78 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



It may therefore be inferred that Mangbattu and the others have 

 a tolerably close relationship to the Bantu, and may even be 

 remotely akin to it, judging from their tendency to prefix forma- 

 tions 1 ." Future research will show how far this conjecture is 

 justified. 



Although Islam has made considerable progress, especially 

 amongst the Funj of Senaar, the Shilluks, Dinkas, 

 and other Nilotic tribes, the bulk of the people are 

 still practically nature-worshippers. Witchcraft con- 

 tinues to flourish amongst the equatorial peoples, and important 

 events are almost everywhere attended by sanguinary rites. When 

 preparing for battle the " medicine-man " flays an infant and 

 places the bleeding victim on the war-path, to be trampled by 

 the warriors marching to victory. 



Cannibalism also, in some of its most repulsive forms, prevails 

 amongst the Zandehs, who barter in human fat as a 

 universal staple of trade, and amongst the Mang- 

 battu, who cure for future use the bodies of the slain in battle and 

 " drive their prisoners before them, as butchers drive sheep to the 

 shambles, and these are only reserved to fall victims on a later 

 day to their horrible and sickly greediness 2 ." 



In fact here we enter the true "cannibal zone," which, as 



I have elsewhere shown, was in former ages diffused 



Zone eCannibal a11 over Central and South Africa, or, it would be 



more correct to say, over the whole continent 3 , 



but has in recent times been mainly confined to " the region 



stretching west and east from the Gulf of Guinea to the western 



head-streams of the White Nile, and from below the equator 



northwards in the direction of Adamawa, Dar-Banda and Dar- 



1 Travels in Africa, ibid. p. 279. Thus the Bantu fia, IVa, Ama, c., 

 correspond to the A of the Welle lands, as in A-Zandeh, A-Barmbo, A-Madi, 

 A-Bangba, i.e. Zandeh people, Barmbo people, &c. Cf. also Kanemfo/, Ti&u, 

 \a\be, &c., where the personal particle (bit, be) is postfixed. It would almost 

 seem as if we had here a transition between the northern Sudanese and the 

 southern Bantu groups in the very region where such transitions might be 

 looked for. 



- Schweinfurth, op. cit. II. p. 93. 



3 Prof. Flinders Petrie has come upon undoubted traces of cannibalism in 

 the Negadah district, Egypt. 



