Concepts of race in the Historicography of northeast Africa
Recent accounts of the proto-history of Africa use data from physical anthropology, but also concepts of race which physical anthropologists in general have abandoned as unsatisfactory; the paper seeks to explain this phenomenon sociologically. Late nineteenth-century political and sociological trends helped to produce patterns of thought which can no longer be regarded as affording adequate explanations of social processes. These patterns combined idealism, or the method of contrasting ideal types, with pseudo-Darwinism, which sought the origins of political development in the interaction of differently endowed groups. In African ethnography of the early twentieth century such concepts led to the view that the continent was inhabited by two groups, Caucasoids and Negroids, and by mixtures of the two which remained mixtures, to be analysed as such. The Caucasoid and Negroid types were regarded as absolute and universal, represented equally in the biological, linguistic, cultural and political aspects of man.
More About Fung Origins
My paper on Fung Origins1 was written in 1932 on the occasion of my transfer from Sennar to Darfur, and during the six years that I was in Darfur, I collected all the information I could about its early history, in the hope that the result would throw some light on the origins of the Fung, particularly because the ' Fung Chronicle ' starts with Amara Dunkas at Jebel Moya west of Sennar, preparing to make war on the Anag, the Nubian kings of Soba and Gerri, before the foundation of Sennar.
Geographic Variation and the Subspecies Concept in Butterflies
DECENTLY two papers have been published by lepidopterists in defense of the subspecies concept. These papers are only two of the many that have argued the pro's and con's of a trinomial system for zoological nomenclature in the last few years, but they were of particular interest to me as a lepidopterist. After reading them, it seemed to me a good idea to take stock of some of the more exhaustive studies that have been published on butterfly subspeciation. Mayr, Linsley, and Usinger (1953) characterize the subspecies as "a geographically defined aggregate of local populations which differs taxonomically from other such subdivisions of the species." This definition leaves us with the question of whether or not the subspecies effectively describes the geographical variation of the component populations of a species. Are subspecies really "geographically defined aggregates" when several different characters are analyzed carefully? The study of this question requires abundant evidence, and I have attempted to gather this from the more detailed, mostly statistically documented contributions on butterfly taxonomy. It soon became evident that only those papers treating variation of individual characters, over and above the usual definition of subspecies entities, would furnish readily available information on this subject. Before entering into a discussion of individual papers which consider geographic variation, it seems pertinent to discuss briefly the two papers by lepidopterists in support of the subspecies concept. Van Son (1955) limits his subspecies to "population variations conditioned by geographical or host isolation." Thus, for van Son, the subspecies includes strictly allopatric aggregates of populations that differ taxonomically from other such aggregates. This is different from the definition of Mayr, Linsley, and Usinger in that it eliminates from consideration groups of populations among which there is a certain amount of contact. Van Son exemplifies this concept by a discussion of Papilio ophidicephalus Oberthur (Papilionidae) and its subspecies (discussed in further detail below). The second paper is by Fox (1955 ), who also feels that the use of the trinomen should be restricted, but not eliminated entirely. He finds in his work on butterflies of the family Ithomiidae that the subspecies is useful in describing populations that differ from one another in color and pattern, but which are otherwise apparently morphologically identical. Characteristics of pattern and color in this group appear to be strongly influenced by mimicry, and Fox states that in his experience he has not noted any appreciable non-concordance of geographic variation. This latter statement is essentially in answer to the thesis of Wilson and W. L. Brown (1953) that the geographical variation of independent characters tends to be discordant in some degree. Unfortunately, Fox's paper can be evaluated only as a personal opinion, since he neither presents any specific examples from among the ithomiids nor cites any references to such examples.