AFRICATHE PEOPLE

Africa is now widely recognized as the birthplace of Hominidae (the family to which modern humans belong). Archaeological evidence indicates that the continent has been inhabited by humans and their hominid forebears for some four million years or more. Anatomically modern African peoples are believed to have appeared about 100,000 years ago in sub-Saharan Africa and somewhat later in northern Africa. Exactly how and when the modern races emerged is not known, though the northern and southern groups are believed to have been distinct for some time; nonetheless, Africa is now overwhelmingly populated by the European geographic race in the north and the African geographic race in the south, the great majority being sub-Saharan peoples. Some rough generalizations about these geographic races can be made based on physical appearances (e.g., people in northern Africa tend to have less skin pigmentation than those in sub-Saharan Africa), but the real distinctions between them are largely biochemical (e.g., differences in blood types). In all African countries the majority of the population is indigenous. In South Africa there are large numbers of Europeans (about one-seventh of the population). Other countries with significant European populations are Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Mozambique, Kenya, and Senegal. Other substantial minority groups are Asian peoples (chiefly in southern and East Africa), Arabs (in West and East Africa), and people of mixed origin. Cultural areas The basic units of African society have been-and in much of sub-Saharan Africa still are-the ethnic groups, tribes, or peoples; they number almost 3,000. Most are not politically or economically independent social units but rather groups that have a common sense of culture and identity, especially in terms of a distinct language and religion. Boundaries between them are usually not clearly defined, and frequently it is difficult to know whether a collection of very similar communities should be regarded as one tribal group or as many tribal groups. It is convenient to classify these peoples by languages and by the main outlines of their cultures. There have been many attempts at cultural classifications of African peoples based on the concept of a culture area consisting of a number of societies with certain common features. Although to some extent useful, the generally accepted culture areas for Africa are too large to be very meaningful because each includes widely differing forms of social and political organization. The best-known of many older classifications is that by the American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits (1924), which is still referred to despite its inadequacies. A later classification (1959), by another American, G.P. Murdock, takes as units relatively small clusters of peoples, who are grouped largely on linguistic and ethnohistorical grounds. Murdock divided the continent into 55 clusters of tribes, forming 11 main groupings, some of which are defined by livelihood (such as hunting or pastoralism) rather than by ethnic or linguistic affiliation. If one chooses to ignore these rather numerous divisions, then the principal cultural regions are northern, western, west-central, eastern, and central and southern Africa; Madagascar also should be included on this list.