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THE NORTHERN FACTOR IN THE HISTORY OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS REVISITED

Author(s): I.R. Amadi

Source: Transafrican Journal of History , 1989, Vol. 18 (1989), pp. 80-89

Published by: Gideon Were Publications

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24328705

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THE NORTHERN FACTOR IN THE HISTORY OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS

REVISITED

I.R. Amadi

Accepted January. 15 1989

Archaeological, linguistic, and perhaps other pieces of evidence on their face value seem, in respect of African history, at least in recent historiography to point to a movement of peoples, cultures, and ideas southwards from the northern to the southern half of the continent beginning from the end of the Makalian wet phase some 5000 BP. Perhaps the European invasion of Africa during the scramble and the partition may be said to be an extension, temporal and spatial, of what has now come to be known as the Hamitic influence in the history of Black Africa. Those who subscribe to the view of a pervasive northern impact may often believe that black Africa was incapable of any cultural innovations beyond those introduced among them by the superior Hamites from the north or elsewhere. On the other hand, many historians challenge this impression and take pains to prove the ron'rary view in some specific instances.

In this paper an attempt will be made to review briefly some of the major historical and cultural indices, some of which are taken for granted, that have been used by the exponents of the external influence and, against the backdrop of the opposing arguments, determine how far Black African development has heen influenced from outside in the early periods of African history. In the end there will emerge, it is hoped, a position that emphasizes the weakness of the Hamitic

hypothesis and points to the possibility of Negroes actually influencing developments northwards.

The hamitic hypothesis as an idea was first mooted by the explorer, J.H. Speke, in relation to the Buganda Kingdom of the 19th century.1 It was later more forcefully articulated by C.G. Seligman when he wrote:

Apart from relatively late Semitic influence . . . the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of Hamites, its history the record of these peoples and their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bush men, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali. . . The incoming Hamites were pastoral 'European' — arriving wave after wave — better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negros.2

However, later-day scholars have abandoned Seligman's superior race syndrome and have chosen to take refuge in the diffusion of institutions rather than of

gQ Transafrican Journal of History, vol. 18, 1989: 80 - 89

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Transafrican Journal of History

superior people. Thus recently, though without, perhaps, any obvious racist colouration, scholars have come up with viewpoints that attribute major developments south of the Sahara to diffusionist elements from the north. For instance in a contribution to the debate J.D. Clark writes that 'after the Pleistocene, sub-Saharan Africa seems to have been more receptive than contributary to cultural progress in the old World as a whole.'3 A study of the existing literature on the immediate pre-history and history of Africa will certainly throw up the looming shadow of this external old world influence which in many cases merely acts as a red herring in the quest for an objective appraisal of the African past. 'Nothing has bedevilled the study of (African) history', Professor M.S. Kiwanuka has written, 'more than the Hamitic theory, (of) J.H. Speke'.*

Admittedly, modern scholarship in general is much more cautious in these matters. However, the role of the Negro in the early civilization of the north — Egypt which can be gleaned from the records appears to be essentially neglected. It is noteworthy that, perhaps as a result, Cheikh Anta Diop has taken pains to most persuasively argue for a Negro origin of civilization, asserting that the ancient Egyptian civilisation was authored by the Negro race.5 His remarks and conclusions have of course drawn not very charitable criticism from Professor Raymond Mauny.6 Yet, in spite of some evident weaknesses in his thesis, 'the greatest merit of his work lies in pointing out in full measure the reality of Negro input in the Egyptian civilisation. The Egyptian element, along with other factors as can be seen in the following lines, would seem to render untenable the view that it was the Hamites who engineered cultural sophistication in sub-Saharan Africa.

Plant and Animal Domestication

First, let us consider the origins of food and animal domestication in history as they affect Africa south of the Sahara. Gordon V. Childe, the theorist of the neolithic evolution in his thesis of unitary origin believes that plants and animals were first domesticated in the Near East from where the knowledge of that invention diffused first to the Nile valley and thence across the Sahara to the Negro peoples. This Near Eastern development according to him occurred in the eighth millienuim B.C., while dates between the sixth and fifth millenia B.C. have been suggested for its reaching Egypt. For sub-Saharan Africa the diffusion occurred in the third millenium B.C., it is generally held.7 This north-south trend would even appear well supported by archaeological excavations in the southern half of Africa where occur the most recent Iron Age -settlement dates in keeping with the late occupation of the region by the iron-using agricultural Bantu. But, the Bantu it has been demonstrated , originated from West Africa and not from across the Sahara'.

