Chapter 20 Chapter 19 How Africa Became Black Africa
No matter how much you've read about Africa beforehand, once you're there, your first impressions of it can overwhelm you.On the streets of Windhoek, the capital of newly independent Namibia, I saw black Hereroes, black Ovambos, whites, and Namas who were neither black nor white.They are no longer the characters in the photos in the textbooks, but the real people in front of my eyes.Outside Windhoek, the last of the Kalahari Bushmen, once widespread, are struggling to survive.But what surprised me the most in Namibia was the name of a street: one of the main roads in the downtown area of Windhoek was actually called "Goring Street"!
I would have thought that no country would have been so influenced by unrepentant Nazis to give an article in the name of the notorious Nazi Reichstag and founder of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring. Street naming!Sure enough.It turned out that the street was named in honor of Hermann's father, Heinrich Göring.Heinrich Göring was the founder of the Reichstag in the former German colony of South West Africa (later to become Namibia).But Heinrich was also a problematic figure, as his exploits included one of the deadliest European raids on Africans, Germany's genocidal war against the Herero in 1904.Today, while developments in neighboring South Africa receive more of the world's attention, Namibia is also struggling to overcome its colonial past and build a multiracial society in harmony.Namibia proved to me how inseparable Africa's past and present are.
Most Americans and many Europeans regard the natives of Africa as blacks, the whites of Africa as modern invaders, and the racial history of Africa as the history of European colonialism and the slave trade.There is an obvious reason why we focus on these peculiar facts: Negroes are the only native Africans with whom most Americans are familiar because they were brought to America in enslaved numbers.But until thousands of years ago, a large part of modern black Africa may have been occupied by some completely different peoples, and the so-called black Africans themselves also came from different sources.Even before the white colonialists came, it wasn't just blacks who were already living in Africa, but (as we shall see) 5 of the 6 largest races in the world lived in Africa, 3 of which lived only in Africa.A quarter of the world's languages are spoken only in Africa.No other continent can match Africa in terms of ethnic diversity.
Africa's diverse races come from its diverse geographical conditions and long prehistory.Africa is the only continent that straddles the north-south temperate zone, and it also has some of the world's largest deserts, largest rainforests, and highest equatorial mountains.Humans have lived in Africa much longer than anywhere else: our distant ancestors originated in Africa about 7 million years ago, and anatomically modern Homo sapiens probably arose in Africa after that.The long-term interaction between Africa's many peoples has produced a fascinating prehistory, including two of the most dramatic population migrations of the past 5,000 years—the expansion of the Bantu people and the migration of Indonesians to Madagascar.All of these past interactions continue to have a huge impact, as the details of who got there before whom shape Africa today.
How did those five races get to where they are in Africa today?Why are blacks the most widespread in Africa, and not the other 4 groups that Americans tend to forget exist?The history of Africa's past is unwritten history, without the kind of written evidence that tells us about the expansion of the Roman Empire.How, then, can we hope to work out answers to these questions from its past history.The prehistory of Africa is a great mystery that is still only partially answered.It turns out that the situation in Africa bears some striking parallels with the prehistory of the Americas we discussed in the previous chapter, though little attention has been paid to them.
By AD 1000, these five major human groups had made Africa their home.Laymen loosely refer to them as blacks, whites, African pygmies, Khoisan, and Asians.Figure 19.1 is a map of their geographic distribution, while their portraits will tell you the obvious differences in skin tone, hair shape and color, and facial features.Blacks used to live only in Africa, Pygmies and Khoisan still live in Africa, and whites and Asians live far more outside Africa than inside it.Up to five groups constituted or represented all major races except Aboriginal Australians and their relatives.
Many readers may already be protesting: don't stereotype people by arbitrarily dividing them into "races," and I admit that each of these so-called major groups is quite diverse.To lump people as diverse as Zulus, Somalis, and Igbos under the same category is to ignore their differences.If we lump the Egyptians of Africa with the Berbers and the Swedes of Europe under the same category of "whites," we are also ignoring the enormous differences between them.Moreover, the divisions between blacks, whites, and other major groups are arbitrary, because the boundaries between each such group and the others are hard to draw: all human groups on earth are Marriage will take place.However, as we shall see, acknowledging these major groups is still very useful for understanding history, and we can use the names of these groups as a shorthand instead of repeating every sentence. explanation of.
In these five groups in Africa, many of the typical representatives of blacks and whites are familiar to Americans and Europeans and need not be described in terms of their physical characteristics.Even as late as AD 1400, blacks still occupied the largest area of Africa: the southern part of the Sahara and most of sub-Saharan Africa (see Figure 19.1).While the descendants of African-Americans in the Americas are primarily descended from the west coast of Africa, the same peoples have traditionally occupied East Africa as far north as the Sudan and south as far as the southeastern coast of South Africa.Whites, including Egyptians, Libyans, and Moroccans, occupied the northern coast of Africa and the northern part of the Sahara Desert.These North Africans were almost impossible to confuse with the blue-eyed, blond-haired Swedes, but most laymen would still call them "whites" because of their lighter complexion compared to the southerly called "blacks", Hair is straighter.Most black and white people in Africa make their living from farming or herding cattle or both.
In contrast, the next two groups, the Pygmies and the Khoisan, included hunter-gatherers without crops and livestock.Pygmies, like blacks, are born with dark skin and thick curly hair.Pygmies, however, are much shorter, have more reddish skin, less black, more facial and body hair, and more prominent foreheads, eyes, and teeth—all of which differ from blacks .Pygmies mostly lived as hunter-gatherers in groups, and their groups were widely distributed in the rainforests of Central Africa, trading with (or working for) neighboring black farmers.
