Main Text Part II
by Wim van Binsbergen
|
From an African bestiary to universal
science? Main Text Part II by Wim van Binsbergen |
homepage | Animal symbolism overview page | Part I
How
then can we interpret the basic structure of three clusters (A),
(B), (C), which is borne out throughout our extensive cluster
analysis? Let us look at the dendrogram again:
Diagram
8. Cluster Analysis 2animals only, actual occurrences simplified
Broadly, the
three clusters may be characterised in the following terms:
(A)
ancient Egypt and Greece
(C)
Central and Southern Bantu-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, and
classical China
(D)
Ancient Mesopotamia’s astral science, modern astronomy as its
contemporary derivative, world-wide animal demon representations,
and Central Bantu-speaking Nkoya society.
Cluster (A) brings together a culture area
which recent research (especially, but not exclusively, in terms
of the Black Athena thesis) has increasingly identified as
forming one historical whole; we may designate this the ‘Black
Athena’ culture area.
Cluster (D) would appear to be
disconcertingly diverse in both space and time, until we realise
that its contents, however selective, nicely match Frobenius’
South-Erythraean culture area, which he saw originating in
ancient Mesopotamia (with possible extensions towards Dilmun /
Bahrayn and the Indus civilisation) and extending south of the
Red (= Erythraean) sea to the East African coast and South
Central Africa, where the southwestern fringe of the complex
would encompass the Nkoya culture of Zambia.[1] There are more extensive
reasons for relegating at least certain archaic layers of Nkoya
culture to the South-Erythraean culture area, although a
discussion would take us to far from the present context.[2] It
is meanwhile attractive to extend the South-Erythraean
cluster’s core region to the Indus valley, both because this
was a recognised centre of cultural innnovation with extensive
links with Mesopotamia, and because astrological data abounds in
the hitherto only very partially deciphered corpus of Indus
valley inscriptions[3] The
Nkoya indebtedness to, or even membership of, this complex[4] is
partly due to the extensive Indonesian influences in East African
and South Central African kingship and court culture in general,
as attested by the xylophone-centred royal orchestra, and by the
presence, among the Nkoya, of mythemes derived from Mesopotamian
and South Asian sources as presumably mediated via Indonesia
(which was subjected to massive South Asian influence since the
beginning of the Common Era) and Madagascar (which was laregely
people from Indonesia in the first millennium CE).
Cluster (C) brings together two culture
areas (imperial China and sub-Saharan Africa) which one would
normally not lump together because of their remoteness. Yet the
regrettably rare students of both African and Chinese culture[5] have
occasionally been struck by the amazing similarities between
sub-Saharan African historical cultural patterns, and such
archaic traits of Chinese classic culture which seem to hark back
to a cultural substratum predating the unified Chinese imperial
state and even the rise of Chinese literacy. Ancient songs and
dances, agricultural and ancestral rites, symbols such as
enshrined in archaic script signs, and much that went into the
making of Taoism as a mythico-realistic approach to nature, all
bear witness to this substratum.[6] Explanations for this
continuity have been offered, either in terms of prehistoric
diffusion from Africa to China by proto-Mande-speaking
intercontinental travellers,[7] or
in terms of maritime diffusion from China to Africa especially
during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).[8] One might even think of
Portuguese influence having a converging effect on both Central
African societies like the Chokwe, and (via Macao) on China.[9] I
consider these explanations too narrow: the mechanisms they
advance in order to explain the massive cultural parallels are
too limited to produce the observed effect over vast expanses of
the African and East Asian continents; and both the ‘China to
Africa’ explanation and the ‘Portugese influence’
explanation have a far too shallow time depth: patterns of animal
symbolism in African clan nomenclature and divination have
perspired in the oldest traveler’s accounts of the continent,
and Chinese astral science are known from extensive documentary
and archaeological evidence far predating the Portuguese
expansion to East Asia, even though later Chinese astronomy and
presumably also astrology were greatly influenced by European
science as a result of the missionary and scientific work of
Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) c.s. Gundel claims[10] a remarkable reception
of ancient Egyptian decan gods into East Asiatic astrology as
late as the nineteenth century CE. Even if this plausible claim
cannot be substantiated, we are at least reminded that we should
not attribute all latterday parallels between the astral science
of China and the Ancient Near East to postulated diffusion in
Antiquity.[11]
Instead I favour the hypothesis of an
extensive Old World Late Palaeolithic substratum (spilling over
into the New World),[12] and detectable in such largely formal
cultural systems as astral science, board games, mythologies,
basic concepts of cosmology and the human body, of witches and
ancestors, etc.[13]
What emerges is a most interesting
historical hypothesis.
I submit that the postulated Late Palaeolithic Old World
substratum includes an elaborate system of animal symbolism. In
those literate civilisations to the North and East of sub-Saharan
Africa, represented in our data set mainly by the ‘Black
Athena’ cultural region (Egypt and Greece), these animal
symbols came to be demonised when the substratum was
overlaid by, or supplanted by, anthropomorphic and celestial
symbolism such as emerged with the creation of states in the
hands of literate priests and kings.
Such demonisation is a familiar and
wide-spread process by which once dominant obsolescent symbols
are relegated to the subterranean and demonic sphere. The word
‘demon’ itself in its current usage of evil spirit could be
taken as an example of this very process, the ancient Greek word daimon
denoting benign spirit (cf. Socrates’ moral daimon as
described by Plato, Xenophon and Plutarch) until the Septuagint
translators of the Old Testament appropriated this word to denote
an order of beings inimical to the Jewish God. This usage was
adopted into the New Testament and Christianity, and projected
onto locally recognised spiritual forces predating to the local
arrival of Christianity. In Islam a very similar process obtains,
responsible for the distinctively local signature of popular
Islam wherever in the vaste expanse of Islam from Senegal to
Indonesia. A manifestation of this process is the formal and
urban Islamic opposition to the popular veneration of trees,
rocks and streams, to the latter’s association with minor
shrines, to beliefs and practices centring on jinns, and
to the widespread cults of spirit possession, — one can glean
examples from most ethnographies of local popular Islam in Africa
(including North Africa) and South Asia. In this connection, the
devil, Satan, Shaytan, etc. the demon par excellence,
whose attributes and identity have been projected onto Germanic,
Slavonic, African, Native American, Oceanic, etc. spiritual
beings and forces in the course of the expansion of the two world
religions, Islam and Christianity.[14]
In sub-Saharan Africa however this
combined process of theocratic and/or secular state formation and
literacy did not take place to quite the same extent, the natural
environment continued to contain the animal species as part of
everyday reality, and therefore in Africa we find the old
substratum of animal symbolism still more or less in place,
extending over huge expanses of space and time. If indeed we are
right in tracing this widespread system of animal symbolism back
to the Upper Palaeolithic, then an old and long dismissed
suggestion made by the ‘father of prehistory’, Breuil, is
thus granted a new lease of life:[15] the idea that there is
a historical connection between the bovines depicted in the Upper
Paleolithic rock art (specifically that of the Franco-Cantabrian
region in southwestern Europe), and the much more recent
Babylonian zodiac whose animal imagery is echoed in the Gilgamesh
epic and, much later, in Herakles’ heroic twelve works.
