundinaceum, a fundamental wild stock, which was found throughout the humid zone from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and had been developed into cultivated races in West Africa; S. verticilliforum, a fundamental wild stock from Eritrea to South-East Africa, which had been developed into a number of races of 'Kaffir corn' in East Africa; S. aethiopicum which had been developed for cultivation in Eritrea and Abyssinia. This situation had been static for centuries except that East African sorghum had been taken to India at an early date. The cultivation of Eleusine (finger millet) might have originated in Abyssinia or India, but probably it had begun in Abyssinia and was later developed in India; the same techniques for its cultivation and the same names for it were widespread. Teff was unique to Abyssinia, but Pennisetum (bulrush or

pearl millet) had been developed in West Africa, around Lake Chad, in the Nile Valley and in East Africa, from whence it had spread to India, possibly via Arabia.

On the basis of this evidence Professor Porteres put forward the hypothesis that the first African agriculture, unlike that of America, was not

vegecultural, the cultivation of rhizomes, but was cereal cultivation, the

sowing of seeds. It would seem that many forest Africans knew cereal cultivation first, and that, at least in the case of rice, this knowledge owed

nothing to other areas of agriculture. Dr Clark, however, felt that there was no doubt from the archaeological

evidence at present available that the idea of the cultivation of crops was introduced to Africa from South-West Asia, and that the crop was probably emmer wheat. He stressed the fact that the chronology suggested in his

paper was open to drastic revision, but he thought that the earliest Neo- lithic dates should probably be assigned to the sixth millennium in the east,

I80o RICHARD GRAY




and that there was a somewhat later Neolithic in the fourth millennium in the Western Sahara.

During the Saharan wet phase, down to the middle of the third millennium B.C., there must have been considerable contacts with the peoples living south in the savannah region and the fringes of the forest. As the Sahara began to dry up, in the second millennium, there must have been a movement outwards both north and south into the savannah. This, Dr Clark felt, was probably the significant time when people south of the Sahara really began to experiment and adapt local crops and plants to food production. He thought that it was to this period that the cradles of agriculture identified by Professor Porteres most probably belonged, although he wondered what time interval botanists felt would be necessary to get the various crops into chromosome groups.

Dr Mauny did not think that the Megalithic monuments could be used as dating evidence as suggested by Professor Porteres in his paper. These stone pillars surmounted tombs made of pots, one on top of the other; they were much later than was commonly supposed and were probably the graves of people like the Bassari, who were not the rice producers. Com- menting on Dr Clark's remarks he pointed out that no grains had as yet been found on any Saharan Neolithic site, but there were Mediterranean

plants in the Saharan Neolithic about the third millennium, for example at

Hoggar. Professor Tucker thought that it was quite possible to make the deduc-

tions of a philological nature which Professor Porteres made in his paper, but that in the absence of any comparative philological work they remained merely possibilities and could not be depended upon. In particular he questioned the statement5 that the Nilotic word for sorghum was zor, gor or djor, the usual word in Nilotic languages being either bel or bjel. He also queried Professor Porteres's suggestion that the Abyssinian terms for eleusine millet carried a meaning of 'beer' with them.

Apart from these relatively minor criticisms, the discussion hinged on the problem of whether, as Dr Clark suggested, the sub-Saharan cradles of agriculture developed under an external stimulus, or whether they were the result of independent experiments and inventions. It was felt that while the practice of cultivating wheat could have led relatively easily to the idea of cultivating millet, the transference would have been far more difficult in the case of rice cultivation, which in West Africa started as wet cultivation. Mr Christie pointed out that Asian evidence suggested that not only would it have involved a considerable change in agricultural techniques but also, probably, the production of a complete new set of accompanying rituals. Professor Porteres said that whereas the ancestral forms of wheat, i.e. emmer, gave edible seeds, and cultivation could develop from a grain-collecting system, the ancestral forms of Oryza glaberrima did not yield a collectable crop, and consequently the idea of shifting from one

5 See Professor Porteres's paper below, p. 203.

I8I



ecology to the other did not really seem to be very feasible. Professor Forde, quoting as a possible parallel the Neolithic origins of barley and oats cultivation in the Near East and Europe, wondered whether African rice could have developed as a weed on marginal areas where Asian rice was being cultivated as a result of a straight-forward diffusion process. Pro- fessor Porteres stated, however, that one could be quite certain that Asian rice had been introduced at two different points on the coast, and that as it penetrated inland it had only prospered in the areas where African rice was already being grown.

Leaving this question of the origins of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, the discussion moved on to the problem of the extension of agriculture into the forest areas, and in particular as to whether this expansion could have preceded the introduction of exotic crops from South-East Asia or the Americas. In so far as the banana and yams of South-East Asia were concerned, Mr Christie suggested that it was possible to make some tentative hypotheses about the probable dates for the movement of Indonesian people to Madagascar; though whether these people then spread extensively into Africa either by land routes, or by rounding the Cape as Father Jones had suggested,6 was he thought still very much an open question. Since the Madagascan-Indonesian language contained virtually no words from Indian Sanskrit-in contrast to all the higher languages of Indonesia-the departure from Indonesia must have been prior to about A.D. 400. It was more difficult to say what could have been the earliest possible date for their departure, though it must have been after the introduction of iron-working, and he was sure that ships, perfectly capable of making the direct journey across the Indian Ocean on the equatorial current, were already operating in the South-East Asian waters by Ioo B.C. to A.D. I00. Mr Christie thought therefore that it was probable that Indo- nesians had arrived with their cultigens in Madagascar during the first three centuries of the Christian era, but he added that Professor Berg, on linguistic grounds though not as yet as a result of a lexicostatistical or similar analysis, felt that the proto-Madagascans would have needed an additional thousand years to produce current Malagasy.

Yet, as Dr Oliver pointed out, if the banana and the yam spread into Africa from the coastlands opposite Madagascar, one would have expected that the population growth in Bantu Africa would have developed ahead of that of the forest regions of West Africa; in fact the opposite seemed to have happened. Was this to be explained by Father Jones's hypothesis of an Indonesian circumnavigation of the Cape leading to a simultaneous development of these crops in West Africa, or could the West African peoples have moved into the forest regions, have cultivated them and established secondary populations, long before the arrival of these South-East Asian plants? Could the cultivation of indigenous yams, for example,

6 Jones, A. M., 'Indonesia and Africa: The Xylophone as a Culture-Indicator' J.R.A.I. (1959), LXXXIX, 155-68.

182 RICHARD GRAY




have been a significant factor before the arrival of those from South-East Asia?

Dr Morgan thought that it was most unlikely that the mixed cultivation of the forest areas of West Africa (e.g. either yams and maize, or plantains and coco-yams, Colocasia) could have preceded the introduction of exotic crops. It seemed to him 'a curious notion' that indigenous yams should have been introduced into the forest on their own. In the forest zone of Southern Nigeria, where yam cultivation was more developed and possibly older than in the regions farther to the west, the plants associated with the yam were either American or Asian, and the independent, indigenous yam cultivation had probably been restricted originally to the forest fringe and extreme southern savannah. Dr Clark believed that this conclusion was supported by the archaeological evidence, since he thought that it would have been impossible to clear and cultivate the forest areas on a large scale with the tools of the Neolithic peoples. There had been, he thought, no effective settlement of the forest regions until the coming of metal, which seemed to coincide chronologically with the probable dates suggested by Mr Christie for the arrival of the South-East Asiatic food crops.

This opinion was, however, challenged by Professor Lawrence who said that 'enormous numbers' of Neolithic axes had in fact been found in the forest country of Ghana, with thousands coming from the same village in some cases. He had himself experimented with Neolithic axes and found they were quite adequate for chopping off branches. Mr Christie agreed, saying that in Asiatic forest conditions, such as those found in the Naga hills or the Annamite chain, areas were cultivated by cutting branches with stone axes and then burning them. Professor Forde reminded the Confer- ence that at the turn of this century some of the remote groups in the northern part of Southern Yoruba were intensively cultivating yams mainly with digging sticks and stone tools, the little iron they had being used for ritual purposes. A scarcity or even absence of metal did not therefore, by itself, seem to have been a decisive factor, but on the other hand he agreed with Dr Morgan that there were features which pointed to the importance of the forest margins, and the moist, formerly wooded regions such as North-Eastern Ibo, as the earlier areas of cultivation. Dr McCall suggested that the research of Mr Urban on a number of minor plants, which were still cultivated occasionally in different places and used as food in periods of hunger, might well have a bearing on the question of the early cultivation of indigenous yams. About twenty of these plants had been collected by Mr Urban who believed them to be relics, and Dr McCall thought that they might have been cultivated originally in association with the indigenous yam before the arrival of the more productive Asian and American plants.