The Khoisan group is the least familiar to Americans, who probably haven't even heard their names.They used to be distributed over a vast area of southern Africa, and among them were not only a small number of hunter-gatherers called the San, but also a large number of herders called the Khoi. (People now prefer the more familiar names Hottentots and Bushmen.) The Khoi and San look (or used to look) very different from African blacks: their skin is yellowish, their hair Very thick and curly, women tend to accumulate a large amount of fat in the buttocks (medically known as "gluteal fat").As a distinct group, the Khoi have dwindled considerably in number as European colonists shot, drove, and infected many of them with disease, and most survivors and Europeans gave birth to mestizos, a population of mixed ancestry in South America Sometimes they're called half-bloods, sometimes they're called busters.The San people are also subject to shooting, driving and disease infection, but in the desert area of Namibia, which is not suitable for agriculture, a group of San people whose numbers are dwindling still maintain their characteristics. A few years ago, there was a film "God Crazy too" is about them.
There is nothing surprising in the distribution of white Africans in northern Africa, since peoples of a similar constitution live in the Near East and the adjoining parts of Europe.Throughout history, people have traveled between Europe, the Near East and North Africa.Therefore, I will not dwell too much on African whites in this chapter, since there is nothing mysterious about their origin.It is the blacks, pygmies, and Khoisan who are more mysterious, since their geographic distribution suggests drastic population shifts in the past.For example, the now sporadic 200,000 pygmies scattered among 120 million blacks suggest that pygmy hunters formerly populated the equatorial forests before they were driven out and isolated by the arrival of black farmers.The Khoisan are an anatomically and linguistically distinct people, yet their territory in southern Africa is surprisingly small.Could it be that the Khoisan were originally widespread and their population to the north was somehow wiped out?
I've saved the biggest anomaly for last.Only 250 miles off the coast of East Africa, the large island of Madagascar is much closer to the African continent than to any other, separated from Asia and Australia by the vast waters of the Indian Ocean.The people of Madagascar are a mixture of both ingredients.One component is black African, which is to be expected, but the other is visually recognizable as tropical Southeast Asian.In particular, the language spoken by all Malagasy - Asian, black and mestizo - is Austronesian, very similar to Maanya spoken on the Indonesian island of Borneo, which is separated from Madagascar by the open The Indian Ocean is over 4,000 miles away.No people even remotely resembling the Borneans lived within a few thousand miles of Madagascar.
When Europeans first visited Madagascar in 1500, those Austronesian speakers brought their Austronesian language and a modified Austronesian culture already established there.This, I think, is one of the most astonishing facts of human geography throughout the world.It is speculated that prehistoric Borneans sailed in ships without maps or compasses and ended up in Madagascar.How on earth did they do this?
This example from Madagascar shows us that the languages of peoples can provide as important clues about their origins as their physical appearance.Just looking at the people of Madagascar, we know that some of them originated in tropical Southeast Asia, but we can't know which part of tropical Southeast Asia, and we would never guess Borneo.What else can we know from African languages that we can't know from African faces?
There are 1,500 languages spoken in Africa, which is unimaginably complex.Joseph Greenberg, a great linguist at Stanford University, teased them out into clarity.He confirms that all these languages fall into exactly five language families (see Figure 19.2 for their geographical distribution).Readers accustomed to thinking that linguistics is bland and overly specialized might be surprised to know what an interesting contribution Figure 19.2 makes to our understanding of African history.
If we first compare Figure 19.2 with Figure 19.1, we see that there is a rough correspondence between language families and anatomically defined groups of humans: languages within a language family tend to be spoken by different people of.In particular, speakers of Afro-Asiatic languages mostly proved to be people who could be classified as white or black, speakers of Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo proved to be black, and speakers of Khoisan The Khoisan people speak the Austronesian language, and the Indonesians speak the Austronesian language.This suggests that languages tend to evolve along with the people who speak them.
Hidden above Figure 19.2 is our first surprise, and a huge blow to those Eurocentrics who believe in the so-called superiority of Western civilization.We are taught that Western civilization originated in the Near East, was developed to its zenith in Europe by the Greeks and Romans, and gave birth to the three great religions of the world: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.These religions took place among people who spoke three closely related languages called Semitic languages: Aramaic (the language of Christ and the Apostles), Hebrew, and Arabic.We instinctively associate Semitic peoples with the Near East.
However, Greenberg concluded that the Semitic languages actually formed only one of a much larger language family—one of six or more branches of the Aphro-Asiatic family, all others of the Aphro-Asiatic family The branch (and the other 222 extant languages) are found only in Africa.Even Semitic languages themselves are predominantly African languages, with 12 of its 19 extant languages found only in Ethiopia.This shows that the Afro-Asiatic languages originated in Africa, and only one of them spread to the Near East.So perhaps it was Africa that produced the language used by the authors of the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Moral Pillar of Western Civilization.
The next surprise hidden in Figure 19.2 is a superficial detail which I did not comment on just now when I told you that different peoples often have different languages.Of the 5 groups of Africans - blacks, whites, pygmies, Khoisan and Indonesians, only the pygmies do not have any different languages: every ethnic group of pygmies and the neighboring black farmers Groups speak the same language.However, if one compares a language spoken by the Pygmies with the same language spoken by the Negroes, the Pygmies' speech seems to contain some unique words with peculiar pronunciations.
Of course, as far as the origin of language is concerned, people as special as the Pygmies live in such a special place as the African equatorial rainforest, and their degree of isolation will surely allow them to gradually form their own language family .Today, however, these languages have disappeared, and we have seen from Figure 19.1 that the modern geographical distribution of the Pygmies is very scattered.Thus, the demographic and linguistic clues add up to suggest that the Pygmies' homeland was submerged in a sea of invading black farmers, whose languages the few remaining Pygmies adopted, while their original Language leaves only traces of certain words and sounds.We have seen earlier that much the same was the case with the little blacks of Malaysia (the Semangs) and the little blacks of the Philippines, who adopted Austronesian and Austronesian languages, respectively, from the peasants who surrounded them.