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The Hamitic Hypothesis Revisited \

To many modern scholars who write on these issues the question of the Hamitic theory may never have been of any conscious concern to their objectives; nevertheless one can hardly fail to discern an unconscious, at time surreptitious, acceptance of the Hamitic thesis, given especially the recent African colonial past. Indeed D.G. Coursey, with regard to the controversy surrounding the origin of the African yam, has observed that 'the psychological climate of much of the colonial era in West Africa was . . . unfavourable to the

idea that African races could possibly have developed any useful crop'.8 In any case it is not being argued that in these things no connexions had existed between the Old World and Africa south of the Sahara. It is rather the nature and extent

of the former's influence that raise some questions. Contrary to the diffusionist view G.P. Murdock has postulated an independent

origin of crop domestication in West Africa among the Mande people who, he says, domesticated the African rice around the headwaters (sic) of the River Niger about 5000 B.C. He ranks the zone as one of four centres of agricultural evolution, adding that 'this was a genuine invention, not a borrowing from another people'.9 Although the bases for his conclusion have been criticised,10 he is not alone in the view of the indigenous invention of agriculture in West Africa. For instance Richard Gray and Roland Porteres have expressed a similar opinion. They say that '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.'11 Three independent centres of domestication — the Ethiopian region, tropical West Africa north of the rain forest, and southeast Africa — have been assigned to sorghum.12 It used to be thought that yam was not grown in Africa until the arrival of Asian yams. Coursey has shown that yam cultivation doubtlessly evolved independently in the Derived Guinea Savanna of West Africa or possibly under high forest conditions.13 It is thus clear that it would be difficult to make a final statement

regarding the diffusion of crop domestication into sub-Saharan Africa from outside. One can, therefore, not agree more with Thurstan Shaw who rightly cautions that 'in the present state of our knowledge any consideration of the beginnings and development of agriculture in Africa must largely be a survey of our ignorance or a reasoned essay in speculation. '

In respect of livestock it is generally accepted that the well known domesticates — goats, sheep, and cattle — were introduced from outside especially as no possible ancestors of these animals have been discovered in Africa south of the Sahara. Consequently their origin has been traced through the Nile valley to the Near East. Two observations need to be made on this matter: the first is that

evidence exists in support of cattle having been possibly domesticated earlier in the Sahara than Egypt, the assumed first African port of call on the diffusionist track; the second is that certain animals such as the ass, the cat, and the guinea

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Transafrican Journal of History

fowl are accepted as authentic indigenous domesticates whose domestication most probably owed nothing to external stimulus.

Iron Technology

The origin of iron technology in Africa is another area of controversy regarding influence from across the Sahara. It is well known that the earliest iron culture in

Sub-Saharan Africa occurred in about the 5th century B.C. at Nok located south

of the Jos Plateau and far from the Saharan margin. It has been suggested that owing to the complexity of iron technology, its independent invention must have

occurred only once — in the Middle East — and the knowledge diffused there from to other places.14 It was known in North Africa first and later in Meroe. Diffusionists are of the opinion that iron in Nok came either from North Africa or

Meroe.15 The rather slim difference in dates — 6th century B.C. for Meroe and 5th century B.C. for Nok — appears to be an important anchor against which the Meroitic diffusion is secured. Yet a dissenting opinion exists which says that iron in Nok was actually earlier than in.Meroe.16 If this is true, then the Meroe thesis needs to be reviewed. A more direct evidence against Meroe is available in relation to Daima, located south of Lake Chad, where excavations have shown the Iron Age occurring much later than at Nok — actually about a thousand years after Nok. The point is that if iron Had diffused from Meroe it would have probably been at Daima earlier than Nok because Daima was well suited geographically to play the role of a corridor through which cultural influences flowed in an east — west direction.17

