WEST AFRICA West Africa was inhabited in prehistoric times, ancient stone implements being found in Senegal, the Sudan, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Gold Coast and Nigeria, and sites are frequently found in the Sahara in regions now barren, but which no doubt anciently enjoyed different climatic conditions. North Africa was probably peopled by men of Mediterranean race, then by Eastern Hamitic people (dark-skinned, fine features, soft hair), the modern Berber resulting from their admixture. Later came the Jews and Arabs. The Pygmies or Negrilloes, were pushed back by negroes from Central Africa, and were established in the area lying between the Sahara and the Gulf of Guinea and between the Atlantic and Lake Chad. Negrilloes and negroes at first inter bred among themselves, then mixed with Berbers and peoples of Hamitic and Semitic stock, thus giving rise to higher grade peoples such as the Bornuan, Kanuri, Hausa, Mandingo, Yoruba and Ashanti.
The following provisory classi fication rests on physical, cultural and institutional data : I. White race: Berbers, Fulani II. Black race : a) Senegalese-Guinea family b) Nigerian Senegalese c)
d) Guinea e) Lower Nigerian f) Hausa Social Organization: General.—The social unit is the family in the strict sense, and more often the extended family, a group occupying the same enclosure whose members are divided into classes consisting of parallel generations having equal rights, with labour and ownership in common. Several related family groups form a village quarter. The distinct and organized clan is rare; more easily distinguished is the identity of the tribe and sub-tribe. Matriarchy is rare. Marriage is seldom exogamous, nearly always patrilocal; the children are attributed to the father, and descent is usually traced in the paternal line. Family author ity devolves upon the father or the patriarch assisted by elders. Common ownership of family goods, with individual ownership of personal property, is almost universal. Women are usually at liberty to dispose of their own property. Succession to the fam ily possessions, of which women form part, is vested sometimes in the brother and sometimes in the son of the deceased. On the Ivory Coast, in the Upper Volta and Nigeria, a husband allows his wife to cohabit with another man, the children belonging to him. Marriage between brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law is frequent. Personal possessions are heritable in the same way as family goods, but frequently men succeed to a man's goods and women to a woman's.
Many bush peoples (Liberia, Ivory Coast, Southern Nigeria) and peoples of the French Sudanese region (Gourounsi, Bobo, Lobi, Bariba) live in small independent groups. Elsewhere kingdoms have been constituted, very often theocratic in character and ruled over by a priest-king or by a king and a priest reigning together (Nigeria, Dahomey, French Sudan, Upper Volta) and uniting the civil and magico-religious power. Ministers and councillors assist the sovereign. The Queen-Mother (Gold Coast, Nigeria) possesses authority. The heir to the throne is often chosen, by an electoral group, from certain families accord ing to local hereditary laws.
Islam spread, in particular, over Mauritania, Sene gal, the Guineas, the Niger valley, the Hausa country, Bornu and Nigeria; elsewhere, there is general belief in a supreme deity, in a sky and an earth god, and in inferior gods. Respect is paid to ancestors. Gods and ancestors share in the life of the social group. Various methods of divination are in vogue to ascertain their will. Infraction of certain sacred inhibitions (murder, the shedding of blood) are displeasing to the gods and are regarded as sins and require compensation and expiation. Family and clan cults are found, more rarely tribal cults. Sacrifices, frequently of a seasonal character (altars, trees, stones, hills, streams), insure fertility and fecundity, there being a close association between magic and religion. The head of the family is the domestic priest, and the descendant of the first occupant of the country is the priest of the earth. Sacerdotal colleges, male and female, are fre quent (Dahomey, Ashanti, Yoruba). Traces of totemism are found in French Sudan, Ashanti, Dahomey, Nigeria. Numerous tribal, clan, family, individual, occasional and professional tabus, probably of totemic origin, are recorded.
Belief in witchcraft is general, the sorcerers being supposed to be able to change themselves into animals, injuries to the animal inflicted during the metamorphosis appearing on the sorcerer's body. There are special laws and punishments for sorcery.
Initiation of members of the social group is by successive de grees in secret ceremonies to adolescents, adults and men of full experience. They seclude the grades in the forest or in sacred groves. The neophyte is considered to have died and to have been reborn with a new personality, and receives
(moral, religious, technical, aesthetic). His position in the group depends on initiation. There are similar but less complicated ceremonies for women.
In Nigeria the king was frequently slain after he had reigned for a certain period, or when he grew old (Yoruba, Jukun, Hausa) the same custom appears to have existed in the French Sudan (Mandingo, Dogon).
Cannibalism and head-hunting have almost disappeared, but existed on the Ivory Coast, in Liberia, Dahomey and Nigeria. In former times human sacrifices were followed almost everywhere by a feast at which the victim was eaten. (H. LAB.)
