Read the following articles in detail:
First, the basic characteristics of race, nationality and language in black Africa
Human race is a group with different physiological characteristics based on the differences of physiological and genetic characteristics between different human groups, that is, human racial groups or ethnic groups. Generally speaking, all human beings in our world are identical in physical and physiological characteristics. However, in the process of body evolution and development, human beings are in different natural geographical environments, and various factors of natural geographical environment, such as climate, food and ecology, are different from each other. These different environmental factors have different influences on the evolution of human physique, and human beings themselves will make different adaptations and choices to these different natural geographical environmental factors, thus making differences. These differences and characteristics are stabilized by inheritance from generation to generation. When people are isolated from each other or have little contact with each other, this difference in physiological and genetic characteristics may be strengthened, such as human body shape, height, skin color, etc., which is mainly determined by relatively stable human genes. So human race is basically a biological problem, not a cultural problem. However, the ethnic structure of human beings is closely related to the formation of national languages, so cultural studies often need to examine the ethnic backgrounds of different human cultural groups and explore the relationship between ethnic differences and the formation of human language systems. At the same time, the racial characteristics of human beings are not completely unrelated to human culture, and there is the possibility of mutual transformation or mutual reinforcement of each other's characteristics to a certain extent or under certain circumstances, although racial differences are only a very secondary factor in the development of human culture.
Compared with human as a biological concept, human is mainly a cultural concept. The division of ethnic groups is mainly based on the natural physiological characteristics of human beings, while the division of ethnic groups is based on human language, lifestyle, psychology, personality and customs. Nationality is a cultural and social attribute, not a physiological or natural attribute. Although the formation of a nation has a certain relationship with race, ethnic differences are not the main reason for ethnic differences, but mainly the result of cultural differences. Generally speaking, when studying cultural issues, we should attach great importance to ethnic issues. In academic circles in China, it is customary to call the emerging ethnic groups in black Africa tribes. Although this has been controversial, we still use the concept of tribe for the time being.
In the process of the formation of a nation, language is a key factor, and there is a very close interaction among nation, language and culture. Compared with the long-term stability of human physiological and natural characteristics, nationality, language and culture are constantly changing with the development of human historical activities.
Although there are differences in physiology and physique among different races in the world, they have different skin color, body shape and physique characteristics, but these differences and different characteristics do not mean that human beings are superior or inferior in race. It is unfounded to explain the advancement and backwardness of human beings by racial differences or national characteristics, and it often has a tendency of racial prejudice and discrimination. The differences between different groups of human beings are mainly cultural differences. Some groups are in a relatively developed stage in culture, while others are in a relatively backward stage. The advancement and backwardness of this culture are relative and can be changed through human activities and cultural exchanges.
As far as the ethnic structure of the African continent is concerned, there are three major ethnic groups in the world: white, yellow and black. North Africa north of the Sahara, including the Sahara desert, is basically a white population, or Europa, including ancient Egyptians, Berbers, Arabs and their hybrids. In sub-Saharan Africa, the main population is black, that is, the black population. But what needs to be pointed out here is that the black group is only a very large group compared with the white group and the yellow group, and its internal composition is very complicated, and its physiological characteristics such as skin color and physique are not completely consistent. But before modern times, except for some islands in the South Pacific and some residents in the Australian mainland, the black population was mainly concentrated in the tropical African continent of sub-Saharan Africa, and they constituted the main body of residents in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, the ancient cultural history of sub-Saharan Africa can basically be said to be the cultural history of blacks. Although there are still some small ethnic groups in sub-Saharan Africa, one is the nigri Luo ethnic group known as the Pygmies, which may be an ancient independent ethnic group in tropical Africa, and the other is the Bushmen and the Khoisan ethnic group in hottentots, which has the national characteristics of a mixture of nigri Luo blacks and Mongolian yellow people. However, pygmies and Khoisans account for a very small proportion of all residents in sub-Saharan Africa, and their influence on the historical and cultural process of the African continent is far from that of blacks. In addition, there are many ethnic groups in Africa, which are white, black and yellow. Most residents in Sahara, Sudan, East Africa and Madagascar have the characteristics of this mixed blood to varying degrees.
Second, the ethnic types and characteristics of Black Africa
The ethnic types and characteristics of sub-Saharan Africa can be summarized as follows: First, it is the origin and ancient home of the black population in nigro, one of the three major ethnic groups in the world, and it is also the only continent in the world with the black population in nigro as the main population, so we can call sub-Saharan Africa the black home or black Africa. From this perspective, it should be said that the ethnic structure in sub-Saharan Africa is relatively unified. Second, sub-Saharan Africa is dominated by nigro blacks, but there are also some other races. One is the more primitive and ancient indigenous race mentioned above, that is, the Khoisan (hottentots and Bushmen) and the nigri Luo (Pygmies), and the other is a race belonging to the European white population and the Mongolian yellow population. The third is a mixed population composed of black people in nigro, white people in Europa and yellow people in Mongolia. These populations are mainly distributed in the connecting areas between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, such as the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, the upper Nile, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya in the Horn of East Africa, Madagascar and several small islands in the Indian Ocean, such as Comoros and Musk Islands.
Next, we will make a concrete explanation of the ethnic types and characteristics of black Africa.
1, black groups in nigro and their internal structures.
In the world racial system, the black population in nigro, as a single human race, is actually only relative to the white population in Europa and the yellow race in Mongolia. The black group in nigro is a caged group with complicated internal structure, which can be divided into several sub-races or racial branches. Their racial characteristics such as skin color, height and body shape are not completely consistent. However, compared with white people and yellow people, black homosexuality is still very prominent in racial and physiological characteristics. For example, black people have black skin. Except for the pale palms and soles of the feet, the skin of the whole body is black, although the degree of black is different. In addition, black hair is short and curly, such as granular curly hair on the head. Black people generally have less hair. Black people have prominent foreheads, wide noses, low noses and thick lips, and so on. At present, from the perspective of physical anthropology, nigro black groups in the African continent are generally divided into two groups, one is the Sudanese black group in nigro with darker skin color, and the other is the Bantu black group in nigro with lighter skin color. Dividing African blacks into Sudan and Bantu black population is only a relatively simple classification method, depending on whether the classification standard is simple or complex. If we make a careful comparison, African blacks can be divided into more types, but most of them are accepted by the academic circles at present.
The black Sudanese in nigro are distributed in the northern part of sub-Saharan Africa, that is, from the southern edge of the sub-Saharan desert to the equatorial region. Its boundary line is roughly like this. Generally, the northern boundary line starts from the Senegal estuary along the Atlantic Ocean, meanders eastward through Timbuktu, through Niger and northern Chad, and then eastward through Tibesti Plateau and Darfur Plateau, reaching the border between Sudan and Ethiopia in the upper Nile. The southern border of the Sudanese black people in nigro also starts from Guinea along the Atlantic coast in the west, runs eastward through northern Cameroon along the Atlantic Gulf coast, and extends to today's southern Ethiopia. That is, from the edge of the Sahara desert in the north to the equatorial rainforest in the south, it spans almost the entire African continent and belongs to the area where the Sudanese blacks in nigro live. The common characteristics of black Sudanese are dark skin, curly hair, little body hair, flat nose, large nostrils, thick lips, upturned upper lip and protruding forehead. Linguistically, African-Americans in Sudan have obvious kinship and many cultural similarities or similarities. However, the academic circles generally divide Sudanese blacks into two types, namely, the East Sudanese who are bounded by Lake Chad and the West Sudanese who are west of Lake Chad. The main difference in physical characteristics between East Sudan and West Sudan lies in height and figure. East Sudanese are usually much taller than west Sudanese. Most of the East Sudanese are tall, with thin trunks and slender legs, especially those tribes of Nyroos-speaking East Sudanese, such as Dinka, Xiluke and Nur. Their heights are generally between 1.805 and 438+0.85 meters, and some are more than 2 meters, making them one of the highest ethnic groups in the world. Some scholars even refer to these tall, Nyroos-speaking blacks as "nilot", and regard them as one of the three major black types alongside Sudanese and Bantu. In contrast, the figure of the West Sudanese is much shorter, especially some black tribes near the Gulf of Guinea, such as the Yoruba people in West Africa, whose height is generally between 1. 1.65 meters. From the perspective of skin color, Sudanese blacks are darker than Bantu blacks, but generally, the closer they are to the equatorial rainforest, the darker their skin color, while people near the Sahara desert in the north are lighter.