Those who argue that iron diffused from North Africa to Nok do so on the

assumed merits of Carthage as an iron-using Phoenician settlement beginning from its foundation in the 9th century B.C. They also mention the copper mines of Akjoujt in modern Mauritania where copper artifacts datable to the 5th century B.C. have been excavated. The fact that the,equine phase of the Saharan rock art shows chariot routes passing close to Akjoujt from a northerly direction,

they further contend, is suggestive of the art of .metal working having been transmitted from Carthage. Other such routes existed elsewhere and could have

played a similar role, they also suggest.18 Although no iron artifact has been recovered at Akjoujt, iron working is assumed by Oliver and Fagan who contend that iron and copper were so intermingled in the mines 'that it would have been impossible to smelt one without the other.' This, perhaps, is more so when copper is believed to have provided the necessary intermediate technology for understanding the more complex task of iron smelting.19

Rather than strengthen, this viewpoint weakens the general proposition because, in the first place, it fails to adequately take into consideration the fact that Africa south of the Sahara, with the possible exception of Mauretania

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The Hamitic Hypothesis Revisited

skipped the Bronze Age and moved from Stone to Iron Age ostensibly without the benefit of the intermediate copper technology. Secondly, in spite of the existence\>f other possible chariot routes in the Sahara there is no evidence of copper mines in central Sahara that would have created a source of opportunity for this technology around the fourth century B.C. It must be a great tribute to the people of Nok if they did what the Carthagineans, Egyptians, and the Kushites could not do, namely: understand the complex mechanics of iron working before ever working on copper. The case for independent invention of iron technology in Nok is therefore a strong one.20

Egyptian Culture, the Hamitic Theory and other Black Monarchies

Undoubtedly the blossoming of the oldest African civilization in Egypt is another factor influencing the Hamitic theory. The Egyptian culture, classified as Hamitic, is seen as diffusing southwards and southwestwards in its later years with an important anchorage in Kush. It may never be disputed, as Diop does, that Kush borrowed a lot from ancient Egypt especially after several centuries of subordination and colonisation by Egypt. However, it is the nature of such influence reaching the Negro peoples through Kush that remain contentious. We have'already discussed the question of iron. One essential dimension of the Egyptian factor calls for mention at this point, to wit: the alleged diffusion of the traits of 'divine kingship'. For certain reasons this hitherto widely held notion appears improbable. Fage has aptly pointed out that the political institutions of central and western Sudan could not have been affected by any eastern influences other than from the Christian Nubian kingdoms that succeeded Kush as from the 6th century A.D. Secondly, he maintains that the monarchies of Shilluk and the

Babito of Bunyoro founded much later in the 16th century were the products of Luo conquest of the Chwezi state of Bunyoro-Kitara. Kushitic influence, it would seem, was confined in the direction of the Blue Nile where the Sidama were possibly affected.21

In a similar vein the Hamitic element manifests itself in the traditions of origin of monarchies and peoples of several Black kingdoms. For instance from those traditions of the interlacustrine region of East Africa which indicate a northern origin for the Chwezi some people have distilled the notion that these founders of

the Bunyoro — Kitara state were either Greeks, Portuguese, or Egyptians,22 all in an effort to emphasize the inferiority of the Negro. Of course Were and Wilson

dismiss this idea as mere guess work. More importantly, Nkore tradition says that the Abachwezi were indigenous to the interlacustrine region. Indeed an informant claimed that they 'were a ruling class within Bunyoro. They were born here. They were hunters'.23

For ancient Ghana a similar proposition has been made as a result of Mahmud

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Transafrican Journal of History

Kati's Tarikh al Fettach and Es Sadi's Tarikh al Sudan both of which mention the

presence of white kings in the kingdom in its formative years. According to the latter there were twenty-two white kings before and twenty-two other white kings after the Hejra. This belief has been'challenged because, among other reasons, there is unmistakable Islamic influence in that tradition which apparently chrystallized in the;hey day of Islam in the Western Sudan. Again, the notion has been traced to al Idrisi who wrote in the 12th century A.D. It is noteworthy that others before him such as al Yakubi, al Masudi and al Bakri spoke of Ghana as a Negro kingdom.24 Finally Kati and es Sadi wrote in the 16th and 17th centuries long after the collapse of Ghana and may have worked with imperfect and unreliable sources. Against the background of this kind of skepticism -should be weighted other similar traditions of exotic — often Middle Eastern — origins of peoples and dynasties in this part of Africa. We have in mind such legends as those of Kisra, Oduduwa, Bayejidda,25 and lately the wayward claims of Jewish/Egyptians origins by the Igbo and the Efik.26