Finally Mr Exell drew the attention of the Conference back to the ecological evidence of the great vegetation belts in Africa. Geographers,

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RICHARD GRAY

he said, had long been puzzled by the existence of a great grassland belt, running from Northern Angola through the Southern Congo across into a part of Northern Rhodesia. In a quite unnatural manner this lay between the equatorial forest to the north and the brachystigial woodland of Central Angola and the Rhodesias to the south. It had since become clear that the whole of this grassland belt was secondary: originally it had consisted of a mixed forest, half-deciduous half-evergreen. It now seemed quite certain that this was the area first cultivated by the peoples of this region. The rain forest to the north was it seemed too difficult for them, and farther south, in the brachystigial woodland, they were faced with a six-months drought; but in this intermediate region of mixed forest they had a rainfall of some-

thing like fifty to sixty inches a year, and their agricultural activities had resulted in this vast stretch of grassland.

In West Africa, Dr Morgan said, there was an exactly similar pheno- menon. On the west coast and north across the forest one came to a grassland zone followed by a zone of dry forest. This grassland fringe of the forest was in fact the most open part of West Africa. It was here that tradition claimed to locate the original homeland of the great military power of

Oyo, at least four original Yoruba capitals being in that zone, and there were also claims of an original Ibo homeland in this grassland fringe. As

regards East Africa, Mr Wright suggested that in Uganda the areas of

elephant grass might well indicate a similar process. On this point the discussion ended, but not before the Conference had been reminded that the grassland belt described by Mr Exell was also the Bantu nuclear area

postulated by Professor Guthrie in his paper which was to be discussed the

following afternoon.

DISCUSSION ON LEXICOSTATISTICS AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH

IN AFRICA

(Chairman: Dr Fage)

Opening the discussion on glotto-chronology, Mr Wrigley drew attention to Professor Armstrong's paper, and pointed out that lengths of

divergencies of neighbouring West African languages from a common

parent of the order of 6000 years suggested that the Negro peopling of West Africa began very early indeed. It was true that if it could be shown that non-literate languages changed more rapidly than the literate

languages, which had perforce been used by Swadesh and others to establish the constants assumed in lexicostatistical analysis, results such as these would be upset. But the example of Sardinian among the Romance

languages suggested if anything that the reverse was the case. Moreover the rate of change would have to be very much more rapid to invalidate the general inference to be drawn from Armstrong's work.

Professor Berry, however, said that he was not happy about the applica- tion of lexicostatistical methods to West African languages; he would not

184




have expected a great rate of change anyway in the languages compared by Professor Armstrong. Other speakers felt that though lexicostatistics was as yet unproved as a means of arriving at an absolute linguistic chronology in Africa, at this stage even pointers towards a relative chronology were of value.

The discussion then turned to the major controversy between Professor Greenberg, with his conclusion that the Bantu languages all sprang from a branch of the West African languages, and Professor Guthrie who maintained that the Bantu languages had spread out from a nucleus in Central Africa. Professor Guthrie explained that he had not expected, and was very surprised by, the results he obtained from his analysis of the Bantu languages. He had sought to identify as rigorously as possible the cognate roots in the Bantu languages. He did not start with an arbitrary list. Having excluded all doubtful cognates, some 1500 in all, he was left with some 2300 sets of cognates within the Bantu family. The roots involved classified themselves into three major groupings: those found generally in the Bantu area, and those found either mainly in the western or eastern halves. About 47 per cent of the general roots occurred throughout the 'Bantu nucleus', an area across Africa from the Congo mouth to the Indian Ocean with Katanga as its approximate centre. There was no case where a language nearer the nucleus had a smaller percentage of general roots than one more remote from the nucleus, though the percentage of general roots fell more rapidly in forested areas. Thus going north-east, south-east or south-west from the nucleus there was in each case a gradual falling off from some 47 per cent to some 30 per cent, but going north-west there was a sudden drop as the forest was entered to some 20 per cent after which there was a gradual decline to about 14 per cent. A taxonomic classification of roots in pairs of languages on an electronic computer was producing similar results to simple geographical plotting, and there were regular sound shifts throughout his material.

Professor Guthrie said that his studies still could throw little light on the expansion of the Bantu peoples: there was not, for instance, sufficient evidence as yet to detect by linguistic means whether or not earlier Hamitic or Nilo-Hamitic populations in parts of East Africa had been recently 'Bantuized', as suggested by Dr Oliver on the basis of traditional evidence. Actual experiment with the persistence of roots so far suggested that only in one case was there disturbance by a non-Bantu language. Although there was a vast body of cognates within the Bantu languages, the actual percentage of the vocabulary of each language involved in his work was very small: never more than 20 per cent, and the average was probably nearer I5 per cent.