Black Sudanese are made up of hundreds of tribes of different sizes. Among the tribes in western Sudan west of Lake Chad, there are Mandingo, Wolof, Serer, Tukurol, Soningkai, Susu, Temnai, Kisi, Gurma, Moxi, Songgai, Hausa, Kanouri, Tibu, Ashanti and Fengfeng. East of Lake Chad, the main tribes known as East Sudanese are Ba Guimil, Kanumbu, Baya, Sala, Banda, Zande, Nur, Nuba, Dinka, Xiluke, Bathai and Nubia. These tribes play an important role in the history of ancient African history and culture. Although most of them can be subdivided into many branches, most of them have relatively unified language, culture, historical traditions and lifestyles, and some have established large-scale regional political entities, such as polis, kingdoms and even imperial-scale political organizations. They are actually ancient countries, which have had a comprehensive development process in African history. In addition to the above-mentioned larger tribes, there are more small-scale African-American tribes, which are extremely scattered, with different languages, religions, historical backgrounds and living customs, thus making the African-American Sudanese in nigro present a very complicated tribal structure. Even those ancient African nations with large scale and high degree of integration were dismembered and split by the invasion of western colonial forces after entering modern times. Some of them died in the slave trade, and some were divided into several parts by later colonies, belonging to different colonial governments, and their internal differentiation and diversity were obviously strengthened. For example, in the era of western colonial rule, Hausa people were divided into several colonies that spoke English and French respectively, and the original ethnic integration of Hausa people was actually destroyed. Later, after independence, Africa was divided into several countries, which led to the variation of the development process of ancient African nationalities. It can be said that the formation of modern nations in Africa is not entirely based on the identity of these ancient nations, but on the category of colonies, and then seek the development path of modern nations on the basis of independent countries.
Among the Sudanese black tribes in nigro, some tribes are mixed with the white races in Europa, North Africa. Most of these tribes are concentrated on the edge of the Sahara desert and the upper reaches of the Nile valley to the Ethiopian plateau. For example, the tribes of the Fulani people who speak Fulani widely in Sudan are actually descendants of the Berbers of ancient North Africa who belong to the white population of Europe, and the Shuwa people who live on the southeast bank of Lake Chad are Arab descendants of the white population. Hausa and Nubians also have obvious black physical characteristics of mixed Arabs and Berbers. Today, some tribes in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya have obvious physical characteristics of ancient whites and blacks. Therefore, culturally, we generally regard Mauritania, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia as alternate overlapping areas of North African culture and Black African culture, and their cultures are mixed cultures or transitional cultures of the two major cultural regions.
The African region south of the Sultan-type nigro black distribution area, that is, the whole southern African continent from the equatorial line area to Cape Town, the horn of South Africa, is the world where Bantu-type nigro black people live. Bantu is a general term used to refer to hundreds of tribes of black people south of the equator, because these tribes have the same primitive origin, from which they have been migrating to eastern and southern Africa for the past two thousand years. Although in the long migration process, they gradually split, and they have different characteristics and new attributes in culture, but this * * * and race origin makes them maintain a certain degree of * * * and inheritance relationship in blood and language, which can be regarded as one of the main types of black people in nigro.
Black Bantu and black Sudan are different in constitution. First, their skin color is light grayish black, and some are light cinnamon. Second, their foreheads are not too prominent, their noses are tall and straight, and their lips are not too thick. Culturally, the most obvious similarity of Bantu blacks in nigro lies in the similarity or similarity in language. In the course of thousands of years' migration, Bantu blacks are distributed in the central, eastern and southern parts of the vast African continent and divided into hundreds of different tribes, which are far apart and isolated from each other, but they are very close in language, similar in grammatical structure and unified in many core vocabulary. Therefore, compared with Sudanese blacks, Bantu blacks are a kind of blacks with relatively unified language.
