Man, Past and Present Part 52

It should be noticed that these genealogical tables are far from complete, for they exclude most of the southern sections, notably the _Rahanwin_ who have a very wide range on both sides of the Jub.

In the statements made by the natives about true Somals and "pagans,"

race and religion are confused, and the distinction between Asha and Hawiya is merely one between Moslem and infidel. The latter are probably of much purer stock than the former, whose very genealogies testify to interminglings of the Moslem Arab intruders with the heathen aborigines.

Despite their dark colour C. Keller[1145] has no difficulty in regarding the Somali as members of the "Caucasic Race." The Semitic type crops out decidedly in several groups, and they are generally speaking of fine physique, well grown, with proud bearing and often with cla.s.sic profile, though the type is very variable owing to Arab and Negro grafts on the Hamitic stock. The hair is never woolly, but, like that of the Beja, ringlety and less thick than the Abyssinian and Galla, sometimes even quite straight. The forehead is finely rounded and prominent, eye moderately large and rather deep-set, nose straight, but also snub and aquiline, mouth regular, lips not too thick, head sub-dolichocephalic.

Great attention has been paid to all these Eastern Hamitic peoples by Ph. Paulitschke[1146], who regards the Galla as both intellectually and morally superior to the Somals and Afars, the chief reason being that the baneful influences exercised by the Arabs and Abyssinians affect to a far greater extent the two latter than the former group.

The Galla appear to have reached the African coast before the Danakil and Somali, but were driven south-east by pressure from the latter, leaving Galla remnants as serfs among the southern Somali, while the presence of servile negroid tribes among the Galla gives proof of an earlier population which they partially displaced. Subsequent pressure from the Masai on the south forced the Galla into contact with the Danakil, and a branch penetrating inland established themselves on the north and east of Victoria Nyanza, where they are known to-day as the Ba-Hima, Wa-Tusi, Wa-Ruanda and kindred tribes, which have been described on p. 91.

The Masai, the terror of their neighbours, are a mixture of Galla and Nilotic Negro, producing what has been described as the finest type in Africa. The build is slender and the height often over six feet, the face is well formed, with straight nose and finely cut nostrils, the hair is usually frizzly, and the skin dark or reddish brown. They are purely pastoral, possessing enormous herds of cattle in which they take great pride, but they are chiefly remarkable for their military organisation which was hardly surpa.s.sed by that of the Zulu. They have everywhere found in the agricultural peoples an easy prey, and until the reduction of their wealth by rinderpest (since 1891) and the restraining influence of the white man, the Masai were regarded as an ever-dreaded scourge by all the less warlike inhabitants of Eastern Africa[1147].

Amongst the Abyssinian Hamites we find the strangest interminglings of primitive and more advanced religious ideas. On a seething ma.s.s of African heathendom, already in pre-historic times affected by early Semitic ideas introduced by the Himyarites from South Arabia, was somewhat suddenly imposed an undeveloped form of Christianity by the preaching of Frumentius in the fourth century, with results that cannot be called satisfactory. While the heterogeneous ethnical elements have been merged in a composite Abyssinian nationality, the discordant religious ideas have never yet been fused in a consistent uniform system. Hence "Abyssinian Christianity" is a sort of by-word even amongst the Eastern Churches, while the social inst.i.tutions are marked by elementary notions of justice and paradoxical "shamanistic"

practices, interspersed with a few sublime moral precepts. Many things came as a surprise to the members of the Rennell Rodd Mission[1148], who could not understand such a strange mixture of savagery and lofty notions in a Christian community which, for instance, accounted accidental death as wilful murder. The case is mentioned of a man falling from a tree on a friend below and killing him. "He was adjudged to perish at the hands of the bereaved family, in the same manner as the corpse. But the family refused to sacrifice a second member, so the culprit escaped." Dreams also are resorted to, as in the days of the Pharaohs, for detecting crime. A priest is sent for, and if his prayers and curses fail, a small boy is drugged and told to dream. "Whatever person he dreams of is fixed on as the criminal; no further proof is needed.... If the boy does not dream of the person whom the priest has determined on as the criminal, he is kept under drugs until he does what is required of him."

To outsiders society seems to be a strange jumble of an iron despotism, which forbids the selling of a horse for over 10 under severe penalties, and a personal freedom or licence, which allows the labourer to claim his wages after a week's work and forthwith decamp to spend them, returning next day or next month as the humour takes him. Yet somehow things hold together, and a few Semitic immigrants from South Arabia have for over 2000 years contrived to maintain some kind of control over the Hamitic aborigines who have always formed the bulk of the population in Abyssinia[1149].

FOOTNOTES:

[1000] _The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study_, W. Z. Ripley, 1900, p. 437.

[1001] "Diese Namen sind naturlich rein conventionell. Sie sind historisch berechtigt ... und mogen Geltung behalten, so lange wir keine zutrefferenden an ihre Stelle setzen konnen" (_Anthropologische Studien_, etc., p. 15).

[1002] E. Meyer, _Geschichte des Altertums_, 1909, l. 2, discussing the original home of the Indo-Europeans (-- 561, _Das Problem der Heimat und Ausbreitung der Indogermanen_) remarks (p. 800) that the discovery of Tocharish (Sieg und Siegling, "Tocharish, die Sprache der Indo-skythen,"

_Sitz. d. Berl. Ak._ 1908, p. 915 ff.), a language belonging apparently to the _centum_ (Western and European) group, overthrows all earlier conceptions as to the distribution of the Indogermans and gives weight to the hypothesis of their Asiatic origin.

[1003] "Io non dubito di denominare _aria_ questa stirpe etc." (_Umbri_, _Italici_, _Arii_, Bologna, 1897, p. 14, and elsewhere).

[1004] _Anthrop. Studien_, p. 15, "Diese Gemeinsamkeit der Charakteren beweist uns die Blutverwandtschaft" (_ib._).

[1005] Sir W. Crooke's antic.i.p.ation of a possible future failure of the wheat supply as affecting the destinies of the Caucasic peoples (_Presidential Address at Meeting Br. a.s.soc._ Bristol, 1898) is an economic question which cannot here be discussed.

[1006] Ph. Lake, "The Geology of the Sahara," in _Science Progress_, July, 1895.

[1007] This name, meaning in Berber "running water," has been handed down from a time when the Igharghar was still a mighty stream with a northerly course of some 800 miles, draining an area of many thousand square miles, in which there is not at present a single perennial brooklet. It would appear that even crocodiles still survive from those remote times in the so-called Lake Miharo of the Ta.s.sili district, where von Bary detected very distinct traces of their presence in 1876. A. E.

Pease also refers to a Frenchman "who had satisfied himself of the existence of crocodiles cut off in ages long ago from watercourses that have disappeared" (_Contemp. Review_, July, 1896).

[1008] _Recherches sur les Origines de l'Egypte: L'Age de la Pierre et des Metaux_, 1897.

[1009] _Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop._ 1896, p. 394. This indefatigable explorer remarks, in reference to the continuity of human culture in Tunisia throughout the Old and New Stone Ages, that "ces populations fortement melangees d'elements neanderthalodes de la Kromirie fabriquent encore des vases de tous points a.n.a.logues a la poterie neolithique" (_ib._).

[1010] _The Antiquity of Man_, 1915, p. 255.

[1011] _Africa, Antropologia della Stirpe Camitica_, Turin, 1897, p. 404 sq.

[1012] "Le nord de l'Afrique entiere, y compris le Sahara naguere encore fort peuple," _i.e._ of course relatively speaking, "Du Dniester a la Caspienne," in _Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop._ 1896, p. 81 sq.

[1013] _Ibid._ p. 654 sq.

[1014] _Resume de l'Anthropologie de la Tunisie_, 1896, p. 4 sq.

