The Journal of Negro History, Volume 8, 1923Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 8, 1923
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
According to Roscoe, definite stages are well defined and can be
definitely traced in their paintings. At first the themes were things
and later they were men and the human body as a design for the artist
is clearly portrayed. There was a "breast and furrow" type of painting
that marked almost every object with which they had to do. The piano
with iron keys was very much like such instruments found in Egypt.
The Jews' harp was found in many quarters. There can be no doubt that
music had its place in the life of the Mashonaland. But music is a
fine art and its value lies largely if not wholly in its appeal to our
aesthetic natures. What can be the meaning of such evidences of love
of music among the African tribes? Can it not be interpreted as their
response to the appeal of the beautiful?
Of the great defensive walls of Zimbabwe Bent says: "The fort is
a marvel with its tortuous and well-guarded approaches; its walls
bristling with monoliths and round towers, its temple decorated with
tall weird-looking birds, its huge decorated bowls. The only parallel
that I have seen were the long avenues of menhirs near Carnac in
Brittany. One cannot fail to recognize the vastness and power of this
ancient race, their greatness of constructive ingenuity and their
strategic skill."[14] Of course, there is evidence that the present
inhabitants of those ruined cities were not the tribes that once ruled
mightily in these regions. Bent himself holds that such high culture
must have come from another people. The very fact that the present
population seems so far below the level of culture that once prevailed
there is the only evidence upon which Bent predicates his argument
that another race than the Negroes were the bearers of this great
culture. However, it is hardly probable that the level of culture
was foreign to the Negroes who lived in the palmy days of Zimbabwe.
There must have been an overlapping of cultures even if we grant
that another race produced the culture of this region. It is hardly
probable that a dominant race would have wholly abdicated in favor of
the natives and it is still less probable that the natives could have
dislodged a race so strongly fortified. It is highly probable that the
same race of people could have produced the peoples who occupied the
level of these two very different cultures. No one supposes that the
inhabitants of Athens today are equal to the Greeks of the days of
Pericles. Yet they are connected with the same great race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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