The sporadic distribution of the Nilotico-Saharan languages in Figure 19.2 also shows that many speakers of these languages are also submerged in the sea of Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Congo speakers .But the distribution of Khoisan languages illustrates an even more dramatic phenomenon of "submergence."These languages use aspirated sounds as consonants, which is very unique in the world. (If you're baffled by the name !Kuhn Bushman, then the exclamation point is not a sign of premature dismay, it's just linguists' way of expressing an aspirated sound.) Of all the extant Khoisan languages the only one is the southern African Yes, with two exceptions.The two exceptions are two very specific, aspirated Khoisan languages, one called Hadza and one called Sandawe, which exist in isolation in Tanzania, the Khoisan languages closest to southern Africa There are over 1000 miles.
In addition, Xhosa and several other Niger-Congo languages in southern Africa are also full of aspirants.Even more unexpectedly, aspiration sounds or words from Khoisan also appear in the two Afro-Asiatic languages spoken by black Kenyans, who speak The Hadza and Sandawe speakers were further removed from present-day Khoisan.All this shows that the distribution of the Khoisan language and the Khoisan people was not limited to present-day southern Africa, but reached the far north, and later they, like the Pygmies, were drowned in the ocean of blacks In the sea, there is only a linguistic legacy of their past existence.This is a unique contribution of linguistic evidence that is almost impossible to deduce from physical studies of living people alone.
I save the most outstanding contributions of linguistics for last.If you look at Figure 19.2 again, you will see that the Niger-Congo language family is spread over all of West Africa and most of sub-equatorial Africa, which obviously does not provide any clue as to where on that vast scale the language family originated. where.However, Greenberg affirms that all Niger-Congo languages of Africa south of the equator belong to a branch called the Bantu languages.This branch accounts for nearly half of the 1032 Niger-Congo languages and more than half of the Niger-Congo speakers (nearly 200 million people).But all these 500 Bantu languages are so similar to each other that some people joke that they are 500 dialects of one language.
Taken together, the Bantu languages constitute only a single, low-level group of the Niger-Congo language family.Most of the other 176 language groups are crowded in West Africa, making up only a small fraction of the overall range of the Niger-Congo language family.In particular, the most distinctive Bantu languages, as well as the closest non-Bantu relatives, the Niger-Congo languages, are crowded into a small area in Cameroon and neighboring eastern Nigeria.
Apparently, the Niger-Congo language family originated in West Africa; its Bantu branch originated at the eastern end of this distribution range, namely Cameroon and Nigeria; In some areas.This expansion must have started long ago, so there was enough time for this ancestral Bantu language to diverge into 500 descendant languages, but also so recently that all these descendant languages were still very similar to each other.Since all other Niger-Congo speakers were black as well as the Bantu speakers, it is impossible to deduce who migrated in which direction based on physical anthropological evidence alone.
To make this kind of linguistic reasoning intelligible, let me take a familiar example: the geographical origins of the English language.Today, the largest number of people who speak English as a first language live in North America, with others scattered around the globe, such as the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries.Each of these countries has its own dialect of English.If we know nothing more about the distribution and history of languages, we may guess that English originated in North America and was later spread overseas by colonists in Britain and Australia.
But all these English dialects constitute only a lower branch of the Germanic language family.All the other languages—the various Scandinavian languages, German and Dutch—crowd in northwestern Europe.In particular, Frisian, the closest Germanic relative to English, is confined to the Netherlands and a small coastal region of western Germany.Thus, a linguist might rightly deduce right away that English originated in the coastal regions of northwestern Europe, and from there spread throughout the world.In fact, we know from historical records that English did come to England from there by the Anglo-Saxons who invaded in the 5th and 6th centuries AD.
Basically the same reasoning tells us that the nearly 200 million Bantu people who now occupy a large swath of the African map originated in Cameroon and Nigeria.Along with the Semitic origin in North Africa and the Malagasy in Asia, this is yet another conclusion we can draw without linguistic evidence.
We have deduced from the distribution of the Khoisan languages and from the fact that the Pygmies did not have their own idiosyncratic language that the Pygmies and the Khoisan were formerly more widespread and then submerged by the great sea of Negroes. (I use "submerge" as a neutral, all-encompassing word, whether the process is conquest, expulsion, interbreeding, killing, or epidemic.) According to the distribution of Niger-Congo languages, we It is now understood that the blacks who "drown" the Pygmies and Khoisan were Bantu.The physical and linguistic evidence considered so far allows us to infer these prehistoric "submergence" phenomena, but still does not solve the mystery of these "submergence" phenomena for us.Only the further evidence I shall present next can help us answer two other questions: What favorable conditions enabled the Bantu to displace the Pygmies and Khoisan?When did the Bantu reach the former homeland of the Pygmies and Khoisan?
To answer the question about the Bantu's advantage, let us examine the living evidence before us—evidence from domesticated plants and animals.As we have seen in previous chapters, evidence for this is important because food production brings with it high population densities, germs, technology, political organization, and other elements of power.Peoples who inherited or developed food production due to the accidental factors of geographical location were able to "submerge" peoples with less geographical conditions.
When Europeans arrived in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 15th century, Africans were growing five groups of crops (Figure 19.3), each of which has significant significance for African history.The first group of crops is grown only in North Africa, extending as far as the Ethiopian highlands.North Africa has a Mediterranean climate, characterized by rainfall that is concentrated during the winter months. (Southern California also has a Mediterranean climate, which explains why my basement, and those of many other Southern Californians, tends to flood in winter and dry out in summer.) The Fertile Crescent, the Birthplace of Agriculture It also has a Mediterranean climate with rainy winters.