There is reason to suggest that the Late
Palaeolithic Old World system of animal symbolism may have been
first formulated in Africa: it is here that somatically modern
mankind emerged some 100,000 years Before Present, prior to
expansion to other continents where it replaced the
Neanderthaloid population, perhaps with some, but probably with
no genetic mixing. The easiest way to explain any Late
Palaeolithic Old World cultural continuity is by appealing to the
world-wide demographic spread of somatically modern man across
and out of Africa.[16] The oldest representations of animals are no
longer those of the famous rock art of the Franco-Cantabrian
region in southwestern Europe, but from East and Southern Africa.[17]
The substratum was well preserved in the
sub-Saharan African context, but also in East Asia, where the
emergence of the state and literacy incorporated and
encapsulated, rather than annihilated, the Late Palaeolithic
substratum traits. As a result animal symbolism in Chinese astral
science (including the zodiac and the lunar mansions as parts of
our data set) closely and consistently clusters together with the
Chokwe and Tswana material so as to form cluster (C). That also
in the South-Erythraean cultural region (D) the postulated Late
Palaeolithic substratum of animal symbolism may be detected, is
clear from the fact that the ‘animal demons’ series (as a
demonising transformation of the original Palaeolithic series)
formally situates itself in this cluster (although of course in
space and time the animal series transcends all clusters, being
virtually world-wide). It is odd that the Nkoya series should
situate itself here rather than nearer to the Chokwe material;
the Nkoya language is fairly closely related to the Chokwe
language,[18] and many forms of material culture and social
organisation of both societies are similar. The Nkoya political
organisation in kingdoms owes however a demonstrable debt not
only to ancient Egypt[19] but also and especially to the East African
Coast / Madagascar / Indonesia, and thus might be more
effectively influenced by the South-Erythraean cultural complex
than the Chokwe. The Chokwe are situated more to the West and
would instead display South Atlantic traits (such as worship of
the high god Nyambi/ Nzambe/ etc., trading cults, and nkisi
medicine containers, all of them little developed and probably
recent traits among the Nkoya).
Students of early astronomies have often
been struck by the extreme success of astrology (divinatory
astronomy) as a conceptual frame of reference: apparently
invented in ancient Mesopotamia[20] as an additional form
of divination (next to the dominant haruspicy) to predict events
important to the state and the kingship, it had a counterpart on
Egyptian astral science already in the midlle of the first
millennium BCE,[21] subsequently conquered Hellenic science, and
in Hellenistic times[22] became a central organising theme not only in
divination (where it became the systematic reasoning behind
palmistry, numerology, etc.), but also in medicine and the
pharmacopaea,[23] colour symbolism, mineralogy, art, and
permeated the entire world view of Late Antiquity; but also South
and East Asia, West and East Africa, and Germanic-speaking
northwestern Europe, adopted or developed local astrologies;
while the most succesful divination method whose localised
versions spread all over the world (including the Indian Ocean
region, South and West Africa, Byzantium, Renaissance Europe,
German peasant culture, and African American shell divination)
was the Arabic (ilm al-raml, which Ibn ‡aldun already
recognised[24] to be essentially a perverted form of
astrology. I submit that the success of astrology was largely
based on the fact that it was an early transformation of a system
of animal symbolism that formed a world-wide cultural substratum
dating back to the Late Palaeolithic, and to the African
continent as the cradle of somatically modern man.
Ever since the late nineteenth century art
historians and archaeologists have wondered at another widely
distributed representational complex: the ‘animal style’,[25]
originally identified in Scythian figurines dating from the
mid-first millennium BCE onwards, but gradually found to extend
over much of Asian and European early history, with ramifications
into, e.g., Hittite and ancient Mesopotamian art, and perhaps
even Eskimo and other American cultures. The stag or deer occupis
a central place in this complex, in its own right or (which seems
to be a derived sense) as the animal sacred to a hunting god or
goddess. The theme of the ‘flying gallop’ (nowhere to be
observed in nature, yet captured in ancient art from China to
Scythia, Syria and Crete)[26] is also related to this style, and ultimately
central shamanistic themes such as the reviving of a dead animal
by the proper arrangement of its skin and bones seem to attach to
this theme. I submit that the extreme extension of the ‘animal
style’ complex is not only to be sought in linguistic or ethnic
communality of certain Asian and European human groups, or in
extensive migratory or trading contacts, but that these obvious
mechanisms of diffusion have been greatly facilitated by the
persistence of a relatively intact original system of animal
symbolism as contained in the Late Palaeolithic substratum.
Presumably a parallel argument may be advanced with regard to
animal tales. If we dare insist on an African origin, the stag or
deer would then be a transformation of African antelope species
— an equivalence I have already applied in Table 2. The
extension of the ‘animal style’ over much of Asia, and
specifically both in South West Asia (ancient Anatolia and
ancient Mesopotamia) and in China, adds plausibility to the
appearance of both African and Chinese material in cluster (C).