Asked by Professor Wescott whether he saw any reconciliation between his views on the classification of Bantu and those of Professor Greenberg, Professor Guthrie said that no such reconciliation was possible. The Bantoid (i.e. 'semi-Bantu') languages had practically no cognates with the

I85



Bantu languages; the similarities were of grammatical type. Oddly enough where there were reminiscences of Bantu roots in West African languages, they were in languages which were typologically quite different. The only possible reconciliation with Greenberg's views would be if one postulated a movement from West Africa so remote in time that it ought to be called pre-Bantu and not proto-Bantu. A possible speculative hypothesis would be that the pre-Bantu were one group in the Lake Chad region who possessed canoes, and that they moved south along the Ubangi River to the middle Congo and then up the River Kasai until they found in Katanga, south of the equatorial forest, an environment similar to that of their original homeland. Among the most general Bantu roots were those for 'canoe', 'paddle', 'to catch fish with a line' etc. From the same area near Lake Chad other pre-Bantu might have moved more slowly into West Africa. The essence of his argument, however, was that the pre-Bantu must have moved rapidly through the forested area of the Congo basin, that their language must have developed over a considerable period, which might be called the proto-Bantu period, in the region to the south of the dense equatorial rain-forest, and that it must have been from this southernly development area that the main dispersion of the Bantu languages eventu-

ally took place. This hypothesis stimulated several comments from the archaeologists

present. Professor Hiernaux pointed out that the suggested nuclear Bantu area was the centre of Dimple-based pottery; he also drew attention to the existence of special pots, used only to carry fire on canoes, which were still found on the Luapala and Ubangi Rivers, similar to pots found at Sanga and dated to the first millennium A.D. Dr Clark suggested that the Makalian wet phase might have made other routes possible, and alternatively canoes

might have gone along the coast and up the Congo. He also drew attention to the fact that there were three separate Neolithic vegecultures: in eastern West Africa; in the Kenya area, a 'Hamitic' culture which did not enter the argument; and a southern Congo-Katanga-Zambezi valley culture, with bored stones and polished axes, and one CI4 date of about 4300 B.C.

On the question of the antiquity of canoes in Africa, Dr McCall said that

they were known in the Mesolithic, about 6000 B.C., and Dr Bivar added that the Chad canoes made of grass resembled Egyptian boats of about

3000 B.C. Professor Guthrie said that he thought his hypothetical route was the

most probable as it would always have been impossible to pass through Gaboon from north to south except by sea along the coast, and there was no evidence for Bantu sea-going. As for the time-depth involved in his work, he could say that, at the time of the dispersal from the nucleus, the Bantu must already have possessed iron, and the dispersal was therefore not more than two thousand years ago, but there must have been a very long period of development in the nucleus before this. Professor Wescott thought that one must be careful of defining nuclei from linguistic age: Icelandic was the

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most conservative of the Scandinavian languages, but Iceland was not their nuclear homeland. Professor Guthrie said that his case was different because of the uniform decrease of percentages the farther away one went from the nucleus.

Finally Dr McCall suggested that the original home of the Bantu

languages could be moved from the Benue area to that of the Chad without

destroying Professor Greenberg's hypothesis of the relationship between Bantu and the West African languages; the main obstacle, he thought, was the position of the Bantoid languages, which Professor Guthrie maintained had been influenced by Bantu. Professor Guthrie said that the percentage of his 2300 basis Bantu roots in the Bantoid languages was very small, and

although Professor Wescott said that he had found a considerable number of cognates with Bantu in the Bantoid languages, Professor Guthrie thought that was because Professor Wescott had started with a basic list of the Swadesh pattern instead of letting the cognates demonstrate themselves.

DISCUSSION ON SEROLOGY AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH IN AFRICA

(Chairman: Dr Fage)

Dr Fage opened the discussion on serology by saying how grateful historians were for Dr Garlick's blood-group maps. Some of the distri- butions plotted did seem to correlate with known geographical, cultural or linguistic patterns. However, the physical anthropologists present stressed the need for caution, pointing out that such maps could often only be based on slender and scanty evidence. It was very important to specify the exact nature of each sample examined. In the past some samples, for instance, had been labelled simply 'Bantu'. Sampling must be controlled by a thorough knowledge of the local sociology and ethno- graphy. There was also need for correlation with anthropometry. Further- more, it must be realized that population movements were by no means the only causative factor at work; blood groups and other genetic characteristics might, for example, be considerably modified by the incidence of diseases.