Thus, the original crops of North Africa turned out to be crops adapted to germinate during the winter rains, and archaeological evidence shows that they were first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent beginning about 10,000 years ago.The spread of these Fertile Crescent crops to neighboring North Africa with a similar climate set the stage for the rise of ancient Egyptian civilization.They include such familiar crops as wheat, barley, peas, beans and grapes.These crops are familiar to us only because they also spread to neighboring regions of Europe with a similar climate, and from Europe to the Americas and Australia, becoming some of the staple crops of temperate agriculture throughout the world.
When you travel south across the Sahara in Africa and encounter rain again in the Sahel on the southern edge of the desert, you'll notice that it rains in the Sahel in summer, not winter.Even if Fertile Crescent crops adapted to winter rains manage to make it across the Sahara, they may struggle to grow in the rainy summer Sahel.We found two groups of African crops whose wild ancestors arose just south of the Sahara that were adapted to less seasonal variation in summer rain and day length.One group contained plants whose ancestors were widely distributed from east to west in the Sahel and probably domesticated there.Notably, they include sorghum and pearl barnyardgrass, which became staple cereals in vast areas of sub-Saharan Africa.Sorghum proved to be a valuable crop and is now grown in hot, arid regions on every continent, including the United States.
Another group contains plants whose wild ancestors arose in Ethiopia and were probably domesticated in the highlands there.Most of these are still mainly grown in Ethiopia, and Americans still know nothing about them - these crops include Ethiopian narcotic cones, Ethiopian bananas like bananas, oily Nug, used to brew domestic beer barnyardgrass and a small-grained grain called teff used to make domestic bread.But every coffee-addicted reader can thank ancient Ethiopian farmers for domesticating the coffee plant.Originally grown only in Ethiopia, coffee became popular in the Arabian Peninsula and then around the world, and is today the mainstay of the economies of countries as far-flung as Brazil and Papua New Guinea.
The penultimate group of African crops comes from wild ancestors grown in the humid climate of West Africa.Some of these crops, including African rice, have almost always been limited to local cultivation; others, such as African yams, have spread to all other parts of sub-Saharan Africa; and two crops—oil palm and kola nut— — has spread to other continents.West Africans chewed the caffeinated nut of the kola nut as a narcotic, and the Coca-Cola Company enticed the first Americans and later the world to drink a drink originally made from an extract of the kola nut. Drinks, that was a long time ago.
A final group of African crops has also adapted to the wet climate, but they are the most surprising in Figure 19.3.Bananas, Asian yams and taro had been widely grown in sub-Saharan Africa by the early 15th century, and African rice had been transplanted and grown along the coast of East Africa.But these crops all originated in tropical Southeast Asia.The presence of these crops in Africa might surprise us if the presence of the Indonesians on Madagascar had not made us aware of Africa's prehistoric connection with Asia.Could it be that the Austronesians who set sail from Borneo landed on the coast of East Africa, donated their crops to grateful African farmers, picked up some African frontier residents, and then sailed east to Madagascar to colonize, so in Africa left no other traces of Austronesians?
Here's another surprise: All of Africa's native crops -- those of the Sahel, Ethiopia, and West Africa -- originated north of the equator.None of the African crops originated south of the equator.This gives us a hint of how Niger-Congo speakers from north of the equator could replace the Pygmies in equatorial Africa and the Khoisan south of the equator.The failure of the Khoisan and Pygmies to develop agriculture was not because they were unqualified as farmers but simply because it happened that most of the wild plants in southern Africa were unsuitable for domestication.Neither Bantu farmers nor white farmers, despite inheriting thousands of years of agricultural experience, have since been unable to develop native plants in southern Africa into food crops.
As for the domesticated animals of Africa, a general introduction can be made much faster than an introduction to its plants, because there are so few domesticated animals there.The only animal we know for sure to be domesticated in Africa is a turkey-like bird called the guinea fowl, because its wild ancestors were found only in Africa.The wild ancestors of domesticated cattle, donkeys, pigs, dogs and domestic cats are native to North Africa, but also in Southwest Asia, so we are not sure where they were first domesticated, although the earliest known domestic donkeys and Domestic cats appeared in Egypt.Recent evidence suggests that cattle may have been domesticated independently in North Africa, Southwest Asia and India, and that breeds from all three are related to modern African breeds.Otherwise, all other domesticated mammals in Africa must have been domesticated and introduced elsewhere, since their wild ancestors were found only in Eurasia.Africa's sheep and goats were domesticated in Southwest Asia, its chickens in Southeast Asia, its horses in southern Russia, and its camels probably in Arabia.
The most unexpected feature of this list of African livestock is once again negative.Africa is known for its large wild mammals, and they're also plentiful—there's zebras and wildebeest, rhinos and hippos, giraffes and bison, but none of them make that list.We will also see that this fact has had as profound an impact on African history as there were no native domesticated plants south of the equator.
This quick tour of Africa's staple food products is enough to show that some of them have traveled long distances from their origins in and outside Africa.In Africa, as in other parts of the world, some groups were "luckier" than others by inheriting a whole range of domesticable wild plants and animals from their environment.By analogy with the fact that Australian Aboriginal hunter-gatherers were "swamped" by English settlers who lived on wheat and cattle, we have to suspect that some "lucky" Africans took advantage of their own to "swamp" theirs African neighbors.Now, we can finally turn to the archaeological record to see who "submerged" whom and when.
What can archeology tell us about when and where agriculture and animal husbandry actually arose in Africa?Any reader who devotes himself to the history of Western civilization can be forgiven for taking it for granted that food production in Africa began in the Nile Valley of ancient Egypt, home of the pharaohs and pyramids.After all, by 3000 B.C.E., Egypt was undoubtedly home to the most complex society in Africa and one of the earliest centers of writing in the world.In fact, however, what may be the earliest archaeological evidence of food production in Africa comes from the Sahara Desert.