We are now in a position to suggest an
historical explanation for the tripartite cluster structure which
our analysis has revealed. Cluster (C), comprising both the
African and the Chinese material, corresponds with the Late
Palaeolithic cultural substratum including the earliest,
presumably Africa-derived, animal symbolism. The other two
clusters reveal the two earliest centres of cultural innovation
where this substratum was profoundly transformed: ancient
Mesopotamia (D) and ancient Egypt (A). It is remarkable that
these two centres of civilisation, although relatively close in
space (on a world scale) and time, should appear as so radically
distinct in our analysis. This is all the more remarkable in view
of the fact that the earliest history of Egypt reveals
considerable Mesopotamian influence, to such an extent that a
considerable number of scholars have seen such influence as
decisive in the emergence of Egyptian civilisation (writing, tomb
architecture, the unified state, the gods — all a fact by the
time of the first dynasty, c. 3100 BCE). Interestingly in the
light of our present analysis, it is especially Mesopotamianising
themes in the representation of animals on cosmetic
palettes and seals, that are among the primary indications of
Mesopotamian influence on early Egypt.[27] Other analyses have
played down the Mesopotamian influence, and have instead stressed
the internal dynamics of the prehistoric societies of the Nile
valley,[28] the influence from sub-Saharan Africa,[29]
or the interaction between sub-Saharan African influences and
Eastern Mediterranean influences[30] — the latter possibly
overlapping with the influence from Mesopotamia. In the latter
approach we would envisage a situation, in the fifth and fourth
millennium BCE, where our three clusters would still be in statu
nascendi, still in the process of dissociating from one another,
and with little to distinguish the Egyptian and Mesopotamian
cluster from the African one. Given an initially considerable
Mesopotamian influence, Egypt soon moved away more and more from
the Mesopotamian models and towards a most distinctive
socio-cultural orientation of its own. I suspect that this
divergence increased because of at least two reasons:
(a)
the contingency of cultural change in general (given such
contingency, any change both in Egypt and in Mesopotamia —
separated after all by considerable stretches of sea and partly
inhospitable land — would be more likely to result in further
deviation than to further convergence between the two regions);
but also
(b)
the Egyptian elite’s and general population’s endeavour to
articulate Egypt’s distinctiveness by explicit reference to
Mesopotamian models, knowledge about which continued to be
available through trade and migration models — as if Egypt and
Mesopotamia each sought to occupy distinctive available niches in
an extensive and loosely integrated regional cultural ecology;
the desire to maintain domestic identity in the face of knowledge
about and interaction with surrounding peoples coresponds with
the so-called xenophobia for which ancient Egypt has been known
throughout its history.
But whatever the
earliest history of the civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia,
the material from these cultures as included in our data set
derives not from their earliest times, but from the time of their
greatest maturation, in the late second and the first millennium
BCE, when literacy, the state, religion, and complex social
organisation in general, had propelled both Egypt and Mesopotamia
into a specific high level of cultural innovation, resulting in a
very marked distinctiveness vis-a-vis one another and vis-a-vis
the Late Palaeolithic substratum. In both civilisations animal
symbolism remained important, as is testified by the animal
associations of Gilgamesh and Enkidu in epic texts and in glyptic
iconography; by the Mischwesen (composite fabulous
animals) appearing in both Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and in Egypt
by the very extensive matching, to the point of conflation,
between gods and animals. But in both Mesopotamia and Egypt the
triumph of literacy, the state, and organised religion consisted
in the dethronement of animals as central symbols and vehicles of
thought. Their place was largely taken by anthropomorphic gods,
often secondarily associated with animals, but also with other
natural phenomena and with man-made objects and crafts. It is
proper that the demonised animal figures (constituting an
anguished memory of symbols that were once — under the Late
Palaeolithic substratum — the dominant repositories of meaning)
appear, not as part of the substratum cluster (C) — their
original context, where they would still be intact and not yet
demonised — but as part of one of the ‘transformed animal
symbolism’ clusters, (A) or (D). Given the more emphatically
maintained animal nature of the ancient Egyptian gods as compared
to ancient Mesopotamia, it is consistent that the ‘animal
demons’ cluster, although in principle encompassing much of the
entire world, should fall in the Mesopotamian cluster (D).
Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge the
fact that animal demons also occur in African symbolism, and not
exclusively as recent transformations of African symbolism under
conditions of the state and literacy.[31] As Ruel points out,[32]
there is also in Africa specific animal symbolism of political
domination. This I can only endorse, on the basis of my own
studies of royal symbolism in South Central Africa,[33] and
of a comparative exploration of leopard-skin symbolism I recently
undertook.[34] This link between African political
domination and animal symbolism in principle leaves open the
possibility that also in Africa the demonisation — as a
secondary phase — of an earlier form of animal symbolism has
been associated with the emergence of precolonial states, though
not with literacy. By the same token, we should extend our
analysis to the, considerable, sub-Saharan evidence on astral
animal symbolism in the form of zodiacs etc.[35] It is noteworthy that
much ofthe literature on this point refers to the world of
African Islam, as if the astronical and astrological knowledge
systems we are encountering here, though on African soil, do not
directly spring from an indigenous African tradition but from the
Arabic one which was a direct heir to the scientific and magical
tradition of the Ancient Near East and Graeco-Roman antiquity.
But in some of these African astronomical and astrological
attestations Islam is merely a distant influence, like among the
Dogon. In addition, divination bowls both in Southern Africa
(Venda) and in West Africa (Yoruba) often have decorated rims
that evoke zodiacal symbolism.[36] It is not clear whether
such zodiacal symbolism belongs to
(a)
an independent indigenous African zodiacal tradition (which I
would find extremely unlikely);
(b)
an imported literate zodiacal tradition — most probably from
the Arab world — which however is locally carried by
specialists more or less competent in that tradition; or
(c)
merely represents the superficial, decorative imitations of
foreign examples on imported artefacts, not supported by locally
competent meaning.
