The American Museum Journal 
qn 
Vou. VII MAY, 1907 No. 
THE DOUGLAS AFRICAN COLLECTION. 
oA —, 0) HROUGH the generosity of Messrs. Percy R. Pyne, 
RKO Ree Cleveland H. Dodge and Arthur Curtiss James, the 
Museum has acquired a large ethnological collection 
which was made recently by Mr. Richard Douglas 
in south central Africa. ‘This acquisition is of partic- 
ular importance, not only on account of the great 
amount of material received, but also because heretofore the Museum 
has had few and only isolated specimens from the Dark Continent. 
Africa is the primitive home of the negro race, representatives of 
which have been more or less a factor in the Occidental civilized world 
since the early days of Egypt. Upon the royal tombs and temples of Kar- 
nak, Luxor and Thebes we find in color and relief triumphal and other 
processions in which appear now and again among the captives or the 
slaves the unmistakable facial features presented by the negro of today, 
showing that there has been practically no change for thousands of 
years. ‘Che permanence of these characteristics is surprising to those 
who believe man to have come into existence within the last eight or 
ten thousand years of the earth’s history. In spite, however, of this 
conservatism in feature, hair and complexion, the black peoples of 
Africa present great variety of anatomical, linguistic and tribal differ- 
ences, ranging from the illusive pigmy of the Congo forest to the tall, 
clean, light colored Zulu of the South. 
Along the Upper Nile and westward along the borders of the Sahara 
there is a broad belt of dark-skinned peoples where the lighter Arabian 
blood of the northeast gradually shades into the black of the Congo 
and the South. ‘The arts and culture too of the Mediterranean states 
that followed the Arabic intrusion were gradually overwhelmed by the 
great monotony of native African barbarism. Yet for centuries, possi- 
bly while the savages of the stone age were hacking each other to pieces 
in primeval Europe, the peoples of the Dark Continent were smelting 
and forging iron, cultivating their fields with iron hoes and rising against 
their enemies with iron spears and swords. Study of Africa proves 
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