However, Dr Roberts believed that a working outline had now been established of African blood-group patterns. What was now needed, especially to permit reasonable interpretation, was analyses in depth of specific peoples and the establishment of their local frequency variations. Here the historians could help by stating what immigrations were known for a particular area and at what times, thus making it easier to distinguish between remnant and immigrant groups. The study of mortality and fertility might then reveal which specific genetic characters were more rapidly modified.

Professor Barnicot drew attention to the importance of 'genetic drift', of which there were two kinds. The first kind arose when a population unit was sufficiently small, for then chance played a disproportionately large

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role in determining what genes were passed on from generation to generation. Some might disappear altogether, while others might become universal. If the population subsequently increased, this aberrant pattern might still survive for some time. The second type occurred when a distinct new settlement was established by a small group of emigrants from a large population unit. It was then possible for the founders of the new settlement to be eccentric in all their genes. He thought that this second kind of genetic drift might have been especially important in Africa. Professor Hiernaux pointed out that the two kinds of drift could occur together.

In so far as the discussion had a general conclusion, it seemed to be that the establishment of historical inferences from serological evidence required the closest possible co-operation between historians and serologists. If the work of the serologist was to be of value to the historian, the former needed to know what historical evidence or hypotheses there might be.

DISCUSSIONS ON THE HISTORY OF AFRICA IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

(Chairmen: Professor Irwin and Professor Ingham)

The history of ideas in relation to Africa during the nineteenth century was discussed by Professor Curtin, who said that a great deal of work remained to be done on the development of European attitudes to Africa and the myths of European activities in Africa. Dr Shepperson felt that such a study could help to prevent historians of Africa from becoming isolationists; he suggested a variety of topics for investigation, including the development of racist attitudes in the late medieval and early modern periods,7 Africa as a setting for Utopian speculation in Europe,8 and image-forming agencies in Europe such as the African Association and the provincial Geographical Societies. Professor Ingham thought it was important to concentrate rather on the ideas of administrators and Euro- peans actually resident in Africa, and Professor Brunschwig agreed that the influence of the 'man on the spot' was often decisive. There was a danger, said Professor Graham, of over-simplification when writing intel- lectual history: it was often very difficult to discover exactly why a colonial governor had taken a specific line of action; experienced administrators were like the lower animals, governed by instinct, and an immediate, firm decision was sometimes the most valuable one. A practical implication of these latter points was drawn by Dr Oliver, who stressed the importance of providing research students with facilities for travel and study in Africa.

7 See, for example, the following: Arthur O. Lovejoy's studies of primitivism, e.g. his Essays in the History of Ideas, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, I948; Carl Degler, 'Slavery and the genesis of American race prejudice', Comparative Studies in Society and History, ii, i, Oct. 1959, pp. 49-66, and Oscar and Mary F. Handlin and Carl Degler, Correspondence, ibid., II, 4, July 1960, pp. 488-95; and Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages, Harvard University Press, 1952.

8 A lesser-known example of these works is Ignatius Donnelly's novel concerning Uganda.

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Dr Shepperson brought up the problem of American links with Africa. In particular there was a need for work on the American slave-trade after 1833, the role of the United States in the partition of Africa, American contributions to the theory of imperialism before Hobson and Lenin, and the influence of American Negroes on the development of African nationalism.

Dr Bivar introduced the question of the Arabic sources for African history. The paleographical study of Arabic scripts could yield valuable chronological evidence and other information for the study of the early history of West Africa, and for the nineteenth century the quantity and significance of Arabic material was very considerable. Although much of the writing was of a purely religious character, it often contained information of interest to political and economic historians. Mr Hunwick reported that a great deal of new material had been found in Northern Nigeria since Dr Kensdale catalogued the Arabic manuscripts in the Ibadan University College Library. The serious study of this increasing mass of material offered an opportunity and challenge to historians of Africa. Mr Smith, he said, was hoping to launch a Bornu scheme comparable in scope to that of Benin, and he himself was working on the state of learning in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Timbuctu. Dr Boahen said that a promising start had been made on the collection of Arabic manuscripts in Northern Ghana, and Professor Ingham reported on Mr Allen's progress in collecting Swahili and Arabic documents of the East African coast. M. Person said that the Futa Jallon was rich in Arabic manuscripts, and Mr Hodgkin appealed for international co-operation in this study of the history of ideas in Africa itself.

