The 1971 Ethnolinguistic Map of the Peoples of Africa features:
• A political map of Africa which includes the names and languages of the people who inhabit it
• Inset map with a key to the groupings and subgroupings on the main map
• Illustrations and information about the main groups of peoples including the Berber, Bedouin Arab, Bushman, Malagasy, Zulu, and more
• Selected cities and towns
* Lesson plan idea - have your students research for updated information on the archeology of the Nile River Valley • maps
Africa's people's–immensely diverse in physical type, language, and culture–have long been cast in the steroetype of drumbeating savages or simple children of nature surrounded by an impenetrable jungle world. The reality of history and the diversity of the landscape deny this myth. Today urban growth and industrialization transform Africa–but bring an array of new problems. Many Africans yet hold to traditional ways; others bulldoze roads, work in factories, or raise soaring skyscrapers. Statesman, scholars, and scientists guide more than 40 independent nations.
BEDOUIN ARAB
Descendants of wanderers who crossed from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa in the 11th and 12th centuries, Bedouin still migrate with their flocks. Living in partitioned goat-hair tents, these nomads subsist on rice, plus the meat and milk of their sheep, camels, and goats. Like other desert dwellers, they combat the heat by muffling themselves in long loose robes and headcloths.
BERBER
Even before the time of Egypt's pharaohs, Berbers inhabited much of northwestern Africa. Many of their descendants live in isolated villages in the High Atlas, farming and sheephearding. Chin tattoos of Berber women probably stem from characters of an ancient alphabet now used only by the Tuareg.
TUAREG
Men, not women, wear veils among these aloof pastoralists, a branch of the Berber people. They once controlled much of the Sahara and taxed its caravans. Their own camel trains carry Saharan salt to exchange for millet, sugar, tea, and cloth, thus providing an important economiclink between oasis dwellers and merchants north and south of the desert.
EGYPTIAN
More than five thousand years of wars, conquests, and migrations have shaped the people of contemporary Egypt. Fellahin, or farmers, make up the majority of the population, tilling lands in the fertile Nile Valley by hand–as did their ancestors in the times of the pharaohs. Other groups include Bedouin, and some two million Copts–Christians in a Moslem land.
AMHARA
Emperor Haile Selassie traces his ancestry to Ezana, King of Axum, who embraced Christianity 16 centuries ago. Today many of the Christian Amhara, politically dominate among Ethiopia's diverse peoples, enter the priesthood and clad in turbans and sweeping robes, wander the countryside preaching.
NUBA
Centuries ago Arab immigration pushed tall, black-skinned plainsmen into the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. Today many Nuba live in mud-walled compounds and decorate themselves with intricate patternsof scars. Nuba wrestlers powder their bodies with ashes in the belief that it increases their strength.
NUER
“Stork men” of the Nile, tall lean Nuer males oten rest upon one leg, silent and immobile, while tending their beloved cattle. These proud and independent people live in the isolated swamps and plains of southern Sudan.
DANAKIL
Calling themselves Afar, the Danakil live in the area of Ethiopia's searing Danakil Depression. Many still follow nomadic ways and herd their sheep in one of the hottest regions in the world.
MASAI
Inhabiting the high plains of Kenya and Tanzania, small famil groups of Masai travel with the seasons, buildin clusters of elongated huts ringed with thorn fences. Skill in cattle breeding has made the Masai tribes among the wealthiest of Africa's pastoralists.
KIKUYU
Mount Kenya's fertile foothills form the homeland of the Kikuyu, one of East Africa's largest groups. Land disputes between Kikuyu farmers and their British counterparts touched off the bloody Mau Mau movement on the early 1950s. With Kenya's independence, many Kiuyu–including the nation's first chief of state, Jomo Kenyatta–rose to positions of political leadership.
MALAGASY
The Malagasy trace their origins to ancient seafarers from distant Southeast Asia. Farmers grow rice on terraced hills and in valleys, hardsmen graze cattle on the plain, and fishermen ply coastal waters in outrigger canoes.
MALINKE
Heirs of the Mali Empire that flourished in the 14th century, the Malinke live in compact villages and subsist by farming, fishing,and itinerant trading.
FULANI
Ranging over the savanna of West Africa, nomadic Fulani herd cattle and move their camps with the seasons. The traditional ways of these pastoralists may vanish, however, as political pressures compel them to settle. Other Fulani, mostly Moslems, long ago chose city life and became community and religious leaders.
HAUSA
Organized for centuries into states oriented to commerce, the Moslem Hausa adopted the Arabic alphabet and created a wealth of historical literature. Trade centers in northern Nigeria, connected by rail and road, export tin, agricultural produce, leatherwork, and textiles.
DOGON
In cliffside villages of sundried brick live Mali's millet-farming Dogon. With elaborate costumes and carved wooden masks, the dogon enact complex myths in their ritual dance dramas.
ASHANTI
Gold mining and trade brought wealth and power to the Ashanti of precolonial times. Their descendants, more than a million strong, live in the forest zone of central Ghana, where many prosper by growing cacao for export. In July 1970, amid ritual splendor, Nana Opoku War II was installed as king of the Ashanti in a ceremony centered on the Golden Stool–symbol of Ashanti nationhood.
IBO
Most of southern Nigeria's Ibo-speaking villagers live by farming, but many have moved to cities to take jobs and technicians, merchants, and civil servants. Six years after Nigeria's independence in 1960, a civil war erupted and the Ibo attempted to establish the separate state of Biafra.
YORUBA
Diverse peoples united by history, ritual, and language, the Yoruba spread over southwestern Nigeria and into Dahomey. Before A.D.1000 they banded together in cities for defense and cultivated the outlying land. They retain this tradition, and many city dwellers today commute to farms in the suburbs and beyond.
PYGMY
Averaging under 4 1/2 feet tall, Pygmies range the equatorial rain forests of Central Africa. Pygmy bands hunt with tiny bows and poison-tipped arrows or 100-foot-long nets of woven vine.
LUBA
A people whose ancestors ruled much of the Katanga Plateau in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Luba live in farm villages scattered acros the grasslands and woodlands of southeastern Congo (Kinshasa). They are renowned for the Missa Luba, the Roman Catholic Mass sung in a vigorous, joyful style, accompanied by drums.
BUSHMAN
Once ranging over much of the southern half of Africa, the Bushmen left a legacy of art painted and carved on rock. Some Bushmen still exist by hunting and foraging in and around the Kalahari Desert. Many have become laborers on farms and ranches.
ZULU
More than ten centuries ago, ancestors of the Zulu came from Central Africa to settle in the coastal plain between the Drakensberg escarpment and the Indian Ocean. Today some Zulus still tend their cattle and crops on traditional lands, but many have left to work in South Africa's cities and mines. The arrangement of colored beads in necklaces worn by Zulu women may convey a message of love–and invite a response.
EUROPEAN & ASIAN
Late arrivals in Africa, Europeans–chiefly Dutch, British, French, Belgian, and Portuguese–brought their cultures and languages to the African scene. Many Indians came to eastern and southern Africa as farm and railroad laborers, others as merchants. Small pockets of Chinese and other nationalities are often found in the cities.