Today, of course, a large part of the Sahara is dry and barren.But between 9000 BC and 4000 BC, the Sahara was wetter, had many lakes, and was full of game.At that time, the Saharans began raising cattle and making pottery, and later sheep and goats, and they may have also begun domesticating sorghum and millet.
Pastoralism in the Sahara predates the earliest known introduction to Egypt (5200 BC) of food production in the form of winter crops and livestock throughout Southwest Asia.Food production also arose in West Africa and Ethiopia, and by around 2500 BC cattle herders had crossed the modern frontier from Ethiopia into northern Kenya.
While these conclusions are based on archaeological evidence, there is also an independent way to date the introduction of domesticated plants and animals: comparing the words used to refer to them in modern languages.A comparison of the names of plants in some of the Niger-Congo languages of southern Nigeria shows that the words fall into three categories.The words used to designate a crop in the first category are quite similar in all these languages in southern Nigeria.These crops turned out to be West African yams, oil palms, and kola nuts—plants thought to be native to West Africa and first domesticated there, based on botanical and other evidence.Since they are the oldest crops in West Africa, all modern languages in southern Nigeria have inherited the same set of words that were originally used to refer to them.
Second, the names of some crops are consistent only in languages belonging to a small branch of those languages in southern Nigeria.Originally, these crops were thought to have come from Indonesia, such as bananas and Asian yams.Apparently these crops arrived in southern Nigeria only after the languages had begun to diverge into branches, so that each branch invented or received different names for the new arrivals, names only belonging to the Some modern languages of a particular branch were inherited.The names of the last crops are completely inconsistent within some language families, but relate to trade routes.These crops proved to be of New World origin, such as maize and peanuts, which we know were introduced to Africa after the transatlantic shipping began (1492 AD) and have since spread along trade routes, so they often carry Portuguese name or other foreign names.
Thus, even if we do not have any botanical or archaeological evidence, we can still infer from linguistic evidence alone: first domestication of native crops, second importation of crops to Indonesia, and finally Europeans of American crops.Historian Christopher Ereter of the University of California, Los Angeles, used this linguistic approach to determine the order in which domesticated plants and animals were used by people belonging to each African language family.有一种方法叫做词源统计分析法，其根据就是计算出词通常在历史上的变化速度。比较语言学家利用这种方法甚至能估计出作物驯化或引进的年代。
