Eduard Hahn, to whom the ethnological study of economics owes a considerable number of important discoveries which have been published repeatedly and in varying forms, seems to have paid scarcely enough attention to the good work of the scholars who preceded him in the fight for the recognition of the outstanding position of women in the lower forms of soil cultivation. Steinmetz and quite recently Koppers, have pointed out that Buckland already attributed to the female sex the invention of the most ancient method of soil cultivation, or hoe culture, as, since Hahn, it has generally been called. He was followed by Roth, Lippert, Mason, Grosse, Schurtz, and finally Eduard Hahn with his very logical and ingenious deductions. The modern student of social history is not so easily satisfied with evidence arbitrarily collected from all over the world and the theories based on it, which are then said to hold good for all mankind; he finds the results of the research of the so-called ‘zones of culture school’ (Kulturkreisschule) much more convincing. Gräbner, the leader of this group of German ethnologists, has now recently made his numerous works, in condensed form, accessible to a wider public. Here we find, in particular, a clearer statement of the arguments of Grosse, Bachofen, and others about the connexion of matriarchal society and lower forms of soil cultivation. Matriarchy and hoe culture are assigned to definite chronologically determined stages of civilization (older forms of the so-called ‘two class culture’, and later ones of ‘bow culture’). Koppers, of the Austrian branch group, associates matriarchy and hoe culture with these two civilizations, which he, as does P. W. Schmidt, designates more aptly as ‘exogamous matriarchal’ and ‘free matriarchal’.

Le problème du coton, qui a pris tant d'importance depuis un quart de siècle, est posé en réalité depuis plus de cent ans et il semble bien que les tentatives faites pour le résoudre au début du XIXe siècle dans la vallée du Sénégal furent les premières de cette nature réalisées en Afrique.

Bantu ancestor-worship varies from one tribal area to another in much the same way as Bantu language, though to a lesser extent. It is not an organized or systematic religion: it has no sacred books, no pontificial standards of belief or practice, nor even past-masters of cult whose deliverances carry the general consent of the faithful. So far as I know, no Bantu ancestor-worshipper has ever written a reasoned exposition of the faith that is in him. We have, therefore, to rely upon first-hand reports from aliens scattered over a field of very wide scope, who peer into the gloom from their own little coigns of vantage and tell us what they partly see and partly infer; and there is unfortunately no known method of accurately assessing the allowance that ought to be made for each observer's astigmatism or slowness in noting phenomena. The best that can be done, perhaps, is to notice an observer's attitude towards religion, especially the non-Christian expressions of it, compare his findings on well-known points with those that seem to lie nearest the truth, and then make a rough guess at his personal equation. All writers on this subject, whether field-workers or synthetists, are therefore purveyors of opinion, not of unclad truth—enlightened opinion, perhaps, but still opinion; and their opinions are unwittingly coloured by their prepossessions.

‘East Africa’ is a somewhat vague term; but for our present purpose we may take it to mean the area between Cape Guardafui and the Zambezi, extending inland to the Great Lakes, and including Nyasaland. Our subject naturally falls under two headings: we have on the one hand to consider the inchoate and sometimes only half articulate poetry of the inland tribes, and on the other the literature, as it may fitly be called, developed by the Swahili under Arab influence, but all the same a genuine product of the soil. The poetic output of the Hamitic Somali and Galla, though little known at present, is certainly worth attention.

The resolution of a spoken language into its constituent sounds is an exercise that most of us have practised since first we began to prattle. Our early efforts in the hearing and making of speech sounds were probably as automatic as the act of breathing, and it is very doubtful whether we ever attain any great degree of voluntary control over the physical and mental processes involved in the hearing and making of speech sounds. Before the acquisition of speech is complete, the language problem is further complicated for us by the laborious tasks of learning to read and write, that is to say, learning to see a language with the eye, and to make a visual picture of it with the hand. The result is that language becomes, while we are still young, a medley of complex processes, in which ear, eye, hand, and tongue are co-ordinated by the brain in an intricacy that is probably the crowning achievement of the human mind. Language, visual or oral, heard or seen, made with hand or mouth, rests thereafter upon a congeries of reflex processes that remain at our disposal to serve all the purposes for which language is intended.

In the following pages an attempt will be made to give a survey of those languages in the Congo basin which are most important and of special value for educational and literary work.

As I left the Congo several years ago I have communicated with the Roman Catholic and Protestant missions working there with regard to this subject and I am very grateful for all the replies received.

We cannot yet master the facts. The difficulties are many. Several of the important languages are not yet known. The policy of the French, Belgian, and Portuguese governments is at present very divergent in regard to languages and educational and literary work.

Jeder, der sich mit völkerkundlichen Fragen beschäftigt, muss selbst das meist weit verstreute Material mühsam zusammensuchen, das nicht nur in der nicht allzu umfangreichen ethnologischen Fachliteratur, sondern in Reisebeschreibungen, in den Veröffentlichungen der Missionsgesellschaften und Kolonialverwaltungen, ja mitunter sogar in populären Zeitschriften verstreut ist. Die bibliographische Erfassung der bisher erschienenen wichtigen Literatur kann nur durch Sonderuntersuchungen erfolgen, wie sie in mustergültiger Art etwa von amerikanischen Forschern für einzelne Kulturprovinzen Amerikas geschaffen wurden. Für Afrika fehlen moderne geschlossene Bibliographien fast völlig. Die etwa zu nennenden Untersuchungen sind meist landeskundlicher Natur, die auch die ethnologischen Arbeiten mehr oder minder vollständig mit aufführen. Obwohl auch die natürlich nicht vollständigen Literaturnachweise der Handbücher, Monographien, Sonderuntersuchungen und Zeitschriften gute Dienste leisten können, fehlen doch für Afrika modernen Ansptüchen genügende völkerkundliche und linguistische Bibliographien. Es ist deshalb sehr verdienstlich, dass das Internationale Afitika-Institut zunächst eine Bibliographie der afrikanischen Eingeborenensprachen herausgeben will und mit dieser Arbeit den hervorragenden Kenner afrikanischer Sprachen, Professor Struck, beauftragt hat.

On a coutume de dire que certaines langues nègres possédent la numération décimale et d'autres la numération quinaire. C'est exprimer assez mal un fait qui n'a souvent qu'une existence apparente. On veut dire par là que dans certaines langues il y a un mot spécial pour chacun des dix premiers nombres, et que, dans d'autres, chacun des cinq premiers nombres seulement et le nombre dix sont représentés par un terme propre, six se disant ‘cinq plus un’, sept ‘cinq plus deux’, etc.