At present, the academic circles generally tend to think that the original origin of Bantu people is in the border area between Nigeria and Cameroon near the equatorial line. During the migration of Bantu people for more than 1000 years, the migration of Bantu people was roughly divided into three aspects: east, west and south, and each aspect was divided into several branches. The migration time is early or late, and the migration is not linear, but often tortuous, and differentiation, reorganization and integration continue to occur in the process of migration. As a result, the ethnic structure in ancient Africa formed a more complicated and intertwined situation. Generally speaking, some Bantu blacks who migrated to East Africa and the Indian Ocean stayed in the Great Rift Valley Lake area and Upper Nile area in East Africa, and mixed with the local hammett people belonging to the white population of Europa, forming the so-called "Bantu hammett people" and mixed with the Nile tribe to which the Gro blacks in East Soltani belong, forming the "Bantu nilot". The main tribes in this kind of mixed tribes are Jikuyu, Kamba, Gogo, Kaweilang and Ganda. Kikuyu is one of the main ethnic groups in Kenya today. /kloc-In the 9th century, the Ganda people established a relatively powerful country-Buganda, which became the main ethnic group in Uganda today. Some Bantu people who continued to move eastward arrived in the coastal areas of Kenya and Tanzania today, and even went out to sea to Zanzibar and Pemba, where they were mixed with Arabs, Persians and Indians who came here successively, forming a unique Swahili language. Swahili is a mixed race, mainly Bantu blacks in nigro, mixed with races from the Middle East and South Asia. Later, this race continued to multiply and spread in the coastal areas of East Africa, becoming a highly integrated ancient African nation with a unified language "Swahili" in East Africa. Some of them even crossed the ocean and spread to Comoros and Madagascar, which had different degrees of influence on the ancient culture of these islands.
Bantu people who migrated to the south, also known as the Bantu people who migrated in the middle, had a wider spread and more complicated migration path, forming several migration climaxes, and each time they pushed further to the southeast, south-central and south of Africa. The latecomers passed through the residential areas of the earlier migrating tribes and continued to move forward. Generally speaking, Bantu people who moved south from Zhonglu are distributed in Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, South Africa and other countries. Larger Bantu tribes, such as Makwa, Ya 'ao, Shona, Ma Calanga, Tswana, Zulu, Ngoni, Ensenga, Tumbuka, Mandebele and Cong. These large Bantu branches often overlap, differentiate and interweave with each other. During the migration history of 1000 years, they rejected or assimilated the backward primitive inhabitants, namely the Bushmen and hottentots of the Khoisan people, or drove them to remote areas of modern Angolan, Namibian and other southern African countries. In the process of migration, many changes have taken place in the cultural development level, lifestyle and social structure of Bantu people. As one of the larger Bantu branches, Zulu has formed a number of Zulu tribes, established a relatively developed and stable Zulu political identity, and is an influential ancient nation in southern Africa. Some Bantu branches, such as Ma Calanga, a branch of the Shona people, once established the ancient Zimbabwean culture characterized by huge stone castles, also known as Monomotapa culture, but this culture later died out and no longer exists.
Among the Bantu people who migrated to the west, except for a small number who migrated to the Gulf of Guinea where black Sudanese lived together, they mainly scattered in the tropical rain forest area in western equatorial Africa. They formed a unique tropical rain forest Bantu black tribal culture in equatorial Africa in areas centered on Congo's huge Zaire River basin and Congo basin. In this huge tropical rain forest area, Bantu people used iron smelting technology, metal tools and weapons, as well as the initially developed tropical rain forest agricultural technology, opened up a primitive and boundless tropical rain forest, squeezed out or eliminated the local indigenous people, the Pygmies of the Li nationality in nigro, and formed a Sudanese black culture different from the Bantu people in northern Sudan, East Africa and South Africa. This tropical rain forest Bantu black culture includes Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Zaire and northern Angola. The larger branches are Congo, Kimbandu, Umbandu, Fang, Mpungi, Ovambo, herrero, Taikai, Bangui, Lunda, Bemba, Kuba and Baru. Different from the eastern Bantu people scattered in East Africa, such as Swahili people, the western Bantu people are generally called Xibantu people. Some branches of the Xibantu people have historically established political entities with the scale of ancient kingdoms in tropical rain forests, such as Kuba in the 5th19th century, Congo in the 5th19th century, Ronda in the 5th19th century, and14th19th century. The rest of the Xibantu people have been distributed in the depths of the equatorial rainforest for a long time, and only a small-scale tropical rainforest tribal organization has been formed.