把关于作物的直接的考古学证据同比较间接的语言学证据结合起来，我们就可以推断出几千年前在撒哈拉驯化高梁和黍的人所说的语言是现代尼罗—撒哈拉语的祖代语言。同样，最早驯化西非湿润地区作物的人所说的语言是现代尼日尔—刚果诸语言的祖代语。最后，说阿非罗—亚细亚祖代语言的人可能驯化过埃塞俄比亚的本地作物，而且他们肯定也是把新月沃地的作物引进北非的人。
因此，来自现代非洲语言中植物名称的证据，使我们一眼就能看明白几千年前非洲存在3种语言：祖代的尼罗—撒哈拉语、祖代的尼日尔—刚果语和祖代的阿非罗—亚细亚语。此外，我们还能根据其他的语言学证据一眼就能看明白祖代科伊桑语的存在，虽然不是根据作物名称这个证据（因为科伊桑人的祖先没有驯化过任何作物）。既然非洲今天有1500种语言，那么几千年前它肯定不会只有这4种祖代语言。但所有其他这些语言想必都已消失——这或者是由于说这些语言的人虽然生存了下来，但却失去了自己本来的语言，如俾格米人，或者是由于连这些人本身部消失了。
现代非洲本土的4个语系（即除去最近传入的马达加斯加的南岛语的4个语系）之所以能幸存下来，不是由于这些语言作为交流工具有什么内在的优越性。相反，这应归因于一个历史的偶然因素：说尼罗—撒哈拉语、尼日尔—刚果语和阿非罗—亚细亚语的人的祖先，碰巧在最合适的时间生活在最合适的地点，使他们获得了作物和家畜，从而使他们人口繁衍，并且取代了其他族群或将自己的语言强加给其他族群。现代的为数不多的说科伊桑语的人能够幸存下来，主要是由于他们生活在非洲南部不适于班图人的农业的、与世隔绝的地区。
在我们考查科伊桑人如何躲过班图人的移民浪潮而幸存下来这一点之前，让我们先来看一看，关于非洲史前期的另一次人口大迁移——南岛人在马达加斯加岛的殖民情况，考古学告诉了我们一些什么。在马达加斯加调查的考古学家们现已证明，南岛人至少不迟于公元800年，也可能早在公元300年，即已到达马达加斯加。南岛人在那里碰到了（并着手消灭）一个陌生的动物世界，这些动物非常特别，好像它们是来自另一个星球，因为这些动物是在长期与世隔绝的情况下在马达加斯加演化出来的。它们中有大隆鸟，有同大猩猩一般大的叫做狐猴的原始灵长目动物，还有矮小的河马。对马达加斯加岛上最早的人类定居点的考古发掘，出土了一些铁器、牲畜和作物的残存，从这点来看，那些殖民者就不完全是乘坐小小独木舟的被风吹离航线的渔民；他们是—个经过充分准备的探险队。这次史前的行程4000英里的探险是如何实现的呢？
有一本古代航海书对此提供了一条线索。这本书名叫《航行记》，是公元100年左右一个生活在埃及的无名氏商人写的。这位商人描述了当时已相当繁荣的把印度和埃及与东非海岸连接起来的海上贸易路线。随着公元800年后伊斯兰教的传播，印度洋贸易也兴旺发达起来，有充分的考古文献证明，在东非沿海定居点遗址中发现了大量中东的（偶尔甚至还有中国的！）产品，如陶器、玻璃器皿和瓷器。商人们等待着有利的风向，好让他们横渡中非和印度之间的印度洋。1498年，葡萄牙航海家成为绕过非洲南端到达肯尼亚海岸的第一个欧洲人，他碰到了斯瓦希里人的一些贸易点，并在那里带上一个水手领着他走上那条通往印度的直达航线。
但从印度向东，在印度与印度尼西亚之间，也有一条同样兴旺发达的海上贸易路线。也许，马达加斯加的南岛人殖民者就是从这条向东的贸易路线从印度尼西亚到达印度，后来偶然碰上了向西的通往东非的贸易路线，在那里加入了非洲人的行列，和他们一起发现了马达加斯加。南岛人与东非人的这种结合，今天仍在马达加斯加的语言中体现出来，马达加斯加的语言基本上是南岛语，只是从肯尼亚沿海的一些班图语中借用了一些单词。但在肯尼亚的一些语言中却没有相应的来自南岛语的借用词，而且在东非的土地上也几乎没有留下多少南岛人的其他痕迹：主要地只有可能是印度尼西亚乐器在非洲的遗产（木琴和筝）以及当然还有在非洲农业占有十分重要地位的南岛人的作物。因此，人们怀疑南岛人是不是没有走经由印度和东非到达马达加斯加的比较容易的路线，而是设法（令人难以置信地）直接渡过印度洋，发现了马达加斯加，只是后来才加入了东非的贸易路线。因此，关于非洲最令人惊异的人类地理学上的事实多少还仍然是个谜。
关于非洲史前史上最近的另一次人口大迁移——班图人的扩张，考古学能告诉我们一些什么呢？根据现代民族和他们的语言这个双重证据，我们知道非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区并不总是我们今天所认为的黑色的大陆。这个证据倒是表明了俾格米人曾在中非雨林中有广泛分布，而科伊桑族群在非洲赤道以南较干旱地区亦甚为普遍。考古学能不能对这些假定进行验证呢？
就俾格米人来说，答案是“还不能”，这仅仅是因为考古学家们还必须从中非森林中去发现古人类的骨骼。对于科伊桑人，答案是“能”。在现代科伊桑人分布地区北面的赞比亚，考古学家不但发现了与科伊桑族群在欧洲人到达时仍在非洲南部制作的那种石器相似的石器，而且也发现了可能与现代科伊桑人相似的一些人的头骨。
至于班图人最后是怎样取代北部的那些科伊桑人的，考古学和语言学的证据表明，班图人的农民祖先从西非内陆的稀树草原往南向较湿润的海岸森林扩张，可能早在公元前3000年就已开始了（图19.4）。在所有班图语言中仍然广泛使用的一些词表明，那时班图人已经有了牛和薯蓣之类的在湿润气候下生长的作物，但他们还没有金属制品，并且仍然从事大量的捕鱼、狩猎和采集活动。他们的牛群甚至由于森林中的采采蝇传播的疾病而被毁掉。他们进人刚果河流域的赤道森林地带，在那里开垦园地，并且增加了人口。这时，他们开始“淹没”了从事狩猎和采集的俾格米人，把他们一步步挤进森林。
公元前1000年后不久，班图人从森林的东缘走出来，进入了东非有裂谷和大湖的比较开阔的地带。在这里他们碰到了一个民族大熔炉，这里有在较干旱地区种植黍和高粱以及饲养牲畜的、说阿非罗—亚细亚语和尼罗—撒哈拉语的农民和牧人，还有以狩猎和采集为生的科伊桑人。由于从他们的西非家园继承下来的适应湿润气候的作物，这些班图人得以在不适合以往所有那些当地人耕种的东非气候湿润地区进行耕种。到了公元前的最后几个世纪，不断前进的班图人到达了东非海岸。
