finds. For this reason, therefore, we shall in this book basically refrain from any attempts
at dating.

African history means primarily immigrant movements, migrations of peoples on the
very largest scale, the overlaying of cultures by other cultures. It means, too, that states
grew up and disappeared again, that dynasties prospered and fell, and that there came
battles, wars and the making and breaking of peace. But all this historical event has not
culminated in the way familiar to us in high cultures such as the Asiatic, Old American
or European. If one excepts Egypt it was only by fits and starts that cultural patterns
comparable with those were produced; the most famous would be that of the Kingdom
of Benin in the Niger region. (It is no accident that it was the discovery of this kingdom
in the nineties of the last century that gave the greatest impetus to the serious study of
African cultures and to the emancipation from the prejudices of our civilization to-
wards the Negroes.) All the same these high-culture systems lie far in the past and have
either not carried over into this century or have done so only in the most meagre way.
They have one and all gone under, of their own weakness or through the devastating
influence of other continents, and are vanished beyond recall. Thus the vast historical
continent called Africa is today covered with the wounds and scars of desperate and, in
the long run, ravaged growth.

In one essential respect, however, Africa presents itself as wholly without history, and
that is in its monumental passivity. Nearly all its historical impetuses have been re-
ceived from without. In wave upon wave the foreign immigrations and revolutions
passed across it, coming mainly from the Asiatic region. Where Africa itself developed
a history this occurred, so to speak, in a circle, without achieving in any permanent
sense a higher historical pattern. Such a pattern was brought about only by stimuli
from without. If indeed one disregards Islam and the graftings from European civiliza-
tion, then one finds that Africa has always made something absolutely African out of all
external influences, thus showing, despite its passive and receptive attitude, all its inner
strength. A classical example of this may be found in the art of Benin itself, unthinkable
without the strongest external influences and yet revealing such a special character that
it is impossible to point to clear connexions with other cultures, and that a desperate
attempt has been made to describe the sunken continent of Atlantis as the cradle of this
culture.

Africa is also without history in the general sense of a world history, for it has never
intervened as an active factor either on the lowest or highest political level.

To this there is one great exception: Egypt. But here an African region has been un-
faithful to its continent and has detached itself from it politically and culturally. The
particular advantages and separateness of the elongated oasis of the Nile Valley made
it experience a wholly un-African, Mediterranean development. Unmistakably though
its pre-Dynastic period has its roots in African ground, its later growth as a great power
with a highly-developed culture finally loses it for African art.

Without ever having developed the extraordinary historical elan of ancient Egypt
the whole of the rest of Africa north of the Sahara also forms part of the lively historical

-9-