[1015] This ident.i.ty is confirmed by the characters of three skulls from the dolmens of Madracen near Batna, Algeria, now in the Constantine Museum, found by Letourneau and Papillaut to present striking affinities with the long-headed Cro-Magnon race (Ceph. Index 70, 74, 78); leptoprosope with prominent glabella, notable alveolar prognathism, and sub-occipital bone projecting chignon-fashion at the back (_Bul. Soc.

d'Anthrop._ 1896, p. 347).

[1016] He shows ("Exploration Anthropologique de l'Ile de Gerba," in _L'Anthropologie_, 1897, p. 424 sq.) that the North African brown brachycephalics, forming the substratum in Mauretania, and very pure in Gerba, resemble the European populations the more they have avoided contact with foreign races. He quotes H. Martin: "Le type brun qui domine dans la Grande Kabylie du Jurjura ressemble singulierement en majorite au type francais brun. Si l'on habillait ces hommes de vetements europeens, vous ne les distingueriez pas de paysans ou de soldats francais." He compares them especially to the Bretons, and agrees with Martin that "il y a parmi les Berberes bruns des brachycephales; je croirais volontiers que les brachycephales bruns sont des Ligures. Libyens et Ligures paraissent avoir ete originairement de la meme race." He thinks the very names are the same: "[Greek: Libyes]

est exactement le meme mot que [Greek: Ligyes]; rien n'etait plus frequent dans les dialectes primitifs que la mutation du _b_ en _g_."

[1017] _The Races of Europe_, 1900, _pa.s.sim._

[1018] "Les Chaouias," etc., in _L'Anthropologie_, 1897, p. 1 sq.

[1019] _Ueber eine Schadelsammlung von den Kanarischen Inseln_, with F.

von Luschan's appendix; also "Ueber die Urbewohner der Kanarischen Inseln," in _Bastian-Festschrift_, 1896, p. 63. The inferences here drawn are in substantial agreement with those of Henry Wallack, in his paper on "The Guanches," in _Journ. Anthr. Inst._ June, 1887, p. 158 sq.; and also with J. C. Shrubsall, who, however, distinguishes four pre-Spanish types from a study of numerous skulls and other remains from Tenerife in _Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc._ IX. 154-78. The 152 cave skulls measured by Von Detloff von Behr, _Metrische Studien an 152 Guanchenschadeln_, 1908, agree in the main with earlier results.

[1020] For an interpretation of the significance of Armenoid skulls in the Canary Is. see G. Elliot Smith, _The Ancient Egyptians_, 1911, pp.

156-7.

[1021] "Denombrement et Types des Cranes Neolithiques de la Gaule," in _Rev. Mens. de l'ecole d'Anthrop._ 1896.

[1022] T. Rice Holmes, _Ancient Britain_, 1907, p. 424.

[1023] "Infiltrazioni pacifiche." (_Arii e Italici_, p. 124.)

[1024] _L'Anthr._ XII. 1901, pp. 547-8.

[1025] Cf. G. Elliot Smith, _The Ancient Egyptians_, 1911, p. 58 ff.

[1026] T. Rice Holmes, _Caesar's Conquest of Gaul_, 1911, p. 266, with list of authorities. See also Sigmund Feist, _Kultur_, _Ausbreitung und Herkunft der Indogermanen_, 1913, p. 364, and H. H. Johnston, "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XLIII. 1913, pp. 386 and 387.

[1027] T. Rice Holmes, _loc. cit._ p. 272.

[1028] W. Wright, _Middles.e.x Hospital Journal_, XII. 1908, p. 44.

[1029] See A. C. Haddon, _The Wanderings of Peoples_, 1911, pp. 16, 17, 55.

[1030] R. S. Conway, _The Italic Dialects_, 1897, and Art. "Etruria: Language," _Ency. Brit._ 1911.

[1031] Cf. T. Rice Holmes, _Caesar's Conquest of Gaul_, 1911, p. 283.

"The truth is that linguistic data are insufficient."

[1032] I. 57.

[1033] See p. 465.

[1034] For Lydian see E. Littmann, _Sardis_, "Lydian Inscriptions,"

1916, briefly summarised by P. Giles, "Some Notes on the New Lydian Inscriptions," _Camb. Univ. Rep._ 1917, p. 587.