Kroeber reminds
us[37]
that throughout West Africa we encounter golden rings with twelve
zodiacal signs, which however locals cannot explain for lack of
astrological knowledge. Of course, magical bowls, sometimes with
explicit astrological connotations, have abounded in the world of
Judaism, Madaeism, and Islam during the first millennium CE, and
given the extensive inroads of southwestern Asian culture into
East Africa,[38] these could very well be responsible for
superficially imitated zodiacal designs on pottery.[39]
Diagram 9. Interpretation of the results of cluster analysis on world-wide patterns of animal symbolism
(click on the
thumbnail to enlarge)
Legend:
Given the abstract, aggregated and highly
selective nature of the analysis, few interactive effects which
we know to have taken place between the identified cultural
clusters, actually perspire in the present material. For
instance, the continuity between ancient Egypt and ancient Greece
is highlighted in (A), beautifully in line with Bernal’s Black
Athena thesis, but not so highlighted is the continuity
between ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Greece, which is yet a
proven fact precisely in astronomy (from which part of our data
set was taken) and other sciences,[40] and which certain
scholars[41] have also argued for mythology, e.g. in the
parallels between the Gilgamesh epic, the labours of Herakles,
and the Prometheus myth. I have already pointed out that it was
the thrust of cultural dynamics, accellerated and intensified by
societal complexity, literacy, the state and organised religion,
which caused the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian cluster to become,
at the height of their development, so radically different from
one another despite the evidence of Egypt’s initial
indebtedness to Mesopotamia. This effect of what I have called
‘transformative localisation’:[42] the local appropriation
and adaptation of globally circulating cultural material, so as
to produce a distinctive local form which can no longer be
reduced to its original provenance. In this case the effect of
transformative localisation is so strong as to obscure, from our
analysis, any minor exchanges which are known to have occurred
between Egypt and Mesopotamia — which for some time during the
New Kingdom shared a border at the Euphrates, maintained a
correspondence in cuneiform Akkadic, exchanged healing statues of
gods, adopted each other’s gods, boardgames, etc. For the same
reason of transformative localisation the Egyptian-Greek cluster
(A) should appear so radically different from the substratum one
(D) containing most of the African material, despite Egypt’s
unmistakable cultural and demographic indebtedness to Africa.
Both in the case of Mesopotamian / Egyptian exchange, and of
African/ Egyptian - Egyptian / African exchanges, the analysis
highights how the dynamics of transformative localisation works
on cultural material imported by way of diffusion, and shapes
that material into something uniquely distinct from yet
historically related to the original source. Our analysis is too
crude and too limited to reveal some other historically
established interaction processes affecting the societies in our
sample, such as the influence of Egyptian material not only on
Greece but specifically fed back into Africa;[43] or the historical link
between China and Mesopotamia precisely in the field of
astronomy. In other words, the cluster analysis with its
tree-like results tends to play down interaction between clusters
and between branches, in this case between cluster (A) and (C)
(Egypt/ Africa) and between (D) and (C) (Mesopotamia / China).
Ironically, on the basis of extensive field work I recently
drafted a book arguing the historical links between the kingship
and oral traditions of the Nkoya people if South Central Africa,
and ancient Egypt,[44] whereas in the present analysis the Nkoya
with their system of clan nomenclature (which is presumably older
than and independent from the kingship) situate themselves in the
Mesopotamian cluster (D) (which therefore had to be
re-interpreted as South Erythraean) and not with Egypt (A).
Scientific classifications ultimately
arose in the context of these transformations in ancient
Mesopotamia, Egypt, notably through early astronomy and
divination systems, much later to be reworked in Hellenic and
Hellenistic times, and in modern times to be partly dismissed as
pseudo-sciences. Not only does this analysis support the view
that extensive continuities in space and time, as a social basis
for the attribution of universality, is a feature of other
systems of knowledge besides modern science; it also shows how
modern science and its spatial and temporal extension is
historically indebted to these other systems of knowledge.
The philosopher
of science Sandra Harding attributes modern science’s claim to
universality not in the first place to its internal epistemology,
but to the specific social condition that modern science is
available, represented, mediated, anywhere on the globe, at
specific centres of exchange such as universities, schools, the
media etc. The present paper makes the point that, among systems
of knowledge, modern science does not have the monopoly of this
social condition. Many other systems of knowledge, far from being
merely local, have extensive continuity over vast expanses of
both space and time, and hence may be suspected of taking on, in
the consciousness of the people sharing such knowledge, a
validity comparable to modern science’s. The global
distribution of the mythological theme of ‘hero fights
monster’ is one initial example. The argument then concentrates
on animal symbolism as providing an even more impressive example.
From eleven widely differing cultural contexts in Asia, Africa
and Europe and from a time span of several millennia, eleven
series of animal (combined with non-animal) symbolism are
processed: world-wide representations of animal demons; nomes and
major gods from ancient Egypt; figurines in the Central African
(Chokwe) divining basket; the names of clans among the Central
African Nkoya people and the Southern African Tswana people; the
classic Chinese zodiac and lunar mansions; Babylonian astronomy;
the modern international names of the constellations; and the
animal associations of the major Greek gods. It turns out to be
possible to subsume these very disparate series in one large
matrix. After a methodological discussion, the contents of this
matrix are subjected to extensive cluster analysis. Given the
notorious variability and manipulability of cluster analysis
results, we need to proceed cautiously. However, the patterns
that emerge turn out to be remarkably stable and consistent,
regardless of whether the analysis is limited to animal symbols
or is allowed to include non-animal symbols; and regardless of
whether actual occurrences in the data set per series and per
symbolic category data are taken into account, or instead the
data are dichotomised in terms of mere occurrence, or
non-occurrence, per series and per category; dichotomisation
allows us to use a stronger, parametric distance statistic based
on the Pearson correlation, but this again yields largely the
same results. Three clusters articulate themselves persistently
in the data set: an African / Chinese cluster; an ancient
Egyptian / classical Greek cluster; and an ancient Mesopotamian
cluster, to which modern constellation names are historically
indebted, and to which both globally distributed animal demons,
and Nkoya clan names, attach themselves. In an attempt to explain
this pattern, the hypothesis is formulated of an Upper
Palaeolithic cultural substratum encompassing, among other traits
including an early nomenclature of (some) constellations, an
elaborate system of animal symbolism. In the African (Tswana,
Chokwe) and Chinese material in our data set, this Upper
Palaeolithic substratum is still more or less intact.
