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African
Racial Varieties Clickable terms are red on yellow background |
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Map 1. The subcategorisation of African races revisited (from
Pavel Bě1íček: The
Differential Analysis of the Wordwide
Human Varieties. Prague 2018, Map 6, p. 18) |
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Map 2. Indices
of black-skinned melanodermia in Negrids (after R. Biasutti) (Pavel Bělíček: The Differential Analysis of the
Wordwide Human Varieties.,Prague 2018, p. 41, Map 12) |
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The Classification of African Races
The problem of
African racial taxonomy was tackled by many authors but only few of them have
codified staple authoritative types of
anthropological classification. The American physician Samuel G. Morton compared the African Negro
with the Oceanic-Negro and divided African blacks into groups of genuine
Negroes, Hottentots and Kaffirs (Kafrids).1 The British evolutionist
Thomas Henry Huxley classified African populations in varieties of Negroids, Melanochroi (Mediterranids), Bushmen and Xanthochroi
(Berber whites).2 Carleton Coon proposed partitioning into Congoids (Bantu blacks), Capoids
(Khoisanids) and Caucasoids
(Orientalids in North Africa). The decisive influence was exerted only by two
leading anthropologists, Egon von Eickstedt and Renato Biasutti. Eickstedt’s Rassenkunde3 offered the
following classification of anthropological types (Map 1) that prevail on the
African continent: I. Negrid-Europid contact zone: Äthiopide, II.
Bush and savannah zone: Nilotide, Sudanide, Kafride, III.
Rainforest zone: Palänegride Altrassen: II. Khoisanide: (sub-forms: Khoide,
Sanide). Eickstedt’s
considerations on African racial groups influenced detailed maps of their
distribution in surveys published by his Italian colleague R. Biasutti. Biasutti’s taxonomy
put forward an independent nomenclature that counted with the following
subgroups (Map 2): Negroidi: Pigmidi, Cafridi, Nilotidi, Steatopigidi, Sudanidi, Congolidi, Europidi: Orientalidi, Berberidi, Armenidi, Mediterranidi, Nordidi var. Atlantica, Razze
derivate: Saharidi, Etiopidi, Malgassidi,
Indonesidi.4 Pygmids: a term for
African pygmy tribes that may have descended from the dwarfish Sanids. Their pigmentation seems to be a secondary trait,
since African Pygmies are born as red-skinned babies. Their African origin
does not refute the evidence that most Chadic and
Nigerian semi-Pygmids exhibit linguistic features
of the Sinid macrofamily
of Asiatic descent. The ethnic group Ewe-Igbo in
Ghana and Nigeria can be classified as Afro-Sinids
owing to using reduplication and phonological tonality. Negrillo: a
misleading term for the dwarfish Negroid race of central and southern †Steatopygids, Khoisanids: these terms of Biasutti’s racial taxonomy intermingle two heterogeneous
and incompatible nationalities permeating one another in the †Capoids: a
catch-all term5 for several racial
groups in the vicinity of the Cap of Good Hope in †Kafrids: a
derogatory racial term for Zulus and East African tribes introduced by R. Biasutti. It represents a colonial exonym
for local Zulu-Kaffir servants and strikes as resemblant
to the exonymous denominations of ‘Hottentot’ for Namibian Khoids
and ‘Bushman’ for Sanids. On the other hand, its
chief merit consists in distinguishing the East African lake-dwellers from
Bantu ethnic groups and other branches of the Niger-Congo family. They form a
continuation of prehistoric Levalloisian and ‘Pre-Aurignacian’
nomadic fishermen living in conico-cylindrical
roundhouses. Their real core is formed by Pele-Thongan
tribes classed as Tungids. The sites of their
Levalloisian technology and culture spanned from East Africa to Palestine.
Along the northern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea they continued to the
Iberian Peninsula and farther as far as Britain and Ireland. One offshoot
headed from the Near East for South India. Their import for theoretical raceology lay in their incorrect identification with Homo
sapiens and his spread to Eurasia.
