No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
In the 1960s, when the use of non-documentary sources of evidence to reconstruct history in Africa first achieved prominence, physical anthropology was thought to offer some potential. Of particular interest to African historians was the new genetic approach, with its emphasis on comparative studies of blood group distributions. This resulted in several papers in books and journals of African history, where the promise of these new physical anthropological techniques was pointed out to historians. The influence of these early articles has waned, however, and recent books on historical method in Africa give physical anthropology little prominence.
References to physical anthropology in the book by Thomas Spear, for instance, a book that introduces “historical method” in Africa, are relegated to the chapter on “the archaeological record” and are perfunctory. In particular there is a failure to appreciate the implications of the fundamental difference between the analysis of excavated human biological remains--a branch of physical anthropology which has much in common with archeology--and the deduction of more recent evolutionary and non-evolutionary history from the comparative analysis of the biological characteristics of living peoples--a branch of physical anthropology that is much more similar to linguistics than to archeology.
* I am indebted to Robin Law for prodding me into action and for his support throughout the writing of this paper.
1. Although this potential was as yet “untapped.” Gabel, C. and Bennett, N.R., eds., Reconstructing African Culture History, (Boston, 1967), viiGoogle Scholar; see also McCall, D.F., Africa in Time-Perspective (Oxford, 1969), 101ff.Google Scholar
2. Most notably Roberts, D.F., “Serology and the History of the Northern Nilotes,” JAH, 3 (1962), 301–05Google Scholar; Livingstone, F.B., “The Origin of the Sickle-Cell Gene” in Gabel, /Bennett, , African Culture History, 141–60Google Scholar; Hiernaux, J., “Bantu Expansion: The Evidence From Physical Anthropology Confronted With Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence,” JAH, 9 (1968), 505–15.Google Scholar
3. Ogot, B.A., ed., Zamani (Nairobi, 1974)Google Scholar; Spear, Thomas T., Kenya's Past, (London, 1981).Google Scholar
4. Spear, Kenya's Past, subtitle.
5. Ibid., chapter 1.
6. Kieran, J.A., “The Historian in East Africa” in Ogot, , Zamani, 14.Google Scholar
7. Ibid., 15.
8. For instance, Hiernaux, , “Human Biological Diversity in Central Africa,” Man, n.s. 1 (1966), 287–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., La Diversité humaine en Afrique Sub-Saharienne, (Brussels, 1968), idem., “Bantu Expansion;” idem., The People of Africa (London, 1974); idem., “Longterm Biological Effects of Human Migration From the African Savannah to the Equatorial Forest; a Case Study of Human Adaptation to a Hot and Wet Climate” in G.A. Harrison, ed., Population Structure and Human Variation (Cambridge, 1977), 187-217.
9. In particular Hiernaux, “Bantu expansion” and idem., The People of Africa. This latter is a book of considerable potential interest to historians in other disciplines, but appears to have escaped much attention.
10. This is not a recent problem. Writing in 1966, Gabel and Bennett pointed out that physical anthropology is “often treated from strictly non-historical viewpoints, which may account in part for the lack of well developed ethnohistori-cal research in Africa.” Gabel, /Bennett, , African Culture History, vii.Google Scholar
11. There have been many physical anthropologists who have visited Africa and conducted short studies. Some of them have even briefly considered how their findings and methods held some promise to the study of African history. Their attempts to contribute to this area, however, were short-lived, as they moved back to Europe and developed other interests. An example of this is D.F. Roberts, who demonstrated briefly the promise of serology for the reconstruction of African history, but never pursued the interest further. Roberts, “History of the Northern Nilotes.”
12. Wright, A.C.A., “Blood Grouping and the Tribal Historian,” Uganda Journal, 11 (1947), 45.Google Scholar
13. Dobzhansky, T., Mankind Evolving, (London, 1962), 10.Google Scholar
14. Jorion, P., “The Downfall of the Skull,” RAIN (1982), 11.Google Scholar
15. Johnston, Harry H., The Uganda Protectorate, II (London, 1902), 472.Google Scholar
16. Ibid., 471.
17. Ibid., 473.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 474.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 485.
23. Jorion, , “Downfall of the Skull,” 10.Google Scholar
24. Particularly Boas and Radcliffe-Brown.
25. Jorion, , “Downfall of the Skull,” 10.Google Scholar
26. In recent years a more sophisticated form of biological determinism, sociobiology, has become prominent. For a critique see Sahlins, Marshall, The Ose and Abuse of Biology, (London, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27. In particular the “coefficient of racial likeness,” Pearson, K., “On the Coefficient of Racial Likeness,” Biometrika, (1926), 105–17.Google ScholarPubMed
28. For an introduction to these techniques see Constandse-Westermann, T.S., Coefficients of Biological Distance, (Oosterhout, 1972).Google Scholar
29. Weiner, J.S., “Beyond Physical Anthropology” (The Huxley Memorial Lecture 1978)Google Scholar, RAIN (1979), 3–6.Google Scholar
30. Birdsell, J.B., “The Problem of the Early Peopling of the Americas as Viewed from Asia,” Physical Anthropology of the American Indian, (1951)Google Scholar, quoted by Dobzhansky, , Mankind Evolving, 253.Google Scholar
31. For example see Oschinsky, L., The Racial Affinities of the Baganda and Other Bantu Tribes of British East Africa (Cambridge, 1954).Google Scholar
32. Cole, Sonia, Races of Man (London, 1965).Google Scholar
33. Hiernaux, The People of Africa, preface.
34. Weiner, , “Beyond Physical Anthropology,” 4.Google Scholar
35. As Hiernaux labels it in his publications.
36. Morris, L.N., Human Populations; Genetic Variation and Evolution (London, 1972), 322Google Scholar, describes these three as “the foremost mathematical geneticists of the twentieth century.”
37. Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. and Bodmer, W.F., The Genetics of Human Populations (San Francisco, 1971).Google ScholarPubMed
38. See glossary.
39. See glossary.
40. See glossary.
41. Motulsky, A.G., “Metabolic Polymorphisms and the Role of Infectious Diseases in Human Evolution,” Human Biology, 32 (1960), 29.Google ScholarPubMed
43. See glossary.
43. See glossary.
44. See glossary.
45. See glossary.
46. See Weiner, “Beyond Physical Anthropology” for a detailed reivew.
47. Ibid., 5.
48. Morris, L.N., Human Populations, 321ff.Google Scholar
49. Crow, J.F. and Kimura, M., An Introduction to Population Genetics (London, 1970), 382.Google Scholar
50. Hiernaux, , The People of Africa, 3.Google Scholar
51. Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., “Genetic Drift in an Italian Population,” Scientific American, 221 (08 1969), 30–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
52. Hiernaux, , “Bantu Expansion,” 87.Google Scholar
53. See glossary.
54. Mourant, A.E., Kopec, A.C., and Domaniewska-Sobzcak, K., The ABO Blood Groups: Comprehensive Tables and Maps of World Distribution (Oxford, 1958).Google Scholar
55. Weiner, , “Beyond Physical Anthropology,” 5.Google Scholar
56. Jardine, J. and Sibson, R., Mathematical Taxonomy (London, 1971), 268.Google Scholar
57. Ibid., 272.
58. Hiernaux, , “The Analysis of Multivariate Biological Distances Between Human Populations: Principles and Applications to Sub-Saharan Africa” in Weiner, J.S. and Huizinga, J., eds., The Assessment of Population Affinities in Man (Oxford, 1972), 106–97.Google Scholar
59. Hiernaux, , “Bantu Expansion,” 82.Google Scholar
60. See glossary.
61. Weisenfeld, S.L., “Sickle-Cell Trait in Human Biological and Cultural Evolution,” Science, 157 (1967), 1134–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a more general account of the possibilities offered by the sickle-cell trait for historical reconstruction see Livingstone, “The Origin of the Sickle-Cell Gene.”
62. Described as “an agricultural complex introduced into Madagascar and East Africa from certain parts of south east Asia a few centuries before Christ” and believed to be “an important factor in the large expansion of the Bantu peoples through much of tropical Africa, and in the development of forest states in West Africa, due to the suitability of the crops for the tropical forest environment.” Ibid., 276, 278.
63. Ibid., 278.
64. Crow, /Kumura, , Introduction, 367.Google ScholarPubMed
65. Ibid.
66. Edwards, A.W.F. and Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., “Affinities Revealed by Differences in Gene Frequencies” in Weiner, /Huizinga, , Population Affinities, 38.Google Scholar
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid., 39.
71. See Constandse-Westermann, Coefficients of Biological Distance.
72. Cavalli-Sforza, , “Genetic Drift,” 344–45.Google ScholarPubMed
73. Cavalli-Sforza, and Edwards, A.W.F., “Phylogenetic Analysis Models and Estimation Procedures,” Evolution, 21 (1967), 550–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
74. Malyutov, M., Passekov, V.P., and Rychkov, Y.G., “On the Reconstruction of Evolutionary Trees of Human Populations Resulting From Random Genetic Drift” in Weiner, /Huizinga, , Population Affinities, 47–71.Google Scholar
75. Glass, B. and Li, C.C., “The Dynamics of Racial Intermixture: An Analysis Based on the American Negro,” American Journal of Human Genetics, 5 (1953), 368–85.Google ScholarPubMed
76. Workman, P.L., Blumberg, B.S., and Cooper, A.J., “Selection, Gene Migration and Polymorphic Stability in U.S. White and Negro Populations,” American Journal of Human Genetics, 15 (1963), 71–84.Google Scholar
77. Reed, T.E., “Caucasian Genes in American Negroes,” Science, 165 (1969), 762–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
78. Spear, , Kenya's Past, xiii.Google Scholar
79. Hiernaux, , “Analysis,” 97.Google Scholar
80. Rosa, P.J., “An Investigation of Dermatoglyphic Variation Among Ethnic Populations in Kenya,” (Ph.D., University of Durham, 1981), chapter 2.Google Scholar
81. For example, the Ibo as described by Talbot, P.A. and Mulhall, H., The Physical Anthropology of Southern Nigeria (Cambridge, 1962).Google Scholar
82. Benedict, B., “Sociological Characteristics of Small Territories and Their Implications for Economic Developments” in Banton, M., ed., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (New York, 1966), 23–61.Google Scholar
83. Southall, Adam, “The Illusion of Tribe,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 5 (1970), 35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar