A contribution to the anthropology of the Sudan / by A. Winifred Tucker and Charles S. Myers.

  • Tucker, A. Winifred.
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A contribution to the anthropology of the Sudan / by A. Winifred Tucker and Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/32 (page 143)
    If we turn now to the travellers who have visited the tribes, one fact stands out clearly in all their accounts, and that is the remarkable difference existing between the Nilotic Negroes properly so called (i.e., those living along the White Nile) and the tribes of the southern and western Bahr el Ghazal. Schweinfurth says, “ Any traveller who has followed the course of the main sources of the White Nile into the heathen negro countries, and who has hitherto made acquaintance only with Shillooks, Nueir, and Dinka, will, on coming amongst the Bongo, at once recognise the commencement of a new series of races extending far onwards to the south. . . . The jet-black Shillooks, Nueir, and Dinka, natives of the dark alluvial flats, stand out in marked distinction to the dwellers upon the iron-red rocks, who (notwithstanding their diversity in dialect, in habit, or in mode of life) present the characteristics of a connected whole. Of this series the tribes which must be accounted the most important are the Bongo, the Mitto, the Niam-niam, and the Kredy.”1 Of the Bongos he states that they are to be regarded “ as hardly removed from the lowest grade of the Brachycephalse.”3 Keane makes the same distinction between a “black, often very tall and long-headed” type and the other reddish or ruddy brown, more thick-set, and short-headed.”3 Later, Cummins has drawn the same distinction, partly on sociological, partly on anthropological grounds.4 Under these conditions, it is obvious that we must rely chiefly on anthropo¬ metric data to find out the relations of the Sudanese tribes to one another. But only within recent years have any such data been available to serve as a basis for definite conclusions; Yirchow was the first to obtain exact measurements of the living Sudanese. In 1879, he obtained measurements from a Dinka who was brought to Berlin in a troup of so-called Nubians.5 In 1889, he measured four more,6 and in 1895 was able to get full data from a group of men, women, and children (45 in all), who went under the collective name of Dinkas.7 It was practically impossible to find out the exact tribes to which the different members of the group belonged, but 17 of the 21 whom he measured were dolichocephalic and all but one had a stature over l'738m. Yirchow states that the majority of the adult male Dinkas “ do not possess the characteristic negro nose.” In 1900, Girard8 published measurements made upon three Dinkas in Paris. The following figures give the means he obtained for the principal measurements. Stature l-775m., cephalic index 69‘27 (head length 197, head breadth 136mm.), nasal index 91*04, prognathism moderate, head capacity relatively small. By far the most extensive measurements on the tribes of the Sudan were made by Chantre in 1904.9 1 Loc. cit., vol. i, p. 115. 2 Ibid., p. 116. 3 Man Past and Present, 1899, pp. 76, 77. 4 Log. cit., pp. 2-3. 5 Verh. Bert. Anthrop. Ges., 1879, pp. 388 ff. 6 Ibid., 1889, p. 545. 7 Ibid., 1895, p. 148. 8 L’Anthropologie, tome XI, 1900, p. 409 If. 9 Chantre, Recherches Anthropologiques en Egyptc, 1907. Since our paper was sent in for publication the Third Report of the Wellcome Research Laboratories at Khartum has appeared, which includes an account of some valuable anthropometric observations by the late Dr. Pirrie upon some 260 subjects belonging to twelve different tribes of the Sudan. To these results we are unfortunately able to refer only in footnotes.