From the foregoing historical samples a minimum deduction can be made: the northern origins of early Sub-Saharan African cultures remain in several instances an assumption. It may therefore be of help to look more critically at the other side of the coin and, in conjunction with additional information, further sharpen our perspective on the subject. The march of events had not always been in a north-to-south direction. Of course the first tool-making hominid evolved in East Africa and if we should accept a unitary origin of the human species and culture, then it can be said that proto-humans and their culture moved to North Africa and beyond from the south. So far the true relationship between the rock art of the Sahara and southern Africa has not been determined even though both have been dated to about 6000 B.P.27 However, the early paintings throughout Africa depict people living a nomadic way of life.28 Unless it can be proved that one art tradition led to the other, it must be held that the rock paintings attest to the probability of multiple independent origins of identical cultures. So far no such outright proof may be said to exist.

The authors of the southern African paintings and engravings were the pre Bantu San inhabitants of that part of Africa. Interestingly enough the early Saharan paintings show humans with 'very definite' Negroid features. Skeletal remains have indicated that in the past Negroid peoples lived as far north as latitude 25° north.29 It is most likely that they were the authors of those paintings even though Cooke does not think so.30 Be that as it may, J. Ki-Zerbo has warned that the reconstruction which attributes the earliest art period in the Sahara to Mediterranean people who were either White or half-caste is precarious and gives undue weight to population movements from outside Africa.31 The crucial question is: if these Negro peoples eventually drifted south as a result of the desication of the Sahara had they at any earlier time moved northwards in the

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The Hamitic Hypothesis Revisited

first instance? The significance of this question arises from the view that the Negroes of West Africa are said to have evolved from the 'wét conditions of equatorial and West Africa',32 a view which is well buttressed by the discovery at Iwo Eleru in Western Nigeria of the oldest skeletal remains of a Negroid human dated to the tenth millenium B.C.33 If Negros had moved north as early as 5400 B.C.,34 for example, the movement must have significant implications for the diffusionist theory.

At this juncture it may be apposite to refer to the opinion of Cheikh Anta Diop.

Making references to Egyptian painting, sculpture, religion and other cultural traits, ancient and modern authors, including linguistics, he declares that it was the Negroes who created the Egyptian civilisation. By implication therefore, 'they were the first to invent mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, science, the arts, religion, agriculture, social organisation, medicine, writing, technology, architecture. . . ' Diop continues; 'In saying all this one simply asserts that which is, in all modesty, strictly true and which no one, at this time, can refute by arguments worthy of the name'.35 In the present state of our knowledge, this is no doubt an extremist view which may understandably outrage some people's sense of history. None the less, this does not make the opposite viewpoint (White origin of Egyptian civilisation) any greater truth than the former. It would appear that Egyptian civilisation was a joint contribution of the Black and the White races to mankind. Already we have noted the discovery of negro skeletal remains deep in the Saharan latitudes. It is even more intriguing that from the fourth millenium Neolithic cemetary at Badari in Upper Egypt have been excavated skeletons classified as belonging in about equal proportions to caucasoid, Negro, and hybrid races.36 Badari was one of the early formative phases in Egyptian civlisation. Apparently the Negroes were later displaced in the Nile valley and the Sahara owing probably to social and natural factors such as the desiccation that had afflicted the Sahara after the Makalian Wet Phase. These would have

engendered a southward movement of Negro peoples carrying with them the cultural baggage they had been very familiar with, and to which they had contributed, in the more northern latitudes. In all this we should not lose sight of

the fact of the hybridisation of population that would naturally have occurred. Also we need not assume that in their new abode they met stagnant cultures. The Nok culture may yet be a good testimony to this observation. In the circumstances, therefore, the Hamitic hypothesis, whether as diffusion of alien people "or diffusion of alien institutions remains highly controversial.