Map 3. Eickstedt’s map of African races |
Map 4. The traditional classification of African races (after R. Biasutti) (from
Pavel Bě1íček: The
Differential Analysis of the Wordwide
Human Varieties. Prague 2018, Map 2, p. 9) The Subdivision
of African Negrids
Archaeological evidence splits African Negrids
into three principal generations: (1) Oldowans (2.5
mya), (2) Sangoans
(130,000 BP) and (3) Lumpembans (40,000 BP). Oldowans prevailed in East Africa, the latter two concentrated
in the tropical rainforest area. These cultures seem to act as main
milestones in the transition from plant-gathering economy to field
cultivation and the development of African Neolithic agriculture. The
Neolithic hand-axes served to the early farmers as mattocks and hoes for
uprooting vegetal roots and their achievements achievement exhibited very
small progress for detailed periodisation. It is
probable that Oldowans have survived as Palaeo-Negrids while modern Negrids
descend from Sangoans. Palaeo-Negrids.
In isolated refuges of Africa, Europe and Asia it is possible to come across
archaic populations reminiscent of the earliest settlers that found their
homes in Europe at the dawn of the Lower Palaeolithic Age. The French anthropologist George Montandon subsumed their group
as Homo s. palaeniger.1 They were notable for bluish black
skin colour, deep-set eye sockets and quadrangular eye-holes. Further
characteristic features were heavy brow arches, heavy jaws, sloping foreheads
and receding chins. European Palaeo-Negrids. The first European colonists were a
progeny of Homo erectus (Tautavel man in
France) and Homo antecessor (Atapuerca man) and came to Europe with a host of
wanderers via Gibraltar. Their people were later superseded by the Acheulean hand-axe makers, who arose by mixing the
African Negroid heritage with prefixing classifiers and the Levallosian people, who spoke a language of agglutinating
type. They probably came from Aden in Saudi Arabia and via Levant and
Anatolia they arrived in the Balkans and Central Europe. In western Europe
they met remains of Homo antecessor, who
profiled as a Negrid with less sophisticated
hand-axe industry of Chellean or Abbevilian style. His progeny was assimilated by Acheulean newcomers but may have survived partly in the
Old Black Breed. Their variety was discovered by W. Ripley in the Zambesids. The Scottish Old Black Breed exhibited deep-set eyes,
heavy brow ridges and further archaic tendencies similar to African Palaeo-Negrids. Their proto-type was classified by George
Montandon as Homo s. palaeniger. His characteristic features were deep-set eyes,
rectangular eye-holes, heavy brow arches, heavy jaws, very wide faces,
sloping foreheads, receding chins, strong hairiness and bluish black skin
colour. Such tendencies appeared inconsistently also in South and Central Bantuids but they were prominent especially among the
tribes of Kwanyama, Hlubi, Fengu and Makua. In condensed
form they cropped up in the racial varieties of Katangids,
Bergdama and Shara
tribes. H. V. Vallois proposed to class them as a
special type of Zambesids3.
H. Vedder gave preference to the term of Bergdama4 for their peculiarities. B. Lundman was fascinated by the bluish back skin colour in
the Shara tribes and suggested to call them Sharids. The current results of
population genetics imply that the earliest ancestors concentrated around the
original homeland laying somewhere in Cameroon and lower reaches of the
Congo. Its area was originally populated by the Palaeo-Negrids
with the Y-haplogroup E*-M96 and the mt-haplotype L0. Yet their settlements were later overlaid
by Neo-Negrid incomers producing the Sangoan industry (130,000 BP) with a more sophisticated
axe-tool industry. They superseded Palaeo-Negrids
in their old heartland and now coincide with the racial group of Congids. The next step brought differentiation
between Bantuids prevailing in East
Africa from Somalia to Swaziland. The term of Bantu is not the
original ethnonym of all African blacks, its word
root is prefixed by the plural classifier ba-
attached to plural multitudes of humans.5
Its root -ntu must indicate the tribes of Nde, Ndonge, which often appear
in tribal names in
The tribal structure of African blacks may be reconstructed according
to frequency in chains of ethnonyms and linguonym. Table 1 takes
efforts to render a rough subcategorisation of
African tribes without pretending an exhaustive depth of taxonomic
considerations. Its right-hand column suggests frequency rates ruling among
three principal branches of black people. The main conclusion is that Oldowans lacked a permanent tribal ethnonymy
because the African, Melanesian, Australian, Chinese and Latino-American Negrids bear different tribal names. African blacks
created their tribal ethnonyms later in the era of
the Sangoan culture.
Table 1.
The division of African Negrids in the light of ethnonymic
routes Extract from Pavel Bě1íček: The
Differential Analysis of the Wordwide
Human Varieties. Prague 2018, pp. 7-23 |
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