The Tree Where Man Was Born Read Online Free Page A

Khartoum, and perhaps these glistening fishers were descended from some of the earliest known Negroids, a community of Middle Stone Age fishermen who inhabited the Khartoum region at least seven thousand years ago. (It has been suggested that the Khartoum fishermen invented pottery, possibly through the accidental burning of the mud-lined baskets that are still in use. 2 ) The early Negroids appear to have been scattered and few; perhaps they were sedentary fishermen whose modern dominance of the African population came about with the development of agriculture. Possibly they evolved in the central lakes region, and only later came to occupy those regions southwest and west of the Sahara which are now associated with the “true Negro,” whoever that may be: a skull contemporaneous with the skulls foundat Khartoum has been dug up northeast of Timbuktu, in a land which had not yet turned to desert, and other remains of ancient Negroids have been found in Nigeria and on Lake Edward.
    That so little is known of Negroid origins is one of the enigmas of inner Africa, where history must be deduced from chipped stones, clay sherds, rock paintings, and the bones of man and prey. It is presently assumed that Bushmanoid, Pygmoid, and Negroid are races of an ancestral African who adapted over the millenniums to differing environments—the open grasslands, the equatorial forests, the river basins—and would later share his continent with Caucasoids * out of the north, and that a confluence of Negroid and Caucasoid produced the long-headed, small-faced race called the Nilotes or Nilotic peoples, represented by these tall Shilluk casting their nets upon the Nile.
    One morning on the Nile peninsula, in a large company of tribesmen, I met two Shilluk who had ridden on the truck. Dressed as they were in mission pants, their pagan scars and fierce filed teeth could only seem grotesque. The two candidates for civilization were glad to see me, for my acquaintance was an evidence of their worldliness. “
Ezzay-yek, ezzay-yek!
” they greeted me in Arabic—another attainment—and offered a passive rubber handshake. And staring after these new Africans as they moved off toward the river, I felt a terrific sadness. The Shilluk believe that when God set out to create man, he used light-colored clay, but toward the end his hands becamedirty, and that the dark peoples were less favored than the light in such attainments as guns and a written language. 3
    There is a Nuer song that may have come from the Arab slaving raids of the last century . . .
    The wind blows
wirawira
.
    Where does it blow?
    It blows to the river . . .
    This land is overrun by strangers
    Who throw our ornaments into the river
    And draw their water from its bank.
    Blackhair my sister,
    I am bewildered.
    Blackhair my sister, I am bewildered.
    We are perplexed;
    We gaze at the stars of God. 4
    We left Malakal in the cab of a small pickup truck whose driver was called Gabriel Babili. A cable ferry took us across the Sobat River, where a group of Dinka washed themselves, slowly and gracefully, beside a stranded metal whaleboat, a sister craft of the British boat in the museum of the Mahdi wars, at Omdurman. In the windblown grass along the track, men of the Nuer carried paired spears of the style used by the Dervishes, which, together with hoes, fishhooks, and ornaments, are gotten in exchange for hides. The truck stopped everywhere to trade. Once the way was blocked by a great herd of the archaic cattle of Egyptian art, their huge horns curved inward at the tip. The herdsmen were coated from face to foot with ash; the mouths and eyes in the gray masks looked moist and hideous. Some were heedless of the truck, not understanding it, and others, panicked by the horn, fled for their lives. Across the dry plains to the east ran a faded track. “That is the road to Abyss-in-i-a,” said Gabriel Babili, who had a bad smell, mission English, and an enchanted smile.
    Christian