8:54 13.12.2019 Democritus Reformatorium Prehistoric Tribes

 

Systematic methodology

Systematic ethnology

 Systematic anthropology                 

Systematic linguistics

Population geogenetics

Systematic poetics

Systematic folkloristics                     

 

 

Reformatorium

Prehistoric tribes

 Prehistoric races

Prehistoric languages

Prehistoric archaeology

  Prehistoric religions

Prehistoric folklore

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*       Racial taxonomy

*       Ethnic taxonomy

*        Europe

*        Asia

*        Anatolia

*         Caucasus

*       Africa

*       Arabia

*       India

*       China

*       Indonesia

*         Indochina

*        Polynesia

*        Australia

*       North America

*       South America

 

 

*        Spain             France

*        Italy       Schweiz

*        Britain      Celts

*       Scandinavia  

*       Germany

*       Slavs     Balts      

*         Greece   Thrace

*        Anatolia

 

 

                     African Racial Varieties

                         Clickable terms are red on yellow background

 

 

 

 

 

 

Map 1.  The subcategorisation of African races revisited

(from Pavel 1íček: The Differential Analysis of the Wordwide Human Varieties. Prague 2018, Map 6, p. 18)

 

 

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)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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:
1. Bambutide (= Pygmide; African Pygmies)

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 Africa. Its dark brown skin and pepper corn hair structure attest African provenance, even if its dark skin is secondary.

Steatopygids, Khoisanids: these terms of Biasutti’s racial taxonomy intermingle two heterogeneous and incompatible nationalities permeating one another in the Kalahari Desert. The term of Steatopygids is applicable only to Sanids, because matronism, fat thighs, pepper-corn hair texture and steatopygia are traits typical of Sanid Bushwomen and also the Negrito females in southeast Asia. It is inappropriate for the pastoralist tribes of Khoids with conspicuous Mongoloid traits such as golden brown skin, prominent high cheekbones, epicanthus, eye fold and fat eyelids. Eickstedt was justified in keeping the short-sized Sanid foragers apart from the taller cattle-breeding Khoids. 

Capoids: a catch-all term5 for several racial groups in the vicinity of the Cap of Good Hope in South Africa. It unduly unites thee different anthropological varieties, the Kafrids (more precisely called Pele-Thongans), the Hottentot Khoids and the Bushman Sanids.

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 1íček: 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 Shetland Islands between 1897 and 1898.2 In Scandinavia it appeared as the Tydal race, whose dialects apply prenasalised stops.

   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 East Africa. The Bantu people were not identical to the Zulus and the Kafrid lakeside fishermen but remained faithful to their frugivorous subsistence. Their western branch settled down in West Africa and may be identified with Guineids.

   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.

Negrids Oldowan Palaeo-Negrids + Sangoan Neo-Negrids

Sangoan Neo-Negrids Congids + Guineids + Bantuids

Congids (Central Africa) Mbangwe-Ngom tribes (Y-hg E-M96, mt-hg L0): Mbangi 2´, Mbangwe 2´, Ngom 2´, Ndasa 1´.

Guineids (West Africa)     Mbum-Gbaya (Y-hg E1a-M132, mt-hg L1, L2): Mbum 7´, Mbonga, 1´, Gbaya 8´, Gbagyi 3´.

Bantuids (East Africa)        Amba-Ndonge tribes (Y-hg E1b-P177, mt-hg L0a, L0d): Ndogo 1´, Ndo 3´, Nding 1´, Ndrule 2´, Amba 3´.

Table 1.  The division of African Negrids in the light of ethnonymic routes

 

Extract from Pavel 1íček: The Differential Analysis of the Wordwide Human Varieties. Prague 2018, pp. 7-23

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



1 Samuel George Morton: Crania Americana: or a comparatif view of the skulls of various aboriginal nations of America, 1839, pp. 86–95.

2 T. H. Huxley: On the geographical distribution of the chief modifications of mankind Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, 1870.

3 Egon von Eickstedt: Rassenkunde und Rassengeschichte der Menschheit. Stuttgart: Enke, 1940, 1963.

4 Biasutti: Le razze e i popoli della terra. Torino: UTET, 1941.

5 Carleton S. Coon: The Origin of Races. New York: Knopf, 1962.

1 George Montandon: Homo palaeniger et Homo niloticus. Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde, t. 6, 1937, p. 107-109.

2 W. Ripley: The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.. London, 1900.

3 H. V. Vallois: Las races humaines. 8th ed., Grammont, 1971.

4 H. Vedder: Die Bergdama. Hamburg 1923.

5 Raymond O. Silverstein: A note on the term 'Bantu' as first used by W. H. I. BleekAfrican Studies 27 (1968),

211–212.