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of the soil, which in the fullest sense is the characteristic feature of hoe culture, that is to say the sowing, setting, harvesting, digging, and the like, are done by the men or the women, or whether the occasional clearing, which has to be done just the same before a new house or settlement is built, is assigned to one of the sexes. In the latter case, we must not under-estimate the women's part in forest land hoe culture, even though the men relieve them of the work of clearing. It is not always merely that superficial plant raising which Schmidt has in mind. We only have to think of the careful making of yam heaps in West Africa and the many and varied methods of digging. To these must be added the difficult recurring work of weeding, which requires much care and exertion. Kärger says with special reference to the Brazilian forest land: 'In the hot zone the destruction of weeds is the farmer's most important task.' It is just from these tropical regions, such as the Congo and Melanesia, that the accounts of the neverending, exceedingly heavy work of the women in the fields and of the men's extreme idleness, are too numerous and weighty to be disregarded. Women's work in hoe culture is in fact continuous, and extends over the whole agricultural year; the men's share, namely the clearing, lasts a limited time and forms no part of the actual process of hoe culture. We do not, therefore, see any convincing reason for ascribing the difference in the amount of work undertaken by the sexes solely to anthropo-geographical causes. That these have played a part, we do not in any wise deny. Thus in the African primeval forest, with its root crops adapted to the damp soil, cultivation by women, which from time immemorial has been closely associated with these crops, can of course be retained much more easily. This does not, however, mean to say that it is only to be found in these forests.

Apart from the exclusively cattle-farming districts in the north east and south west, and in the Sudan, as well as the areas of plough culture in North Africa, Abyssinia, and latterly, South Africa, Africa is the land of the most intensive hoe culture. Nearly all cultivated plants are to be met with in both hemispheres, and the culture itself is practised seriously and with its characteristic tool, the hoe. There are, however, degrees of intensity, and these are again closely connected 1 Brasilianische Wirtschaftsbilder, Berlin, 1889, p. 44.

with the division of work. Where women undertake the hoe culture, it is often very superficial; where the man takes part, it is intensified, and the intensity of cultivation increases in proportion to the man's share in the hoe culture. Thus the small scattered tribes of the Sudan, where the men participate largely in the actual work of hoe culture, are the best agriculturalists, and in African Hyläa where women undertake the cultivation, the work is often deplorably bad. As soon as a tribe changes from cultivation by women to that by both sexes, an increase in the intensity of the culture can be observed. Casalis relates this of the Bapedi-Basuto, whose hoe culture is strikingly good in comparison with that of the other Kaffir tribes, because, contrary to the general practice, both men and women take part in it. Spieth also considers (94) that the highly developed agriculture of the inland Ewe is entirely due to the co-operation of the men. At the same time, as men participate in it, the work of soil cultivation comes to be held in higher esteem. The Mangandja (Anyanja), a strongly matriarchal people, may formerly have made use of nothing but women's work-much evidence points to this -but to-day the men take part in cultivation, and Livingstone related that their chiefs had often to be called away from the fields. Similarly, according to St. Vincent, among the old Guanches nobles used to take an active share in field work. When we consider that on the East African coast ku-lima (ploughing) is a strong term of abuse and that in the west, as, for instance, among the Bafioti (PechuelLösche) and the Basonge (Schmitz), a man is never to be seen with a hoe, we realize the significance of these instances, to which others from the Sudan could easily be added.

Of course, the culture of the soil is intensified to a far greater extent if plough culture, penetrating from some other zone of civilization, such as the Oriental, or the European, takes root. Then everything is done by men, except a few elementary tasks allotted to women at

The Mangandja (cf. H. Rowley, Story of the Universities' Mission, 1866, p. 247) have a rain ceremony, in which the sister of the chief plays an important part, resembling that of the king's sister in the Zambezi region. The Ronga likewise have a rain ceremony performed by women alone (Junod, French ed., p. 417), and also in Ntumbi (Nyasaland) a similar rite, which was seen by A. Werner, is executed by women.

harvest time. Thus the plough culture of Egypt and Abyssinia has obviously forced older tillers of the soil, such as the Barea, Kunama, Bogos, Kafficho and others, to adopt men's work, in a most pronounced form. Similarly in South Africa the plough has recently been introduced and is slowly transforming tribes, where in former days the work was done by the women, into plough farmers with intensive labour by the men. As an example of this the Bechwana may be quoted. Here, also, the status of agriculture automatically improves. In former days, before the introduction of the plough, Dornan says (27, p. 256) the women and the girls had to do by far the greater part of the field work; the cattle-farming men despised any kind of soil cultivation. To-day the field work is shared by both sexes. The same is related by Passarge of the Batauana-Bechwana on the Okavango (148, 1905, p. 688).