Alternatively, under conditions of state formation, the emergence
of organised religion, and literacy, the substratum underwent
specific transformations in ancient Egypt (from where a decisive
influence was exerted on Greek religion and mythology) and, in a
radically different direction, in ancient Mesopotamia. While
animal symbolism remained a part of both transformative clusters,
animals lost their earlier central roles as vehicles of meaning
and of thought (as in the Upper Palaeolithic), and gave way to
anthropomorphic symbols or to symbols derived from other natural
phenomena than animals, especially meteorological and celestial
phenomena. Scientific classifications ultimately arose in the
context of these transformations in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt,
notably through early astronomy and divination systems, much
later to be reworked in Hellenic and Hellenistic times, and in
modern times to be partly dismissed as pseudo-sciences. Not only
does this analysis support the view that extensive continuities
in space and time, as a social basis for the attribution of
universality, is a feature of other systems of knowledge besides
modern science; it also shows how modern science and its spatial
and temporal extension is historically indebted to these other
systems of knowledge. In addition to this main line of argument,
the paper touches on a number of additional points: the Black
Athena thesis on ancient Egyptian / Greek continuity, supported
by the cluster analysis; Frobenius’[45] concept of the South
Erythraean cultural area, as a likely explanation of the Nkoya
material’s associating with the Mesopotamian cluster, thus
highlighting South Asian and Indonesian influences in Central
African kingship and mythology; the manifestation of the
postulated Upper Palaeolithic system of animal symbolism in the
famous rock art of that period; the persisting manifestation of
that system in such familiar themes of art history as the
‘animal style’, the ‘flying gallop’, animal tales, and
certain shamanistic themes having to do with animal death and
rebirth; the hypothesis that the postulated widespread Upper
Palaeolithic system of animal symbolism may have facilitated the
amazingly wide spread of astrology as an astral system of animal
symbolism; the demonisation or diabolisation, of that system when
under conditions of state formation and literacy a different
religious regime emerges; and finally such historically
documented interactions between the clusters as evade the
tree-like representation of relationships in cluster analysis:
Mesopotamian/ Egyptian, Mesopotamian/ Greek, Mesopotamian/
Chinese, African/ Egyptian, and Egyptian/ African.
Of course, more satisfactory cluster
analyses, and a more sophisticated and subtle interpretation of
their results, could be made if far more series from a wider
range of provenances were included — particularly from other
African and Asian societies, from the Americas, Australia and
Oceania, ancient Europe, and from other spheres of life than
religion, mythology, social nomenclature, and astral science.
However, the preparation and analysis of our eleven series has
already taken months of work. In the near future the data set
will of course be greatly expanded in space and in time.
Meanwhile, for a first indication of the kind of potential of
this material and of this kind of analysis, the present exercise
is quite sufficient. It confirms Levi-Strauss’ that animals
have been bien a penser, ‘good for thinking’, in the
most literal sense: as props for forms of untamed thought from
which, ultimately, along an itinerary whose outline we are
beginning to discern, contemporary scientific knowledge was to
come forth.
[1] Frobenius,
L., 1931, Erythraa: Lander und Zeiten des heiligen
Konigsmordes, Berlin/ Zurich: Atlantis-Verlag.
[2]
For details, cf. my forthcoming Global Bee Global bee flight,
o.c.
[3]
Cf. Parpola, A., 1994, Deciphering the Indus script,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[4]
Cf. my Global bee flight, o.c.
[5]
Having myself scratched only the barest surface of Chinese
history, culture and language, I cannot possibly include myself
among these happy few. However, in the mid-1980s I was invited to
participate in a symposium of the Oosters Genootschap
(‘Oriental Society’) at Leiden University dedicated to
patterns of social drinking in various non-European societies. As
the only Africanist amongst South and East Asianists, I was
struck by the very close parallels between the Southern and
Central African patterns of social and ritual drinking as evoked
in my presentation, and the Chinese data presented at the same
occasion. Regrettably, I did not have the opportunity to work my
oral presentation of that occasion into a published text.
[6]
Granet M., 1919, Fetes et chansons anciennes de la Chine,
Paris; Granet, M., 1926, Danses et legendes de la Chine
ancienne, 2 vols., Paris: ; Granet, M., 1925, ‘Remarques
sur le Taoisme ancien’, Asia Major, 2: 146-151; Granet,
M., 1988, La pensee chinoise, Paris: Albin Michel,
nouvelle edition precedee d’une preface par V. Eliseeff,
earlier edition Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1934; Maspero,
H., 1900, Le Taoisme, Paris, reprinted in: Demieville, P.,
ed., 1950, H. Maspero: Melanges posthumes sur les religions et
l’histoire de la Chine, Paris: Civilisations du Sud,
Publications du Musee Guimet, Bibliotheque de Diffusion; vol ii;
Maspero, H., 1971, Le Taoisme et les religions chinoises,
Paris: Gallimard; Texts of Taoism, vol. 39-40 of: Muller,
M., ed., Sacred books of the East: Translated by various
oriental scholars, first published Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1875-1910, reprinted 1988, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass; Karlgren,
B., 1940, ‘Grammata serica: Script and phonetics in Chinese and
Sino-Japanese’, Bulletin of the Museum for Eastern
Antiquities (Stockholm), 12, 1f; Karlgren, B., 1957,
‘Grammata Serica Recensa’, The Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities Bulletin, Stockholm, 29; Needham, J., with Wing
Ling, 1956, Science and civilization in China, vol. 2. History
of scientific thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;
Wang Hongyuan, 1994, The origins of Chinese characters,
Beijing: Sinolingua, first published 1993; Wieger, L., 1965, Chinese
characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification and
signification: A thorough study from Chinese documents,
translation L. Davrout, New York: Paragon Book Reprint/ Dover,
reprint of Chinese Characters, Hsienhsien: Catholic
Mission Press, second edition, 1927; first edition 1915.
[7]
Winters, C.A., 1980, ‘A note on the unity of Black
civilizations in Africa, Indo-China, and China’, in: PISAS [
International Symposium on Asian Studies ] 1979, Hong Kong:
Asian Research Service; Winters, C.A., 1983, ‘Blacks in Ancient
China, Part 1: The Founders of Xia and Shang’, Journal of
Black Studies, 1, 2.
[8]
Duyvendak, J.J.L., 1938, ‘The true dates of the Chinese
maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century,’ T’oung
Pao, 34: 341-412; Duyvendak, J.J.L., 1949, China’s discovery
of Africa, London: Probsthain; Hirth, F., 1909, ‘Early
Chinese Notices of East African Territories,’ Journal of the
American Oriental Society, 30: 46-57; Wheatley, P., 1975,
‘Appendix II: Notes on Chinese texts containing references to
East Africa’, in: Neville, H., Chittick, H.N., &Rotberg,
R.I., eds., East Africa and the Orient: Cultural syntheses in
pre-colonial times, New York: Africana Publishing Co., pp.
284-290; Filesi, T., 1972, China and Africa in the Middle Ages,
translation D.L.Morisen, London. For an exaggerated assessment of
the Chinese presence in East Africa in the second millennium CE,
cf. Schwarz, E.H.L., 1938, ‘The Chinese connection with
Africa’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal,
3rd series, 4: 175-193, who speaks of millions of Chinese
swarming all over Eastern and Southern Africa by the middle of
the second millennium CE; yet the article contains convincing
details and has the general marks of serious scholarship.
