Countries and Their Cultures: Introduction to Africa

This introduction provides some basic information as background for the detailed accounts of the particular cultures that follow. The cultures have been selected to represent Africa, in the sense that they include the larger and better-known cultures or clusters of cultures out of the more than two thousand cultures that compose the complex entity that we call "African civilization." The peoples of Africa may be classified according to several criteria, probably the oldest of which is race. Africa is occupied by members of the Negroid race, the most numerous; then by members of the Caucasoid race, mainly in northern and southern Africa; the Mongoloid race (in Madagascar); and by the so-called Bushmanoid and Pygmoid races or subraces. Previous work in this field has shown the difficulties and contradictions that result from using the concept of "race," and it is clear that this criterion does not contribute to an understanding of the cultures and identities of African societies. A more meaningful classification is based on language. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was surmised that African languages, of which some knowledge had been percolating to Europe since at least the sixteenth century, were among the most "primitive," an expectation that was never supported by evidence. Philologists were the first Europeans to try to classify African peoples by "tribe" (or similar terms), which they defined as a "territorially limited language group."