The Bronze Age in history is another crucial point in this debate. The Hamitic theory does not seem to adequately explain why Africa south of the Sahara skipped the Bronze Age and moved from Stone to iron technology. According the C.C. Wrigley, tropical Africa suddenly lost contact with the north between the fourth and the first millenia B.C., the period when northern peoples were

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Transafrican Journal of History

constructing urban civilizations characterized by large scale social organisation, metallurgy, and writing. Although absence of minerals has been given as a possible explanation, he believes that isolation was the major culprit — the isolation arising from the post Makalian dry phase.37 Not only was tropical Africa as a result deprived of this technological innovation, it was as well pushed back behind North Africa and Eurasia and in the process acquired the character of technical and cultural backwardness which even the coming of iron could not alter.38 The weakness of the case-for isolation as applied here is in the fact that the

period covered by the fourth to the first millenium B.C. corresponded with or

subsumed the period which diffusionists assign the presence of domestication in tropical Africa. If desiccation had prevented the Bronze Age from penetrating the Savanna zone, why had it not done the same to crop and animal domestication? Be that as it may, the Sahara has never been a permanent obstacle to interaction as attested by long-established contacts across it. This bronze question therefore appears to be a very serious lapse in the diffusionist theory. The absence of copper as an explanation is hardly helpful, otherwise what prevented copper from being transported along the so-called chariot routes of iron diffusion?

A look at the Bantu migrations, events of immense historical importance, will aid our understanding of the Negro's place in history. These migrations which culturally transformed the African sub-continent occurred without any external Hamitic stimulus. In fact, so impressed were the early Europeans with the civizations of Bantu Africa as represented by Zimbabwe and Buganda, for example, that they sought to assign alien origins to them. It is on record that the Bantu may have initially moved southwards from West Africa to the present Katanga region in modern Zaire before they began later to disperse in various directions. Moving in northerly and easterly directions some even displaced earlier speakers of Afro-Asiatic and Cushitic languages.39

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the Hamitic hypothesis is its historically slippery nature. The term 'Hamitic' initially meant 'Black' with all the attendant derogatory epithets it pleased its authors to attach to it. At a time it formed the

basis of a polygenist interpretation of the creation of mankind which assigned inferior species to the Black race which included Egypt. Later something happened. The ancient Egyptian civilization was uncovered by the French soldiers who had invaded Egypt in 1798. It was subsequently and amazingly found that in ancient Egypt lay the beginnings of western civilization. This created a serious problem for the European mind. To wriggle out of it, language was evoked whereby Egypt became identified as Semitic which is non-Negro. Suddenly the term 'Hamitic' changed from 'Negro-Hamitic' to 'Caucasoid Hamitic' — 'White', unblemished, and superior.40

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The Hamtic Hypothesis Revisited

Conclusion

It should be stated that contact between peoples on both sides of the Sahel throughout history has never been in doubt. This contact, however, is no sufficient evidence of a one-way movement of culture. Movement could have been both ways. The presence of Negroes at 25° north latitude and Badari may even designate a diffusion of peoples and cultures northwards from the forest margins. It is further argued that Africans south of the Sahara were capable of inventive originality; and the Bantu migrations demonstrate their ability to influence the march of events on their own. In the final analysis the Hamitic idea remains* a myth and as Sanders aptly says, 'the word still exists, endowed with a mythical meaning; it endures through time and history, and, like a chameleon changes its colour to reflect the changing light. As the word became flesh, it engendered many problems of scholarship.41

About the Author

I.R. Amadi, Ph.D., is currently with the Department of History, University of Calabar, P.M.B. 1115, Calabar, Nigeria.

Not«

1. Kiwanuka, M.S.M. (1965), (ed) Kings of Buganda Nairobi: East, African Publishing Hosue, p. xixff.

2. Seligman, C.G. (1966), Races of Africa, 4th Ed. London: Oxford University Press, p. 61. 3. Clark, J.D. (1962), 'The Spread of Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa' in J. A H. Vol. 3,

No. 2, p. 211. 4. Kiwanuka, p. xix. 5. Diop first set forth his ideas in 'Negro Nations and Culture' published in Presence Africaine, Paris

1955; The publication was later incorporated into a larger volume: Cheikh Anta Diop, The African

Origin of Civilisation: Myth or Reality, M. Cook, editor and translator (Westport, Lawrence Hill and Company) 1974. Diop also upheld his views at a ÜNESCO symposium on Hie Peopling of Ancient Egypt, and the deciphering of the Meroitic text held in Cairo in 1974. In spite of disagreements his views created an outstanding impact on the symposium. For abridged report of

the symposium see UNESCO General History of Africa Vol. 2 California: Heinemann, 1981) pp. 58-82.

