In his book, Africa; its peoples and their culture history, ethnographer G. P. Murdock has undertaken a tremendous interpretive task based upon a survey of the literature. Of consequence here is his thesis that

… agriculture was independently developed [at about 5000 B.C.] by the Negroes of West Africa. This was, moreover, a genuine invention, not a borrowing from another people. Furthermore, the assemblage of cultivated plants ennobled from wild forms in Negro Africa ranks as one of the four major agricultural complexes evolved in the entire course of human history … The invention of agriculture in Negro Africa is most probably to be credited to the Mande peoples around the headwaters of the Niger in the extreme western part of the Sudan, less than 1,000 miles from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

Uganda is a green and fertile country; a land of dense forests, banana gardens, and elephant grass; but there is, in the north-east corner, bordering Kenya and the Sudan, a district which for many months of the year is brown and dry. This is Karamoja. Karamoja forms a barrier between the abundance of Uganda and the sparseness of the desert and semidesert, which sweep from the Horn of Africa, across the north of Kenya, to the escarpment of the Rift Valley, which is the eastern boundary of Karamoja itself. The District, which is one and a half times the size of Wales but with a population of only 172,000, consists of wide, thorn scrub covered plains broken by large volcanic mountain masses. Across the plains the tribes of Karamoja, the Dodoth, the Jie, the Karamojong, and the Suk, herd their cattle. Cattle are the basis of their life and their culture. It is for their cattle that during the dry season they wander over the great plains in search of water and grass. It is for their cattle, to defend their pasture, and to increase the herds, that the tribes fight and steal from each other. Like many of Africa's cattle tribes they have not taken to westernization. They present for Uganda the problem, common to many African states, of a proud pastoral people who do not fit into the new Africa of nationalism, constitutional changes and subtle voting arrangements.

A recent generalization on cropping and cultivation in Africa reduces the variety of environmental types to two: ‘savannahs’ and ‘forest and woodland’. Another work simplifies West African anthropology by introducing two regions linguistic in origin: the West Sudan and the Guinea Coast. The latter, misleadingly shown as the western portion of a ‘yam belt’ or ‘corridor’, includes the ‘forest’ and a small southern portion of the ‘savannah’. Such regional generalizations invite critical assessment of the relationships displayed between crops, agriculture and the environments. It is proposed to take one of these last as termed above: the ‘forest and woodland’.

One of the characteristic traits of a national culture is a distinctive historical folklore, which lauds the qualities and magnifies the deeds of national heroes and derides those of their opponents, domestic and foreign. Such a mythology is harmless enough if it is light and humorous in tone, if it is taken with a pinch of salt, and if it is offset by dispassionate teaching in the schools and universities and objective writing by the historians. But if the mythology itself is bitter and humourless, if it dwells upon grievances, if it is taken too seriously, and if it is propagated by teachers and writers, then the national outlook is liable to become diseased. In the extreme case, the capacity for formulating and pursuing a rational goal becomes vitiated by illusion. Duped by a romantic historical image, party, press and even pulpit advocate unwise and unjust policies, in the name of tradition.

The Occupation of the earth by Man has always been limited and conditioned by the natural environment of the various climatic zones he inhabits. Modern technology is giving him an increasing control over that environment, but in most parts of Africa, where the results of this control are only beginning to become significant, the influence of the factors of natural environment are still very apparent in the patterns of human settlement and history. The waterless desert is still an almost impossible human habitat, and the tropical forest, where the lush vegetation inhibits agriculture and pests and parasites endanger the life of Man and his domestic animals, has been colonized cautiously and frequently only under pressure.

The conservation and study of the variation in indigenous crop plants is an integral part of a crop improvement programme. Investigation of the manner in which the ‘observed’ distribution of the variation has developed is also essential in understanding how to direct the further evolution of the crop in the desired direction.

Of geographical necessity the external culture contacts of Africa have been mainly by sea, and consequently in order to explain the areal differentiations apparent in the cultural history of the continent it would seem necessary to supplement research on the landward traditions of African societies by investigations into the cultural patterns of sea regions embracing the oceanic faces of the continent. In the macro-regional structure of Africa it is possible to recognize entities such as Mediterranean Africa, Atlantic Africa, and Indian Ocean Africa, which possess distinctive personalities that cannot be entirely understood by landward reference but find their true provenance in the cultural dynamics of wider maritime theatres of action. Thus many of the keys to the cultural history and character of the eastern face of Africa must be sought not in Africa itself but in the changing patterns of the Indian Ocean region of which this African zone forms an integral part. As a student of the historical geography of the Indian Ocean, I am concerned here with but one environmental element in the structure of this region and its significance to some aspects of pre-colonial African history.

This is note will not deal with the evidence from glottochronology, which is the subject of Professor Armstrong's paper, nor with the evidence from linguistic borrowings, but with the inferences which may be drawn from the general linguistic configuration of Africa. It consists of a few miscellaneous observations, which are not intended to do more than stimulate interest in this line of inquiry.

In a field like Africa it is reasonable to hope for some assistance from linguistic data for the general study of prehistory. In fact there is a real temptation to use material of this kind in such a way that the results cannot be verified, or, to put it more baldly, to make guesses that are no better than other guesses. Clearly the serious investigation of the prehistory of Africa demands something more than speculative hypotheses, and for this reason it is essential that any conclusions drawn from linguistic information shall be based on a firm basis of codified data.