The formation of Negro people's physique in Africa is closely related to the natural environment and ecological conditions of the African continent where Negro people live, and it is gradually formed by Negro people in the process of adapting to the hot climate conditions of the African continent. Many physiological characteristics of black people, such as dark skin, well-developed sweat glands, thin skin and abundant capillaries in the skin, help to prevent the damage of sunlight, dissipate heat quickly and help to survive in a humid and sultry tropical environment. White and yellow people are not as viable as black people in the tropics. Blacks also have strong resistance or adaptability to some tropical diseases, such as malaria, which is less harmful to blacks than whites. Judging from the skin color of the global population, the amount of melanin increases or decreases with the distance from the equatorial tropical region. Residents in tropical areas wear less clothes and are exposed to direct sunlight all the year round, and melanin accumulates more and more in their skin, which is passed down from generation to generation, which is also one of the important reasons for black skin color.
2. Other races and distributions in Black Africa.
In addition to the black population in nigro, there are some small races in sub-Saharan Africa, which can be roughly divided into two categories, one is the primitive and ancient indigenous race in the sub-equator, and the other is the mixed-race in black Africa, including the mixed-race from the north of the equator near the Sahara border and the Indian Ocean coast in East Africa to Madagascar and Comoros Islands. The former did not play an important role in the whole history of the development of black African culture, which was basically a marginal cultural lag, while the latter played a very key role in the history of the development of black African culture, which was a transitional ethnic culture connecting black African culture with other cultures outside.
(1), primitive and ancient indigenous Khoisan and Neglero. In today's southwest Africa, namely, Angola, Namibia and Botswana, the vast grasslands and kalahari desert, there are some ancient residents belonging to the Khoisan people. They are divided into several big branches, such as Bushmen and hottentots. In terms of physical characteristics, they seem to share the racial characteristics of the black people in nigro and the yellow people in Mongolia, such as curly hair and a wide and short nose, but their skin color is yellow and black. At present, there are still different views on the race and origin of the Khoisan people in academic circles. Some people think that they are an independent race, while others think that they are closely related to blacks. But at least it is certain that they are some elderly residents in southern Africa, and they have lived in a vast area of southern Africa long before the migration of Bantu blacks. Only later, it was squeezed out by Bantu people, and the number became less and less, and the distribution range was greatly reduced. Some of them have been assimilated by Bantu people, and some have become extinct. The rest are concentrated in the Cape region and the Orange River basin of South Africa. In modern times, Bushmen and hottentots were slaughtered by western colonial invaders again, and the few who survived fled to remote arid grasslands and kalahari desert. Another primitive and ancient indigenous race is the Li nationality in nigro, commonly known as the Pygmies. They may be the oldest surviving primitive humans in the tropical rain forests of Africa. They were excluded from the migration of Bantu people, and their fate was similar to that of Khoisan people. The remaining few people live in the depths of the tropical rain forest in the Congo River basin and live a primitive small group hunting and gathering life. Pygmies no longer have their own language, but speak the language of the Bantu black tribe. The status and influence of these two ancient and primitive races in the process of African history and culture have rapidly declined and weakened due to the rise and spread of black people in nigro. Today, they account for less than 1% of the total population in Africa. However, judging from the historical and cultural development of Africa as a whole, as they are the oldest indigenous people in Africa, it is undoubtedly of great significance to study the cultural history of Africa and reveal the mystery of the early historical evolution of human beings in Africa to explore their historical origins, the history and characteristics of early evolution, and their relationship with ancient human fossil cultures in different stages of ancient Africa. This is also one of the important reasons why these two ancient races have always been concerned by academic circles.