6. Dïop's Negro Nations and Culture' and its review by Raymond Mauny appear in Rpbert O. Collins (ed) Problems i n African History New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968) pp. 10-24.

7. Clark, J.D. 'The Spread of Food Production, etc. p. 228. 8. Coursey, .D.G. 'The cultivation and Use of Y ams in West Africa' in Z.A. and J.M. Konczacki

(eds) An Economic History of Tropical Africa, vol. 1 London; Frank Cass, 1977, p. 34.

9. Murdock, G.P. (1959), Africa, Its Peoples and Their Culture History New York, Mc-Graw Hill, pp. 64-7.

10. Baker, H.G. (1962), 'Comments on the Thesis that there was a major centre of plant domestication near the Headwaters of the River Niger' J A. H. Vol. 3, No. 2.

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11. Gray, R. and Porteres, R. (1962), 'Conference Report on African History at S.O.A.S., University of London, 3 - 7, July 1961' in J.A.H. Vol. 3, No. p. 180.

12. Harlan, J.R. et al (eds) Origins of African Plant Domestication Paria: Mouton Publishers, p. 124.

13. Coursey, D.G. in Z.A. andJ.M. Konczacki, p. 36. 14. Fage, J.D. (1973) A Histoiy of Africa, London: Longman, p. 43. Elizabeth Isichei, A History of

Nigeria, London: Hutchinson 8 Co., 1983 p. 18. 15. Oliver, R. and Fagan, B. (1975) Africa in the Iron Age, London: Cambridge University Press, pp.

60 - 62: J.D. Fage, p. 18. 16. Isichei, p. 43. Source of information not indicated. 17. Fage, pp. 17 - 19. 18. Roland Oliver and Brian Fagan, pp. 60 - 61. 19. Fage, p. 18. 20. Onwuejeogwu, M.A. (1986) 'Intergroup Cultural Relations in Nigeria: A Survey from Dawn to

Present* A paper presented at the workshop on the Teaching of Nigerian History from a National

Perspective held in Lagos 2-8 February 1986, p. 4. 21. Fage, p. 41. 22. Were, G.S. and Wilson, D.A. (1968), East Africa Through a Thousand Years, New York: Africana,

p. 45. 23. See Uzoigwe, G.N. 'Pioneers, Superstars, Nilotes and State Formation in the Interlacustrine

Region of East Africa' being a paper presented at the second K.O. Dike Memorial Lecture, 18th May 1986 at the University of Ife, p>. 11. The paper will be published in the forthcoming December, 1986 issue of the . Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria.

24. Ajayi, J.F.A. and Crowder, S. (eds) (1971) History of West Africa, vol. 1, London, Longman, p. 122.

25. Fage, p. 63 ff. 26. See for instance Afigbo, A.E. (1981) Ropes of Sand London: OUP, 1981 ch. One: Monday Noah,

OldCalabar: The City State and the Europeans, Calabar: Scholars Press, 1980 ch. one.

27. Cookc, C.K. 'The Rock P.aintings and Engravings of Africa' in Tarikh vol. 1, No. 3 pp. 45 and 55.

28. Ibid.

29. Oliver and Fagan p. 60. 30. Cooke, C.K. 'The Rock Paintings etc. ' p. 64. 31. Ki-Zerbo,J. 'African Prehistoric Art' UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. 1, p. 678. 32. Fage, p.10. 33. Shaw, Thurstan (1971) 'Prehistory' in Obaro Ikime (ed) The Groundwork of Nigerian History

Ibadan, Heinemann, 1971, p. 30. 34. Fage, p. 10. 35. Collins, p. 16. 36. Fage, p. 11.

37. Wrigiey, C.C. (1960) 'Speculations on the Economic Prehistory of Africa' in J. A.H Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 200.

38. Ibid.

39. Fage, p. 32.

40. For greater details see Sanders, Edith R. (1969) 'The Hamitic Hypothesis. Its Origin and Function in Time Perspective' in J.A.H. Vol. X, No. 4, pp. 521 - 532.

41. 7Äirf, p. 531.

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