Development in the opposite direction-as it were, backwards— from cultivation by both sexes to that by women alone, is more rarely found, and the cause is usually to be found in important events recorded in social history. A notable instance is the cattle raising brought into the east and south by the Hamites, which is in striking contrast to the old established soil culture. It has always been surprising that no organic development to plough culture has taken place here, in the very district, where, after all, cattle breeding and high grade hoe culture meet, but the explanation is not far to seek. The cattle breeders are the rulers wherever they are found, and the customs of the rulers are hallowed; the men of the subject races adopt their cattle farming, are fused with the usurpers, and retain their objection to a form of agriculture foreign to their civilization, so that the culture of the soil is left to the women as the unpolitical element. In Africa there are a particularly large number of tribes combining cattle farming with hoe culture, which leave the latter entirely to women. This is especially the case in the Kaffir tribes (except the modern plough farming Bechwana and Basuto), the Western Somali (Paulitschke), the Bari (Bramley), some of the Dinka (Hartmann), Turkana (Beech), Wanyaturu (Reche), and others. According to Diedrich-Westermann (119 a, p. 99), the Shilluk formerly left the cultivation of millet (their most important crop) entirely to the

women. Yet the Shilluk are supposed to have been still purely cattle breeders fifty years ago! If, in spite of fairly intensive cattle raising, men work in the fields, it is generally the older ones, while the younger men tend the herds.

European culture too can have a serious retarding influence, with its many industries and accompanying opportunities for earning, in its impact upon an industrious tribe of farmers. Thus, since the building of the railway, the men of the Wafipa in East Africa have been entirely attracted away from their work of tilling the soil. The tempting chances of earning had the effect of causing the men to abandon the work in the fields and, as in ancient times, to leave it all to the women (Fromm, 139, 1912, p. 89). Similarly the men of the Basoga-Batempa on Lake Victoria (according to Condon, 123, p. 956) always used to look after the banana plantations, this being the general custom in that district. Since the Europeans created so many lucrative occupations, agriculture is entirely in the weak hands of the women. These are ominous signs for the colonizer, who should desire above all a flourishing native agriculture.

Apart from these tribes, whose ancient inherited attitude to hoe culture has been somewhat confused by relatively recent social upheavals, such as the introduction of cattle breeding, plough culture, and European manufacturing methods, we still have two large groups of hoe cultivators, retaining, untouched by serious convulsions, their agricultural system, which appear to be decidedly uniform in character. One group, in the Sudan, central East Africa, and the highlands of Angola, shows men's work to a less or greater extent and intensive hoe culture; the other is mainly in West Africa with branches extending as far as the East Coast, and, except for clearing, all field work is left to the women, nor is the work always done very intensively.

We have already above assessed at its proper value a purely anthropogeographical explanation of these two main systems of hoe culture. The import of this dual organization lies far deeper. It is just the evidence from Africa that can throw light upon the real origin of the division of work. From the point of view of social history it can be understood, for the two districts correspond to a surprising degree with two specific zones of culture, long recognized as such, the West

African zone, on the one hand, and the East African-Sudanese on the other, which Ankermann (148, vol. 37) first worked out in detail. In the meantime, a further characterization of these zones with reference to particular forms of culture was undertaken.' We can thus distinguish at least an older and a younger Sudan culture, the older being an autochthonous African, while the younger probably is a high grade Asiatic civilization of more ancient date which penetrated westwards from Abyssinia. The West African civilization likewise can no longer be regarded as so uniform. It assimilated particularly elements of that 'new-Sudanese' culture, which transformed above all the real West African culture on the Gold and Slave Coasts and inland as far as Nigeria; in addition there is the influence of a similar culture, moving forward across the Zambezi and transforming the Southern Congo basin up to Loango and the Sankuru. The older Sudanese culture in the Northern Congo district stood firm in the face of the mighty assaults of West African culture. Thus what we call real West African civilization is already considerably cut up and confused. Nevertheless, the old district which it covered reappears when we set out on the map the division of work between the sexes. Wherever the woman works the soil alone is the region of typical West African civilization, and even the characteristic points where it begins in the east are preserved. Here, too, that part of the Sudan under its influence between Liberia and Nigeria interrupts the unbroken geographical outline. Far more important, however, is the distribution of men's work, which would have afforded a much more convincing proof if it had been technically possible to plot on a map the different kinds of work done by the men or the degree of their participation. It would then be shown still more clearly that nearly everywhere those tribes, to which, in a former work, I ascribed the oldest form of patriarchy, where the brother has the right of inheritance, have also the most intensive soil cultivation done to a great extent by men. We may take as typical the conditions among the extremely patriarchal Bobo on the Upper Volta River, where all the field work, including weeding, is

1 For information in regard to this see particularly H. Baumann, Die materielle Kultur der Mangbetu und Azande, Bässler-Archiv, vol. xi, 1927.

2 H. Baumann, Vaterrecht und Mutterrecht, 148, 1926.