African Art. Maurice Delafosse

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      Peopling of Africa

      Next came the first Negroes, who reached the African continent by the southeast. They also must have been nomads or seminomads and hunters, principally because they were in a period of migration and were looking for territories in which to establish themselves, being obliged, in the course of their continual displacements, to nourish themselves with game; but they had almost certainly a tendency to be sedentary and to cultivate the soil as soon as they found favourable ground and could install themselves upon it. It is probable that they practiced the industry of polishing stone, be it that they had imported it or that they had later borrowed it from the natives of the north during the time that they had been in contact with them, or finally, that they had perfected the processes of the Negrillos. They must have possessed fairly pronounced artistic aptitudes and a strong religious impregnation. Perhaps it is to them that one must attribute the stone monuments that have been discovered in various regions of Negro Africa, monuments which have so greatly puzzled Africanists and whose origin remains a mystery, such as the edifices of Zimbabwe in Rhodesia and those raised stones and carved rocks of Gambia in which traces of a sun cult are considered to be revealed. They probably spoke languages employing prefixes, in which the names of various categories of beings or objects were divided into distinct grammatical classes.

      Filtering themselves through the Negrillos without really mixing with them, they must have seized all the grounds which were then unoccupied. When they could not do this, either because there were no available lands or because of the resistance of the Negrillos, they pushed back the latter and installed themselves in their place, driving these Negrillos towards the desert regions, such as the Kalahari, where we still find them even to this day, or towards the forests of equatorial Africa; difficult areas to cultivate, where they have subsisted up to our time in sparse groupings, or else again towards the marshy regions of Lake Chad and of the upper Nile, where later they were met by the Nasamonians of Herodotus, or at last, towards the maritime coasts of northern Guinea, where they were seen by Hanno and Sataspe.

      These first migrations of the Negroes must have been composed of the type called Bantu, whose almost pure descendants are still found in a compact group, with the exception of an island formed by the Hottentots, between the Equator and the Cape of Good Hope. Subsequently to this first wave of Negro immigrants, another one was unfurled over Africa, of the same origin and in the same direction, but made up of slightly different elements. However, this difference is undoubtedly attributable only to the long lapse of time between the first and second invasions, a space of time that cannot be evaluated but which perhaps was represented by thousands of years, during which an evolution necessarily took place in the primitive Negro stock.

      Statue (Vezo).

      Wood, height: c. 57 cm.

      Private collection.

      This is another Vezo funerary statue, similar to the one depicted above. Like the other, it is difficult to know whether the strange positioning is the result of time or the artist's will.

      Statue (Lulua), 19th century.

      Democratic Republic of the Congo.

      Wood, height: 74 cm.

      Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin.

      Asie Usu statue (Baoulé).

      Wood, height: 40.5 cm.

      Private collection.

      Meant to represent a spirit, this statue seems to have been carved for a particular person who maintained it well in his home. The encrusted finish appears to have been left behind by chicken blood and egg libations being poured on it.

      Classical style statue (Nok), 4th century BCE-2nd century CE.

      Terracotta, height: 66 cm.

      The enlarged head, almond-shaped eyes, and precise details of this terracotta statue classically distinguish it as being of the Nok style. Its unmatched sophistication is a clear testimony to the talent of the Nok sculptors of 2,000 years ago.

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