在东非，班图人开始从他们的说尼罗—撒哈拉语和阿非罗—亚细亚语的邻居那里得到了黍和高梁（以及尼罗—撒哈拉语中表示这些作物的名称），并重新得到了牛群。他们还得到了铁，那时铁还刚刚开始在非洲的萨赫勒地带熔炼。公元前1000年后不久，非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区便已有了铁制品的制造，但起源于何处则仍不清楚。这个早期年代有可能接近于北非海岸迦太基的近东铁制品制造技术引进的年代。因此，一些历史学家常常假定冶金知识是从北面传入非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区的。另一方面，自从至少公元前2000年以后，铜的熔炼就已在西非撒哈拉地区和萨赫勒地带进行。那可能是非洲独立发现铁冶炼术的先声。非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南铁匠们的铁熔炼技术为这一假设提供了佐证，因为它们和地中海地区的铁熔炼技术差异很大，足以表明这是独立的发展：非洲的铁匠们发现如何在他们村庄的熔炉里产生高温从而炼出钢来，这比19世纪欧洲和美国的贝塞麦转炉早了2000多年。
有了适应湿润气候的作物，再加上铁器，班图人终于拼凑出一整套在当时非洲赤道以南地区所向披靡的军事—工业力量。在东非，他们仍然不得不同为数众多的说尼罗—撒哈拉语和阿非罗—亚细亚语的铁器时代的农民进行竞争。但在南部2000英里的地区内生活着科伊桑狩猎采集族群，他们不但人口稀少，而且没有铁器和作物。在几个世纪内，班图农民在最近的史前史上的一次最迅猛的移民进军中，以摧枯拉朽之势，一路推进到今天南非东海岸纳塔尔省的地方。
我们很容易把这种无疑是一次迅速而引入注目的扩张行动简单化，并把一路上的科伊桑人描绘成听任成群结队汹涌而来的班图人践踏的人。事实上，情况要比这复杂。非洲南部的科伊桑族群在班图人向外扩张前的几个世纪中已经有了牛、羊。班图人的第一批开路先锋可能人数很少，他们选择了适于种植他们的薯蓣的湿润的森林地区，而跳过了比较干旱的地区，把这些地区留给科伊桑的牧人和以狩猎采集为生的人。交换和通婚关系无疑已在这些科伊桑农民和班图农民之间建立起来，他们各自占据邻近的一些不同的栖息地，就像俾格米狩猎采集族群和班图农民今天在赤道非洲仍然在做的那样。随着班图人口的增长并把牛和适应干旱气候的谷物吸收进他们的经济，他们才逐步地布满了原先被跳过的那些地区。但最后的结果仍然一样：班图农民占据了原先属于科伊桑人的大部分地区；原先的这些科伊桑居民的遗产除了埋在地下等待考古学家去发现的头骨和石器外，就只剩下分散的非科伊桑语言中的吸气音；以及非洲南部某些班图族群酷似科伊桑人的外貌特征。
这些消失了的科伊桑人究竞发生了什么事？We don't know.我们唯一能够肯定的是：在科伊桑族群生活了也许有几万年之久的一些地方，现在生活着班图人。我们只能大胆猜测，用现代亲眼目睹的一些事件来进行类比，例如用钢铁武装起来的白人农民与使用石器的澳大利亚土著和加利福尼亚印第安狩猎采集族群之间的冲突。在这一点上，我们知道，狩猎采集族群被用一系列互相配合的方法很快地消灭了：他们或者被赶走，或者男人被杀死或沦为奴隶，女人被霸占为妻，或者无论男女都受到农民的流行病的感染。在非洲这种病的一个例子就是疟疾，疟疾是蚊子传染的，而蚊子是在农民村庄的四周滋生的，同时，对于这种疾病，入侵的班图人已经形成了遗传的抵抗力，而科伊桑狩猎采集族群大概还没有。
然而，关于最近的非洲人口分布的图19.1提醒我们，班图人并没有搞垮所有的科伊桑人，在非洲南部的一些不适合班图人农业的地区仍有科伊桑人幸存下来。最南端的班图人是科萨人，他们在开普敦以东500英里的南非南海岸的菲什河停了下来。这不是因为好望角这个地方过于于旱不适合农业：毕竞它是现代南非的粮仓。事实上，好望角冬天多雨，属于地中海型气候，在这个气候条件下，班图人的适应了夏雨的作物是不能生长的。到1652年，即荷兰人带着他们原产近东的适应冬雨的作物到达开普敦的那一年，科萨人仍未渡过菲什河。
这种植物地理学的表面上的细节对今天的政治具有重大的关系。一个后果是：一旦南非的白人迅速杀死或用疾病感染或赶走好望角的科伊桑人群体，白人就能正当地宣称他们在班图人之前占有了好望角，因而对它拥有优先权。这种宣布不必认真看待，因为好望角科伊桑人的优先权并没有能阻止白人把他们赶走。严重得多的后果是，1652年的荷兰移民必须全力对付的，是人口稀少的科伊桑牧人，而不是人口稠密的用钢铁装备起来的班图农民。当白人最后向东扩张，于1702年在菲什河与科萨人遭遇时，一场长期的殊死战斗开始了。虽然欧洲人当时能够从他们在好望角的巩固基地调派军队，但也经过了9次战争，历时175年才把科萨人征服，军队前进的速度平均每年不到一英里。如果当初那几艘最早到来的荷兰船遇到这样的激烈抵抗，白人怎能成功地在好望角站稳脚跟呢？
因此，现代南非的问题至少一部分源自地理上的偶然因素。好望角科伊桑人的家园碰巧很少有适于驯化的野生植物；班图人碰巧从他们5000年前的祖先那里继承了适应夏雨的作物；而欧洲人碰巧从他们近1万年前的祖先那里继承了适应冬雨的作物。正像新独立的纳米比亚首都的那块“戈林街”路牌提醒我的那样，非洲的过去给非洲的现在打上了深深的烙印。
这就是班图人何以能够“淹没”科伊桑人，而不是相反。现在，让我们转向我们对非洲史前史的难解之迷的剩下来的一个问题：为什么欧洲人成了在非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南殖民的人。事情竟然不是反其道而行之，这尤其令人惊讶，因为非洲不但可能是解剖学上现代智人的家乡，而且也是几百万年来人类进化的唯一发源地。非洲除了巨人的领先优势这些有利条件外，还有高度多样化的气候和生境以及世界上最高度的人类多样化这些有利条件。如果1万年前有个外星人访问地球，他认为欧洲最后会成为非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南的一个帝国的一批附庸国家，他作出这样的预测也许是情有可原的。