(2) The residents of Madagascar and nearby islands are mainly Mongolian yellow people. The inhabitants of Madagascar and nearby mauritius island, reunion island, Comoros and Seychelles are a mixture of many ethnic groups. Madagascar has been inhabited by humans since ancient times. In the long years, people have been crossing the ocean and living on this huge island. Some of these people come from distant South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, some from Arabian Peninsula and northeastern Africa, and of course, from eastern and southeastern Africa. They have lived together for generations and formed a mixed Malagasy. Now they are generally called Malagasy. Ethnically, Malagasy people are mixed-race people who are mainly Indonesians, Mongolians and Mongolians in Southeast Asia. They speak Malay Polynesian, and the west side of the island is more obviously influenced by African black culture, while the middle and east are dominated by ancient Southeast Asian culture. Malagasy people are divided into several different branches. In the Middle Ages, some small kingdom regimes began to take shape. By the19th century, the cultural integration and political unification of the whole island reached a high level, and a feudal unified country with the central Merina as the core was established. Judging from the cultural development history of black Africa, the formation and cultural development of Margash people provide a unique cultural development model of "black yellow people" in Africa, which is a mixture of black people in nigro and Mongolian yellow people, thus having special cultural and historical significance and research value. In fact, the ancient culture of Madagascar is very different from the native black culture of the African continent in many aspects. For example, Madagascar's national culture, its highly integrated cultural model, its centralized form of ancient intensive agriculture and rice irrigated agriculture as the core, has a strong oriental cultural color. On the other hand, nigro in Margash culture is very important. Therefore, the cultural history of Madagascar and Madagascar provides us with a typical example of a feudal country, which is a mixture of ancient Asian-African mixed culture and black yellow culture.
(3) The mixed-race people in the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Along the northern Mediterranean coast of the African continent, including the middle and lower reaches of the Nile in Egypt, the Maghreb region and the Sahara region, people belonging to the Europa white group have lived for a long time. Their physical characteristics are light skin color, dark eyes, narrow face, inconspicuous forehead and narrow and high nose. In ancient times, these residents were roughly divided into two categories. One is an ancient Egyptian living in the middle and lower reaches of the Nile River in Egypt and its vicinity. The ancient Egyptians spoke Coptic, and conquerors from the Middle East, Persia and Rome continued to merge. The other is the ancient nomadic people in North Africa who spoke Berber, generally called Berbers or Libyans. After the 8th century AD, Arabs migrated to Egypt and North Africa on a large scale, which gradually arabized and islamized the aborigines in Egypt and North Africa, and formed the main body of residents in the Middle Ages in North Africa.
The above-mentioned white population in Europe has long been associated with black people in sub-Saharan nigro. Some Berbers and Arabs crossed the Sahara desert and settled in the Gro region of Soltani, thus forming some residents of Europa descent in black Africa. For example, Fulbe people who are widely distributed in West Africa are residents of Berber descent. They moved around and lived a nomadic life. Moreover, they lived together with Sudanese blacks such as Hausa and married each other for a long time, which made Hausa people have the national characteristics that Sudanese blacks in nigro and whites in Europa in North Africa live together. This racial mixing is also a process of cultural and linguistic mixing, as well as the integration of North African culture and black African culture. Hausa people are also mixed with some Arab ancestry, accepted Islam and Arab culture, and established Hausa culture based on Arabic alphabet symbols. In Mauritania, Western Sahara and Mali, there are also many tribes where desert Berber nomads and African black residents live together, which makes the race, culture and language in these areas have transitional characteristics.
(4) The inhabitants of Ethiopian, Somali, Sudanese and other countries in the northeast of Africa have the mixed characteristics of European whites and nigro blacks to varying degrees. The residents in this area are composed of three parts: the ancient Ethiopians who speak Kuhitt, the East Sudanese blacks who speak Nyroos, and the Arabs who speak Arabic. Their physical characteristics are dark red skin, dark brown hair, dark eyes, oval skulls and straight noses. They are divided into many branches or tribes, such as Amhara, Tigray, Tigrean, Guerra, Afar, samar, Sabu and Beja. Historically, the ancient cultures created by the residents in this area, such as the ancient Ethiopian aksum culture, were quite developed and played a very important role in the communication between Black Africa and North Africa, and between Egypt and the Arab world.