[9]
I owe this suggestion to Patricia van Binsbergen-Saegerman, who
pointed out to me proof of early Portuguese influence on Chokwe
art, and on the Kongo kingdom.
[10] Gundel, Dekane, o.c.,
p. 216.
[11] Pace Bezold, Ungnad, o.c.
For an example of post-Ming Chinese astrology which shows such
close parallels with Hellenistic and Indian astrology that it
would be difficult to see the Chinese forms as having evolved
completely independently on Chinese soil for two millennia or
more, cf. Sherrill, W.A., ed., 1976, The astrology of I Ching:
translated from the ‘Ho Map Lo Map Rational Number’
manuscript by W.K. Chu, London/ Henley: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
[12] Cf. von Negelein, J., 1929,
‘Das Sternbild des ‘‘Grossen Baren’’ in Siberien und
Indien’, Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft, 27: 186-187;
Hentze, Mythes et symboles lunaires, o.c.; Kelley,
D.H., 1960, ‘Calendar animals and deities,’ South-Western
Journal of Anthropology, 16: 317-335; Kelley, D.B., 1991,
‘The twenty-eight lunar mansions of China’, Reports of
Liberal Arts, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, No. 5;
Kelley, D.B., 1992, ‘The Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions of China:
Part 2: A possible relationship with Semitic alphabets’, o.c.;
Kelley, D.B., 1995, ‘The Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions of China:
Part 3: A Possible Relationship with the Ancient Central-American
Calendar’, Reports of Liberal Arts, Hamamatsu University
School of Medicine, No. 9. Incidentally, in a further
analysis along the lines presented in the present paper, these
studies could be used to extend our data set of animal symbolism
(Table 2) into northern Asia, and the New World.
[13] Stricker, B.H., 1963-1989, De
geboorte van Horus, I-V, Leiden: Brill for Ex Oriente Lux;
Fontenrose, o.c.; Ginzburg, C., 1992, Ecstasies:
Deciphering the witches’ sabbath, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, reprint of the first English edition of 1991, Pantheon
Books, translation of Storia notturna, Torino: Einaudi,
1989; Campbell, J., 1992, De vlucht van de wilde gans,
Houten: De Haan/ Unieboek, Dutch translation of The flight of
the wild gander, New York: HarperPerennial, 1990; de
Santillana, G., & von Dechend, H., 1969, Hamlet’s mill:
An essay on myth and the frame of time, Boston: Gambit; for a
dismissive view of this study, cf. Palter, R., 1996, ‘Black
Athena, Afrocentrism, and the history of science’, in:
Lefkowitz, M.R., & MacLean Rogers, G., eds., Black Athena
revisited, Chapel Hill & London: University of North
Carolina Press, pp. 209-266. For my own work on such
continuities, cf. van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ‘Rethinking
Africa’s contribution to global cultural history: Lessons from
a comparative historical analysis of mankala board-games and
geomantic divination’, in my Black Athena: Ten Years After,
o.c., pp. 221-254, also at: http://come.to/ancient_thought . For the exploration of Palaeolithic graphic signs,
cf. Hentze, Mythes et symboles lunaires, o.c., but
especially Leroi-Gourhan, A., 1958, La fonction des signes dans
les sanctuaires paleolithiques, Bulletin de la Societe
prehistorique francaise, 55, 5-6: 307-321; Leroi-Gourhan, A.,
1958, ‘Le symbolisme des grands signes dans l’art parietal
paleolitique’, Bulletin de la Societe Prehistorique
Francaise, 55, 7-8; Leroi-Gourhan, A., 1958, ‘Repartition
et groupement des animaux dans l’art parietal paleolithique’,
Bulletin de la Societe Prehistorique Francaise, 55:
515-528; Leroi-Gourhan, A., 1964, Les religions de la
prehistoire: Paleolithique, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France (Mythes et religion 6). Based on the examination, not of
subterranean sites of rock art but of portable artefacts, and
reaching comparable conclusions: Marshack, The roots of
civilization, o.c.; Marshack, A., 1991, ‘The Tai
plaque and calendrical notation in the Upper Palaeolithic’, Cambridge
Archaeological Journal, 1, 1: 25-61; for criticism of
Marshack, cf. d’Errico, F., 1989, ‘Paleolithic lunar
calendars: A case of wishful thinking?’, Current
Anthropology, 30: 117; with a reply by Marshack and a
rejoinder by d’Errico. For relatively independent views
converging with Marshack’s, cf. Anati, E., 1998, ‘Une
ecriture avant l’ecriture’, Le Courrier de l’Unesco,
april 1998, pp. 10-16; Gimbutas, M.A., 1991, The civilization
of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe, San Francisco:
Harper, ch. 8: ‘the sacred script’. A general up-to-date
background to processes of symbolisation in the Upper
Palaeolithic is offered, e.g., by Gamble, C., 1995, Timewalkers:
The prehistory of global colonisation, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, first published 1993: Allan Sutton Publishing Ltd, Bath.
[14] Aspects of this process in Africa
and South America are treated in: Meyer, B., 1995, ‘Translating
the devil: An African appropriation of Pietist protestantism: The
case of the Peki Ewe in Southeastern Ghana, 1847-1992’, Ph.D
thesis, Amsterdam University; Taussig, M.T., 1980, The devil
and commodity fetishism in South America, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press; van Dijk, R., 1995,
‘Fundamentalism and its moral geography in Malawi: The
representation of the diasporic and the diabolical’, Critique
of Anthropology, 15, 2: 171-191. Glimpses of the process in
the Germanic world of first-millenium CE Europe in: Lampen, W.,
1939, Willibrord en Bonifatius, Amsterdam: Van Kampen.
[15] Breuil, H., 1909, ‘Le bison et
le taureau celeste chaldeen’, Revue archeologique, 4e
serie, 13, 1: 250-254.
[16] Shreeve, J., 1996, The
Neandertal enigma?: Solving the mystery of modern human origins,
New York: Morrow/ Viking; Laine, ‘Eve africaine?’, o.c.,
and extensive references cited there.
[17] Anati, E., 1986, ‘The rock art
of Tanzania and the East African sequence’, BCSP [ Bolletino
des Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici ] , 23: 15-68, fig.
5-51; Anati, E., 1999, La religion des origines, Paris:
Bayard; French translation of La religione delle origini,
n.p.: Edizione delle origini, 1995.