导致非洲与欧洲碰撞的这—结果的直接原因是很清楚的。正如他们与印第安人遭遇时的情况一样，进入非洲的欧洲人拥有三重优势：枪炮和其他技术、普及的文化以及为维持探险和征服的花费巨大的计划所必不可少的政治组织。这些优势在碰撞几乎还刚刚开始时就显示了出来：在法斯科·达·伽马于1498年首次抵达东非海岸后仅仅4年，他又率领一支布满了大炮的舰队卷土重来，迫使控制津巴布韦黄金贸易的东非最重要的港口基尔瓦投降。但为什么欧洲人能发展出这3大优势，而撒哈拉沙漠以南的非洲人则不能呢？
我们已讨论过，从历史上看，所有这三者都来自粮食生产的发展。但粮食生产在非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区被延误了（与欧亚大陆相比），其原因是非洲缺少可以驯化的本地动植物物种，它的适于本地粮食生产的小得多的面积，以及它的妨碍粮食生产和发明的传播的南北轴向。让我们研究一下这些因素是如何起作用的。
首先，关于家畜，我们已经看到，非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区的家畜来自欧亚大陆，可能有少数几个例外是来自北非。因此，直到家畜开始被新兴的欧亚大陆文明利用之后几千年，它们才到达非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区。这在开始时的确使人感到奇怪，因为我们认为非洲是充满大型野生哺乳动物的那个大陆。但我们在第九章中看到，要想对一种野生动物进行驯化，它必须相当温驯，对人服从，驯养花费少，对一些疾病有免疫力，而且还必须生长迅速并存圈养中繁殖良好。欧亚大陆产的牛、绵羊、山羊、马和猪是世界上少数几种通过所有这些考验的大型野生动物。而它们的非洲同类——如非洲野牛、斑马、野猪、犀牛和河马——则从来没有被驯化过，甚至在现代也是如此。
当然，有些大型的非洲动物有时确曾被驯养过。汉尼拔在对罗马的不成功的战争中利用过驯服的非洲象，古代埃及人也可能驯养过长颈鹿和其他动物。但这些驯养的动物没有一种实际上被驯化了——就是说，在圈养中进行有选择的繁殖和对遗传性状的改变以使之对人类更加有用。如果非洲的犀牛和河马得到驯化并供人骑乘，它们不但可以供养军队，而且还可以组成一支所向披靡的骑兵，把欧洲的骑兵冲得落花流水。骑着犀牛的班图突击队可能已推翻了罗马帝国。但这种事没有发生。
第二个因素是非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区和欧亚大陆之间在可驯化的植物方面的一种虽然不是那样极端但也相当大的差异。萨赫勒地带、埃塞俄比亚和西非也有土生土长的作物，但在品种数量上比欧亚大陆少得多。由于适合驯化的野生起始植物品种有限，甚至非洲最早的农业也可能比新月沃地的农业晚了几千年。
因此，就动植物的驯化而论，领先优势和高度多样性属于欧亚大陆，而不属于非洲。第三个因素是非洲的面积仅及欧亚大陆的面积的一半左右。而且，非洲面积中只有三分之一左右是在公元前1000年以前为农民和牧人所占据的赤道以北的撒哈拉沙漠以南地区。今天，非洲的总人口不到7亿，而欧亚大陆有40亿。但如果所有其他条件相等，更多的土地和更多的人口意味着更多的相互竞争的社会和更多的发明创造，因而也就意味着更快的发展速度。
造成非洲在更新世后发展速度比欧亚大陆慢的其余一个因素，是这两个大陆主轴线的不同走向。非洲的主轴线和美洲的主轴线一样都是南北走向，而欧亚大陆的主轴线则是东西走向（图10.1）。如果你沿南北轴线行走，你会穿越在气候、生态环境、雨量、日长以及作物和牲口疾病部大不相同的地带。因此，在非洲某个地区驯化或得到的动物和作物很难传播到其他地区。相比之下，在虽然相隔数干英里但处于同一纬度并有相似的气候和日长的欧亚大陆各社会之间，作物和动物的传播就显得容易了。
作物和牲畜沿非洲南北轴线的缓慢通过或完全停止前进，产生了重大的后果。例如，已经成为埃及的主食的地中海沿岸地区的作物，在发芽时需要冬雨和日长的季节性变化。这些作物无法传播到苏丹以南，因为过了苏丹，它们就会碰上夏雨和很少或根本没有季节性的日照变化。埃及的小麦和大麦在欧洲人于1652年把它们带来之前，一直没有到达好望角的地中海型气候区。而科伊桑人也从来没有发展过农业。同样，适应夏雨和很少或根本没有季节性的日长变化的萨赫勒地带的作物，是班图人带到非洲南部的，但在好望角却不能生长，从而终止了班图农业的前进。非洲的气候特别适合香蕉和其他的亚洲热带作物，今天这些作物己居于非洲热带农业最多产的主要作物之列，但它们却无法从陆路到达非洲。显然，直到公元第一个1千年，也就是它们在亚洲驯化后很久，它们才到达非洲，因为它们必须等到横渡印度洋的大规模船运的那个时代。
非洲的南北轴线也严重地妨碍了牲畜的传播。赤道非洲的采采蝇是锥虫体的携带者，虽然非洲当地的野生哺乳动物对锥虫病有抵抗力，但对从欧亚大陆和北非引进的牲畜来说，这种病证明是灾难性的。班图人从没有采采蝇的萨赫勒地带获得的牛，在班图人通过赤道森林的扩张中亦未能幸免。虽然马在公元前1800年左右已经到达埃及，并在那以后不久改变了北非的战争方式，但直到公元第一个1千年中，它们才渡过撒哈拉沙漠，推动了一些以骑兵为基础的西非王国的出现，而且它们也从来没有通过采采蝇出没的地区而到达南方。虽然牛、绵羊和山羊在公元前第三个1千年中已经到达塞伦格蒂大草原的北缘，但在那以后又过了2000年，牲畜才越过塞伦格蒂到达了非洲南部。
沿非洲南北轴线同样缓慢传播的还有人类的技术。陶器在公元前8000年左右已经在苏丹和撒哈拉地区出现，但直到公元元年才到达好望角。虽然文字不迟于公元前3000年已在埃及发明出来，并以字母形式传入努比亚的麦罗威王国，虽然字母文字也传人了埃塞俄比亚（可能从阿拉伯半岛传人），但文字并没有在非洲的其余地区独立出现，这些地区的文字是阿拉伯人和欧洲人从外面带进来的。
总之，欧洲在非洲的殖民并不像某些白人种族主义者所认为的那样与欧洲民族和非洲民族本身之间的差异有关。估恰相反，这是由于地理学和生物地理学的偶然因素所致——特别是由于这两个大陆之间不同的面积、不同的轴线方向和不同的动植物品种所致。就是说，非洲和欧洲的不同历史发展轨迹归根到底来自它们之间的“不动产”的差异。
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