1 82 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s. f I, 1899
the historic origin of a nation may expect to find its most ancient vestiges in its objects of manufacture — the style and forms of its weapons, its hunting, fishing, and domestic implements, works of de- fense, dwellings, and the like. Especially in Africa, where relics of a pre- historic epoch are almost absolutely wanting, the above articles alone, when subjected to comparative study, disclose primeval conditions.
It is the conviction of Dr Frobenius that close study of the imple- ments, dwellings, etc., of a people discloses the transmission or adoption of the styles perceptible in them, and thereby also the migrations of the tribes or nations themselves ; and by combining all the data available, the author believes it possible that all African migrations can be narrowed down to two great continental currents with a single inter- mediate current connecting the two. The migrations of the first cur- rent extend back and forth between Senegambia and the upper Nile in about 12 north latitude, those of the second current between the Congo headwaters and the upper tributaries of Oranje river in Cape Colony. The single intermediate current connects the eastern end of the northern current with the lake country on the headwaters of the Nile ; but the territory of the middle and lower Congo, and the Hot- tentot or Nama country, were never subjected to direct migratory in- fluence. But Frobenius traces influence of the people of southwestern Asia in the tribes south of the Somali countries, and presents reasons for an apparent Malayo-Nigritian style in the arts of a portion of southern Africa.
The author's conclusions regarding the migrations are based partly on fact, and, he confesses, partly on theory only ; nevertheless they ap- proach certainty, because their occurrence is substantiated by the con- dition of the linguistic stocks of the interior. The oldest linguistic families are still found in their earliest habitat, never having been dis- placed by others — for example, the stocks of the Soudan and the Hottentot family, — whereas people speaking the Bantu dialects, who now cover an enormous territory, were scattered by the intrusions of the Zulus and other tribes. In fact, the name Bantu does not designate "a race" of African men, though often mistaken to mean this; it means only a family of dialects which originally belonged to the second or north-and-south current of migratory tribes. Lately a Bantu dialect, that of the Ashingini, has been discovered as far north as 1 1° north latitude.
The African aborigines live mainly by agricultural and pastoral pursuits, and in some districts the stock-raising peoples hold the tillers of the soil in subjection. Those who live solely by hunting are limited to the Bushman or San race. Slavery, the result of the hostile inter-
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