[18] Greenberg, J.H., 1955, Studies
in African linguistic classification, New Haven (Conn.):
Compass.
[19] Cf. my Global bee flight, o.c.
[20] For extensive literature cited,
cf. van Binsbergen & Wiggermann, ‘Magic’, o.c. On
the basis of the early attestation of astrology in ancient
Mesopotamia and the subsequent very wide spread of this knowledge
system, Winckler launched, a century ago, the idea of
pan-Babylonism: ancient Mesopotamia conceived as the cradle of
all culture. Winckler, H., 1903, Himmels- under Weltenbild der
Babylonier als Grundlage der Weltanschauung und Mythologie aller
Volker, Leipzig: Hinrichs. This position is since highly
discredited, very early on already by: King, L.W., 1915, A
history of Babylon: From the foundation of the monarchy to the
Persian conquest, London: Chatto & Windus, ch X, pp. 289-315.
There is a certain, but only superficial, similarity between
this, highly discredited, position and my own far more complex
suggestion, below, which seeks to explain the unmistakably
world-wide success of astrology by interpreting this specialist
knowledge system as being greatly supported by, and/ or forming a
transformation of, a system of animal symbolism; from Africa the
latter spread all over the world with the demographic expansion
of somatically modern man, and thus offered everywhere a fertile
and kindred ground for the reception of astrology as a more
sophisticated form of animal symbolism.
[21] Gundel, Dekane, o.c.;
Schott, S., 1936, ‘Erster Teil: Die altaglyptische Dekane’,
in: Gundel, Dekaneo.c., pp. 1-21; Gundel, W., 1936, Neue
astrologische Texte des Hermes Trismegistos, Abhandlungen
der Bayerischen Akademie fur Wissenschaften
Philosophisch-historische Abteilung, Neue Folge, Heft 12;
Robins, G., 1995, ‘Mathematics, astronomy, and calendars in
Pharaonic Egypt’, in: Sasson, J.M., with Baines, J., Beckman,
G., & Rubinson, K.S., eds., Civilizations of the Ancient
Near East, New York etc.: Scribner’s, pp. III, 1799-1813.
[22] Bouche-Leclercq, A., 1879, Histoire
de la divination dans l’antiquite, Paris: Leroux, 4 vols,
reprint ca. 1960, U.S.A. (the U.S.A. photomechanical reprint I
consulted does not contain any details as to publisher and year
of publication); Gundel, H.G., 1972, ‘Zodiakos’, in: Paulys
Realencyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft: Neue
Bearbeitung begonnen von George Wissowa etc., Kroll, W., ed.,
II. Reihe 19. Halbband, cols. 462-709; Boll, F.J., Bezold, C.,
& Gundel, W., 1966, Sternglaube und Sterndeutung: Die
Geschichte und das Wesen der Astrologie: 5. durchgesehene Auflage
mit einem bibliographischen Anhang von H.G. Gundel,
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlichte Buchgesellschaft, first edition
Leipzig 1926: Teubner Verlag.
[23] Pfister, F., 1964,
‘Pflanzenaberglaube’, in: Paulys Realencyclopadie der
classischen Altertumswissenschaft: Neue Bearbeitung begonnen
von George Wissowa etc., Kroll, W., ed., 38. Halbband, cols.
1446-1456.
[24] Ibn ‡aldun, 1980, The
Muqaddimah: An introduction to history, translated from the
Arabic by F. Rosenthal, 3 vols, second printing of second
edition, Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press, 1980,
first edition Bollingen Series XLIII, New York: Bollingen
Foundation Inc, 1958.
[25] Leroi-Gourhan, A., 1943, Documents
pour l’art compare de l’Eurasie septentrionale, Paris:
Editions d’Art et d’Histoire; Bunker, E.C., Chatwin, C.B.,
& Farkas, A.R., 1970, ‘Animal style’: Art from east to
west, New York; Cammann, Schuyler v. R., 1958, ‘The animal
style art of Eurasia’, Journal of Asian Studies, 17:
323-39; Rostovzev, M.I., 1929, The animal style in South
Russia and China, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
[26] Reinach, S., 1925, La
representation du galop dans l’art ancien et moderne,
Paris: Leroux
[27] Kantor, H. J., 1952, ‘Further
evidence of early Mesopotamian relations with Egypt’, Journal
of Near Eastern Studies, 11, 2: 239-250; Rice, M., 1990, Egypt’s
making: The origins of Ancient Egypt, 5000-2000 B.C., London
and New York: Routledge.
[28] Hoffman, M.A., 1991, Egypt
before the Pharaohs: The prehistoric foundations of Egyptian
civilization, revised edition, Austin: University of Texas
Press, first published New York/ London 1979.
[29] Frankfort, H., 1948, Kingship
and the gods: A study of Ancient Near Eastern religion as the
integration of society and nature, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, French translation La royaute et les dieux:
Integration de la societe a la nature dans la religion de
l’ancien Proche Orient, Paris: Payot; Redford, Egypt,
Canaan, and Israel, o.c.; Williams, B.B., 1986, The
A-group Royal Cemetery at Qustul Cemetery L: Excavations between
Abu Simbel and the Sudan frontier, Keith C. Seele, Director,
Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition volume III, Part 1,
Chicago: Oriental Institute;
[30] My Global bee flight, o.c.
[31] Cf. Ruel, M., 1970, ‘Were
animals and the introverted witch’, in: Douglas, M., ed., Witchcraft
confessions and accusations, Tavistock
[32] Ruel, M., 1970, ‘Lions,
leopards and rulers’, New Society, 380: 54-56.
[33] Cf. my Tears, o.c.
[34] For a section of my forthcoming
book Intercultural encounters: African lessons for a
philosophy of interculturality.
