You will remember how I mentioned in the last chapter that we are all brothers in one vast family, the family of man. Now it may seem to you that, as time goes on, this family is breaking up into ever smaller parts. This is quite true politically, that is in the way we are governed. There are more self-governing nations in the world today (over 100) than there have ever been, and their number is likely to continue to increase. The Roman Empire and the British Empire are only two of the many large groups out of which dozens of separate states have been created.
   But culturally, that is in the way we live, the human family has drawn closer together throughout its history, slowly at first, and now with increasing speed. Two thousand years ago, the way of life of a citizen of Rome was completely different from that of a citizen of, say, Zaria. Today, in both Rome and Zaria you will find people who dance to jazz music, profess Christianity, study in a university, and find that life is very difficult when their telephone is out of order. The rhythms of jazz originated amongst Africans; Christianity, like so many other great religions, sprang up amongst Asians; the idea of a university was conceived by Europeans; and the telephone was developed by an American. Yet all four now belong to the world, and to the common cultural heritage of the family of man. The rest of this book is really an account of the way in which our people here in West Africa have gradually contributed more and more to, and benefited more and more from, that common heritage.
   Fifty centuries ago, when the scattered tribes of Europe were still illiterate and barbarous, there lived in a fertile river valley in the north-east corner of our continent a people who had a very advanced civilization. That river was the Nile, and the people were the Egyptians. Very few of them were negroes; and, fascinating as it is, we cannot stop to study that civilization here. It has, however, one lesson to teach which I must refer to at this stage of our study.
   It is that the finest civilizations have usually sprung from the most fertile soils, almost literally. Men's culture is rooted in their land. Each summer the Nile valley becomes a shallow lake, whose receding waters leave behind a layer of extremely fertile silt. It is not surprising, therefore, that many adventurous people from both Asia and Africa (including, quite possibly, some negroes) converged on this valley, which was conveniently placed near the land bridge linking the two continents. Intermingling, they formed a new race with relatively few material worries, and so plenty of leisure to give to other things. They painted the walls of their caves, some of them with negro subjects. They built the Sphinx and the Pyramids. And they produced a supreme achievement when they taught themselves to write in a kind of picture language called hieroglyphics.
   Not far away from Egypt, in Mesopotamia, was to be found another great home of early civilization. Here too we find that the roots sank into fertile riverain soil, which had attracted energetic people. Mesopotamia, 'the country between the rivers', lies, green and rich, between the Euphrates and the Tigris. In about the twentieth century before Christ, it was occupied by a people called the Sumerians. They developed an early form of writing too, using wedge-shaped letters called 'cuneiform' letters, after the Latin word 'cuneus' - a wedge.
   Neither of these two highly civilized peoples was negro. The people of West Africa, on the other hand, nearly all belong to the negro race. Negroes are the original natives of the African continent. Today they share it with many non-negro people. Some, like the Jews of North Africa and the Berbers of North-West Africa, have lived on the continent for at least 5,000 years. Others, like the Arabs who are now to be found all along the north coast, did not cross the land bridge from Asia to Africa until the seventh century A.D. and later. Yet others, like the Europeans of Algeria, South Africa, and East and Central Africa, have entered our continent only during the past few hundred years. The negroes alone, who are today found in large numbers between latitudes 18° and 4° N, and particularly in the western end of that strip, cannot be proved ever to have entered Africa as a race, either by sea or land. They have apparently always been here. And it is that western end of that strip, in which our race is massed, that we call today West Africa.
   However, the West African negro has had his history and way of life very greatly changed by the non-negro people with whom he has come into contact. Some of these have reached our country overland, others have come from overseas. All have left their mark on us. Unfortunately, a heavy curtain hangs over much of our history before these contacts with foreign peoples began. In spite of the difficult climate to which I have referred, and the absence of river valleys as fertile as those which supported the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, our ancestors were able to produce the Nok figurines 2,000 years ago. But the art of writing, which is the supreme achievement of any civilization, negroes, like Europeans, had to be taught by others. With the exception of the Hausas1 and the Kotoko tribe from the Lake Chad area, both of whose languages were written with Arabic characters, and the Vai of Liberia, other West African tribes had to wait for the arrival of Europeans before learning to record their words on paper.
   Travel is easy in Europe, and difficult in Africa. So even this new literacy, once taught, spread quickly in the former continent, but slowly in the latter, before modern times brought the defeat of the tropical forest and desert by the train, the car, and the aeroplane. Thus it happens that we must look to the writings of others to lift the curtain for us, as we enter modern times.
   This method of discovering the early history of our people is not of course as satisfactory as using the written records of a people themselves. Provided however that we constantly check and cross-check what we read against what archaeology has to tell us, we can learn a great deal from the accounts of foreign travellers to our lands. We must also of course compare what these accounts contain with what we know of West African life today, and try to trace lines of development.
   The Greeks and Romans of classical times were amongst the first of these travellers. They were very careful to distinguish between the negro and the nonnegro inhabitants of Africa. Herodotus, for example, uses the term 'Ethiopians' for all the inhabitants of Africa outside Egypt. But he makes a further division. 'The Ethiopians,' he writes, 'from the direction of the sunrising (for the Ethiopians were in two bodies) were in no way different in appearance from the other Ethiopians, but in their language and in the nature of their hair only: for the Ethiopians from the East are straight-haired, but those of Libya have hair more thick and woolly than that of any other men.' By 'Libya' here we know Herodotus meant Africa south and west of Egypt.
   He then describes the voyage of certain Phoenician sailors round 'Libya'. 'They set forth from the Erythraian Sea and sailed through the Southern Sea; and when autumn came, they would put to shore and sow the land, wherever in Libya they might happen to be as they sailed, and then they waited for the harvest: and having reaped the corn they would sail on, so that after two years had elapsed, in the third year they turned through the Pillars of Hercules and arrived again in Egypt. And they reported a thing which I cannot believe, but another man may, namely that in sailing round Libya they had the sun on their right hand.'
   You will see at once that this early (perhaps first) circumnavigation of Africa must have been done in a clock-wise direction. And the fact that the historian who recorded it for us notes that the sun was on the ship‘s starboard side for much of the time, even though he finds it incredible, encourages us to go on and read further.
   A certain Sataspes, he tells us, was sentenced by his king, Xerxes of Persia, to circumnavigate Africa as a penance for a sin he had committed. He did not complete the journey; but he did report seeing 'at the furthest point which he reached . . . a dwarfish people, who used clothing made from the palm tree, and who, whenever they' (Sataspes' crew) 'came to land with their ship, left their town and fled to the mountains'.
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