In the discussion on the twentieth century Professor Maquet asked African historians to clarify their use of terms such as 'empire', 'king', 'state', 'caste' etc. Though traditional to Western historiography, these terms were often inapplicable to Africa without amendment and re- definition. Other speakers, including Professor Curtin and Miss Perham, supported this suggestion and appealed to the anthropologists to co-operate in such an undertaking.

Mr Bennett called the attention of the Conference to the difficulties which were being created for future historians by the destruction of evidence. During his work on the contemporary history of Kenya, he had begun to feel like the archaeologists threatened with the destruction of evidence by the Aswan Dam, with the sole difference that he was unaware which of the evidence now available would shortly be destroyed. The problem was particularly urgent in respect of government archives, some sections of which stood in danger of being destroyed rather than handed over to successor governments. As an alternative, he suggested that confidential documents should be brought back to the metropolitan country for preservation, under the fifty years rule if necessary: their wholesale destruction would be both a political mistake and a disaster for

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future scholars. While strongly supporting this proposal, Dr Shepperson pointed out that government records were by no means necessarily the best guide to colonial realities; there was still a great need for work on unofficial sources, and in particular on those relating to the rise of African political parties. Dr Allott stressed the importance of preserving legal records in Africa, and suggested that law reports often contained material of interest to others than purely legal historians.

The problem of salvaging contemporary pamphlets and news-letters, which were of a too ephemeral nature to find their way into established libraries, was raised by Professor Kirkwood. He suggested that a centre should be formed which could collect this material, sift it after a lapse of ten years, and retain items worthy of permanent preservation. Miss Perham reminded the Conference of yet another whole range of evidence which was rapidly disappearing: oral traditions. They were of importance for contemporary historians as well as for those of more remote periods, and she wondered what was being done to record them, particularly in East Africa.

Finally Dr Oliver suggested that there was a need for more teaching of

contemporary history at universities in Africa, citing the example of Continental and American universities which made a much more deliberate effort to teach this than was done in Britain. Although several members of the Conference thought this could create grave difficulties in present conditions, most speakers supported this suggestion, and the feeling was

expressed that it was important to establish this subject on the syllabus before outside pressures became too strong.

DISCUSSION ON TRADE AND TRADE-ROUTES IN PRE-COLONIAL

AFRICA

(Chairman: Dr Boahen)

If a common theme can be said to have emerged from this discussion, which ranged over the whole Continent from the trans-Saharan routes of the pre-Christian era to the Arab penetration of East Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was perhaps the interconnexions of politics and trade. Several speakers pointed out occasions when political develop- ments had changed the course and direction of trade-routes. Dr Mauny, for instance, attributed the importance of the most westerly trans-Saharan route to the arrival of the Arabs in Mauritania in A.D. 734, though Dr McCall said that Sijilmasa, its terminus, was older than had usually been

thought. Another example, at a much later period, was the eastward shift of the trans-Saharan trade from Songhai to the Hausa states following the Moroccan invasion of Songhai. At the eastern end of the Continent, as Professor Pankhurst pointed out, the Galla wars had reduced the importance of the route from Zeila and Berbera, which was supplanted in the seventeenth century by that between Sennar and Gondar. Similarly in the

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Congo area, M. le Chanoine Jadin said that the Jaga invasions had forced the Portuguese traders to move their headquarters southwards to Luanda.

There was also, Dr Oliver suggested, an essential connexion between the rise of long-distance trade in ivory, gold, copper, and possibly slaves, and the minimum political conditions which enabled such trade to be conducted. The numbers of people required as carriers and the safe passage of caravans presupposed a fairly advanced stage of political development. In East Africa, for example, it might well have been the eastward spread of the Ntemi chieftaincy from central Tanganyika towards the coast which made possible the opening up of long-distance routes, for the earliest trade was that of caravans going from the interior to the coast and not the reverse. A similar process seemed to have developed with the establishment of the Portuguese in the Lower Congo and Angola, for the westward extension of the political systems of the Luba-Lunda was associated with the development of trade, especially in ivory, with the Atlantic sea-board.

Several other problems connected with trade-routes in pre-colonial Africa were touched on in the discussion: the nature of trade between the Nile Valley and the Lake Chad area; the earliest gold route inland from Kilwa, and the role of the Hindu traders on the East Coast in the pre- Portuguese era; the history of cowries as a medium of exchange in West Africa. By the end of the afternoon it had indeed become evident that here was a theme which could occupy not a mere session but a complete, and separate conference.

II



Documents

Third Conference on African History and Archaeology: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 3-7 July 1961 || A Report on the Conference