Inhabitants, Civilization, There is a marked distinction between the races in the north and east of the great desert and those in central Sudan and the rest of Africa and the south. The main elements of the population of north Africa, including Egypt and Abyssinia, i are Hamitic and Semitic, but in the north the Hamite Berbers are mingled with peoples of the same race as those of prehistoric southern Eu rope and other types of various origins, and in the east and southeast with peoples of the negro type. The Semitic Arabs are found all over the northern region, and even in the western Sahara and central Sudan, far down the east coast as traders. The Somalis and Gallas are mainly Hamitic. In central Sudan and the whole of the country between the desert and the Gulf of Guinea the population is pure negro — people of the black, fiat- or broad-nosed, thick-lipped type, with narrow heads, woolly hair, high cheek bones and prognathous jaws. Scattered among them are peoples of a probably Hamitic stock. Nearly the whole of the narrow southern section of Africa is inhabited by what are known as the Bantu races, of which the Zulu or Kaffir may be taken as the type. The languages of the Bantu peoples are all of the same structure, even though the physical type vary, some resembling the true negro and others havingprominent noses and comparatively thin lips. The Bush men of southern Africa are of a different type from the Bantu, probably the remains of an abo riginal population, while the Hottentots are ap parently a mixture of Bushmen and Kaffirs. Scattered over central Africa, mainly in the for est regions, are pygmy tribes, who are generally supposed to be the remains of an aboriginal population. The bulk of the inhabitants of Madagascar are of Malay affinities. The total population is estimated at about 140,000,000.
As regards religion, a great proportion of the inhabitants are heathens of the lowest type. Mohammedanism possesses a large number of adherents in northern Africa and is rapidly spreading in the Sudan. Christianity prevails chiefly among the Copts of Egypt, the Abys sinians and the natives of Madagascar, the lat ter having been converted in recent times. Else where the labors of the missionaries have been attended with promising success. It is estimated that about 1 2/5 per cent of the popu lation are Roman Catholics and 1 9/10 per cent Protestants. Over a great part of the conti nent, notwithstanding European colonization, civilization is at a low ebb, and in the Kongo region cannibalism is still preva lent. Slavery is still practised in many parts and polygamy is widespread. Yet in various regions the natives who have not come in contact with a higher civilization show con siderable skill in agriculture and various me chanical arts, as in weaving and metal-working. Among articles exported from Africa are gold and diamonds, palm oil, ivory, wool, ostrich feathers, esparto, cotton, caoutchouc, etc. See paragraph Commercial Conditions at end of this article.
The languages spoken on the continent may be divided into two great classes, those native to Africa and those brought in from outside; the former including the three great divisions of Negroid, Hottentot-Bushman and Hamitic, the latter Aryan, Malay and Se mitic; and the latter again into the pure lan guages or patois of recent immigrants or trad ers and those which have become naturalized by time and change into virtually native tongues themselves.
The first division of the extra-African tongues comprises: (1) Pure English in South Africa and Liberia, pure French in Algeria and the scattered trading settlements elsewhere. (2) Four °creole° dialects: the Mediterranean °lingua franca° or trade jargon ; the English creole or West African Kru-English; the Cape Verde Islands Portuguese creole; and the Boer and Hottentot Dutch creole. The last three are European in stock, but with much African phonic, inflectional and syntactical mixture and influence. The second division includes the Malay or Malagasy of Madagascar and the Semitic tongues of the northeast. These last are (a) Pure Arabic (the Latin of Africa, the uni versal language of social intercourse and trade wherever Mohammedanism prevails), including the Egyptian, Sudani, Maghreb and Muscat dia lects; (b) mixed, as the Abyssinian dialects, derived from the ancient Geez (q.v.), Tigre and Tigrifia, Amharic (originally of southern Abys sinia, but now the chief tongue of the country), Harari of the Galla country, Gurague, etc. All these were brought in by Semitic invaders.
The native African stocks are classed in English books mainly according to the system adopted from Friedrich Muller by R. N. Cust in h is 'Modern Languages of Africa' ; later Ger man Africanists prefer that of Lepsius, the chief difference being on the relations of Bantu and Negro or Nigntic.
I. Negroid. This has three main divisions: (a) Bantu, a pure language. This immense group occupies, with enclaves of Hottentot Bushman and Pygmy, the whole vast triangle from the Kamerun west and Zanzibar east down to the Cape, or pretty much all Africa south of the equator. All its components (for which see BANTU) have one grammar though different vocabularies; the greatest and perhaps representatives of it are the Zulus or Kaffirs and their neighbors the Se-chuana. (b) Ni gritic, Negro or Sudan-Negro, between the Sa hara and the equator. Ethnologically, the races speaking this group of tongues are the purest types of the Negro stock; but linguistically, they are only classed together from the utter impossibility of grouping them with any others, though Lepsius thinks them degenerated Bantu, —a conclusion scouted by others, the affinities being very faint. They are many and to all appearance totally unrelated, so diverse and pe culiar are the idioms ; some, however, think they show marked characteristics in common. They doubtless represent the oldest races on the con tinent, wandering in small hostile bands and changing their dialects almost from generation to generation, like all such petty camps with unfixed traditions and no general intercourse; and may well have scores or hundreds of °languages° among them with no traceable connection. (c) The Nuba-Fulah or Ful; some times called the Nilotic, from its main seat in the Nile valley from Nubia to the Albert Nyanza, and with isolated tribes farther out, as the Barea and Kunama on the northern border of Abyssinia, and the Masai and Oigob southwest. Others dispute the inclusion of the Fulah, con sidering it a tongue by itself ; perhaps a mon grel, more likely a family as above, which has picked up some Hamitic words. The Dinka, Bari and Shilluk are its chief families along the Nile, the Lur or Shuli and Madi being the last to the south; west of the valley it shades into the Nigritic chaos.