African Art. Maurice Delafosse

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      Aim and Object of This Book

      The aim of this book is to furnish a general view of the history, the civilisations, and the material, intellectual, and social character of the Negro race which inhabits the African continent.

      There will be no question, therefore, of the peoples of the white race who, either in antiquity or since, have played such an important role in the development of North Africa, and whom we find today, more or less mixed and transformed, scattered from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and from the shores of the Mediterranean to the southern limits of the Sahara: ancient and modern Egyptians, Phoenician, and Punic peoples, Libyans or Berbers, Arabs, and Moors. More precisely, no mention will be made of them except in the measure of their influence on the progress of Negro societies, an influence which has often been considerable and which could not be too emphasised.

      For the same reason, there will be no study, except incidentally, of the peoples who, however dark their pigmentation has become as the result of secular and repeated crossing with the Negroes, are nevertheless considered as belonging either to the Semitic branch of the white race, for example, the principal portion of the Abyssinians, or to an Indonesian branch of the yellow race, such as many of the Malagasy tribes. Moreover, the island of Madagascar is outside the geographical limits which I have assigned to myself.

      On the other hand, there are African populations which can claim, in part at least, non-Negro ancestry but who are in some way incorporated into the Negro race and into Negro society: such peoples will find a place in this study. I will be content for the moment with citing from among them the Fulani of Sudan, the Hottentots of southern Africa and a certain number of more or less hybrid tribes of East Africa which are commonly called, without much reason, Hamitic or Chamitic.

      Origin of the Negro Peoples of Africa

      The object of the present work being thus defined, we must now begin by seeking to find out whence came the African Negroes. But is it possible to commit oneself as to their first origin? It seems that the actual state of our knowledge does not permit us, as yet, to answer this question in a definitive or even a satisfactory manner.

      Undoubtedly, one would not have even asked the question if Africa were the only part of the world to possess Negroes. But such is not the case and without speaking, of course, of the countries where the advent of the Negro race has taken place only at a recent epoch, as the result of migrations which were generally involuntary and whose genesis and circumstances are known, as in America, we know that the reputed autochthonous inhabitants of lands far removed from Africa and separated from it by the entire width of the Indian Ocean are considered as belonging to the Negro race for the same reasons as are the Negroes of Mozambique and of Guinea.

      Edjo statue (Urhobo).

      Nigeria.

      Wood, pigment, height: 212 cm.

      Each Urhobo community has its own protective Edjo statue, which embodies natural spirits or those of the Eshe founding ancestors. The tall Urhobo statues embody Edjo natural spirits or Eshe founding ancestors, who were offered annual celebrations and sacrifices in sanctuaries. Each community has its own protective Edjo, who lives in the wild and can also be materialised by pieces of wood, metal, or clay. These statues carry medicines on their belts and have military attributes.

      Statue (Vezo).

      Wood, height: c. 57 cm.

      Private collection.

      Sakalava rules the region in which the Vezo population resides. These uniquely shaped statues likely played a funerary role, though it is impossible to know whether the strange positioning is the result of time or the artist’s will.

      Figurine, 9th century CE.

      Northern Province, South Africa.

      Clay, 20 × 8.2 × 7 cm. On loan from the National Cultural History Museum, Pretoria.

      From a much larger collection, originally excavated from the Schroda farm along with the Lydenburg Heads, these figures are thought to be the best known artefacts from the Early Iron Age which indicate ritualistic behaviour. Ethnographers suggest that unusual figurines such as these likely imply the sites of former initiation schools for girls. Schroda, serving as a regional capital, was occupied by 300 to 500 people, which means large initiation schools were probably there and further explains the copiousness of these small clay sculptures. As a whole, they can best be divided into three groups, realistic and stylised anthropomorphic (male and female), zoomorphic (including birds, elephants, cattle, and giraffe), and mythological.

      Hypothetical Lemuria

      If the natives of Australia, of Papua, and of the Melanesian islands are to be ranked in the same human category as the African Negroes, it may be reasonably asked whether the first came from Africa and the second from Oceania, or indeed, if one and the other had not in the first ages of the world, a common habitat on some hypothetical continent, now disappeared, situated between Africa and the Oceanian archipelagoes but having formerly constituted a connection and a passage between them. This continent, the supposed cradle of the Negro race, has its partisans, like that other one which certain people claim to have anciently existed between the present European and the American seas; it has even received a name, Lemuria, as the other has been called Atlantis, and we are shown its remains, represented by Madagascar, the Mascarenes, and a number of islands of various sizes, just as the Canaries and the Azores are regarded as the debris of the ancient Atlantis.

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