[35] Cf. Griaule, M., 1966, Dieu
d’Eau: Entretiens avec Ogotomelli, Paris: Fayart, first
published 1948, English translation Conversations with
Ogotemmeli: An introduction to Dogon religious ideas, London:
Oxford University Press; Bork, F., 1914,
‘Tierkreisforschungen’, Anthropos, 9: 66-80 (where the
author examines materials from India, Indonesia and West Africa);
Callet, le R.P., 1913, Tantaran’ ny Andriana, traduit et
annote par M. Colancon, Bulletin de l’Academie Malgache,
vol. 11-12, vol 12 part 1, p. 21-114; Coro, F., 1951, ‘Folklore
africano: Astronomia e scienze occulte presso i Tuaregh’, Rassegna
Mediterranea, December 1951: 19; Crowfoot, J.W., 1920,
‘Beliefs about the mansions of the moon’, Sudan Notes and
Records, 3: 271-279; ten Raa, E., 1969, ‘The moon as a
symbol of life and fertility in Sandawe thought’, Africa,
39: 24-53; Sechefo, J., 1909, ‘The twelve lunar months among
the Basuto’, Anthropos, 4: 931-941; Paques, V., 1964, L’Arbre
cosmique dans la pensee populaire et dans la vie quotidienne du
Nord-Ouest africain, Travaux et Memoires de l’Institut
d’Ethnologie de l’Universite de Paris, no. 70, Paris:
Institut d’Ethnologie de l’Universite de Paris; Paques, V.,
1956, ‘Le Belier cosmique’, Journal de la Societe des
Africanistes,, 26, 1-2: 211-253; Hiskett, M., 1967, ‘The
Arab star-calendar and planetary system in Hausa verse’, Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 30: 158-176;
Ferrand, G., 1905, ‘Un chapitre d’astrologie arabico-malgache
d’apres le manuscrit 8 du fond arabico-malgache de la
Biblotheque Nationale de Paris’, Journal Asiatique, 10th
series, 6: 193-273; Knappert, J., 1993, ‘al-Nudjum (A.), the
stars: In East Africa’, in: Bosworth, C.E., van Donzel, E.,
Heinrichs, W.P., & Lecomte, G., eds., Encyclopaedia of
Islam, new edition, Leiden: Brill, p. VIII, 105; Bloch, M.,
1968, ‘Astrology and writing in Madagascar’, in: Goody, J.,
ed., Literacy in traditional societies, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 278-297; Cerulli, E., 1931-32,
‘Nuovi appunti sulle nozioni astronomiche dei Somali’, Rivista
degli Studi Etiopici, 6: 83-92; Cerulli, E., 1929-30, ‘Le
stazioni lunari nelle nozioni astronomiche dei Somali e dei Dan?kil’,
Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 12: 71-78; Littmann, E.,
1908, ‘Sternensagen und Astrologisches aus Nord-Abessinien’, Archiv
fur Religionswissenschaft, 2: 298-319.
[36] ; cf. Davis, S., 1955,
‘Divining bowls, their uses and origin: Some African examples
and parallels from the ancient world’, Man, 55 (143):
132-135, and references cited there.
[37] Cf. Kroeber, A.L., 1923, Anthropology,
New York: Harcourt, Brace, p. 205.
[38] Cf. Neville c.s., East Africa
and the Orient, o.c.
[39] Naveh, J., & S. Shaked, 1985,
Amulets and magic bowls : Aramaic incantations of late
antiquity, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University/
Leiden: Brill; Spoer, H.H., 1938, ‘Arabic Magic Bowls II: An
Astrological Bowl,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society,
58: 366-383.
[40] Dalley, S., & Reyes, A.T.,
1998, ‘Mesopotamian contact and influence in the Greek world
(1)’, in: Dalley, S., & Reyes, A.T., eds., The legacy of
Mesopotamia, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 85-106; Bottero,
J., Herrenschmidt, C., & Vernant, J.P., 2000, Ancestor of
the West: Writing, reasoning, and religion in Mesopotamia, Elam,
and Greece, Chicago: University of Chicago; van der Waerden,
B.L., 1974, Science Awakening, I. Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek
mathematics, II: The Birth of Astronomy, Leyden: Brill, English
translation of the Dutch Ontwakende wetenschap: I Egyptische,
Babylonische en Griekse wiskunde, II. De geboorte der
sterrenkunde, Groningen: Noordhoff, first published
1950-1954.
[41] Fontenrose, o.c.,
p. 248; Hrozny, B., 1951, Ancient history of western Asia,
India and Crete, Prague: Artia, p. 57, 155 (I am aware of the
discredited nature of Hrozny’s claim to have deciphered the
ancient Cretan script, and of the several other flaws of this
book, but that is immaterial in this context); Kramer, S.N.,
1961, Sumerian mythology: A study of spiritual and literary
achievement in the third millennium B.C., Memoirs xxi,
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, reprint of the 1944
first edition, pp. 13, 33. The idea of a direct relation between
Herakles and Gilgamesh was however dismissed by Levy, G.R., 1934,
‘The Oriental origin of Herakles’, Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 54: 40-53.
[42] van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997,
‘Black Athena Ten Years After: Towards a constructive
re-assessment’, in my Black Athena: Ten Years After, o.c.,
pp. 11-64, also at: http://come.to/ancient_thought and at http://come.to/black_athena .
[43] My Global bee flight, o.c.
[44] My Global bee flight, o.c.
[45] I am aware that Frobenius’
scholarship and moral stance as an Africanist is discredited
among mainstream Africanists today (cf. Zobel, C., 1997,
‘Essentialisme culturaliste et humanisme chez Leo Frobenius et
Maurice Delafosse’, in Amselle, J.-L., & Sibeud, E., eds, Maurice
Delafosse entre orientalisme et ethnographie: L’itineraire
d’un africaniste (1870-1926), Paris: Maissonneuve &
Larose, pp. 137-143; Streck, B., 1996, ‘Frobenius’, in: Deutsche
Biographische Enzyklopadie, 3, Munchen: pp. 499f.; Luig, U.,
1982, ed., Leo Frobenius. Vom Schreibtisch zum Aquator:
Afrikanische Reisen, Frankfurt a.M.; Vajda, L., 1973, ‘Leo
Frobenius heute’, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 98: 19-29.
On the other hand, Frobenius is widely acclaimed as a major
intellectual influence on Afrocentricity: Abiola Irele, F., 1997,
‘Negritude’, in: Middleton, J.M., 1997, ed., Encyclopaedia
of Africa south of the Sahara, 4 vols., New York: Scribners,
vol. 3, pp. 278-286; Cesaire A., 1941, ‘Leo Frobenius et le
probleme des civilisations’, Tropiques (Fort-de-France),
no. 1, pp. 27-36. For a brief anthropological re-appraisal of
Frobenius, see my forthcoming bookGlobal Bee Flight:
Sub-Saharan Africa, Ancient Egypt, and the World — Beyond the
Black Athena thesis.
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