time; the historical blood-pressure is strikingly low and, even where history breaks
through and founds great states, hoe cultivation remains the basis of the economy.

It is the basis on which all the African Negro cultures rest, whether we are dealing
with the great Bantu group south of the equator or with the Negroes of the Sudan in
the northern half of Africa (the equator, of course, is not to be taken as an exact divid-
ing line between the two main groups; the main boundary is formed rather by the
northern edge of the primeval-forest zone). Yet hoe cultivation is merely the subsoil
awaiting new fertilization, new top layers, for richer cultures and with them richer
artistic productions to grow out of it. Only very slowly does the social life in the villages
and tribes become consolidated, ordered and organized, does there appear a certain
social gradation based on a chieftainship and at first restricted to the family, kindred
and village, without extending to the tribe as a whole or to several tribes. Only slowly,
too, do more subtle religious beliefs and with them a more subtilized art develop, and
the latter then indeed in the characteristic wood-carving form. Africa was, however,
the scene of still further developments, and, as we only possess evidence of Negro art
from a much later period, our treatment of it must once again be postponed.

9 Nigeria. Tada. Seated Figure. Bronze. Height 22 in.

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