Abstract
AFRICAN HOB CULTURE.—Dr. Hermann Baumann publishes in Africa for July a contribution to the study of primitive economics in the form of an analysis of the division of work according to sex in the use of the hoe in African methods of cultivation. It was for long held that the exclusive use of hoe culture by women was proof that agriculture and the settled life were the invention of the woman, who thereby acquired legal and social ascendancy, while man only took part in the tilling of the soil with the introduction of the plough. Now, however, a higher form of hoe culture is recognised in which the man takes a part. It is still associated with matriarchy, but operates in the larger family. In Africa there are two large groups of hoe cultivators. One in the Sudan., Central East Airica; and ttie highlands of Angola, shows men's work to a greater or less extent, with intensive cultivation; the other, mainly on the west coast, with branches extending to the east coast, in which, except for clearing the ground, the work is left exclusively to the women, and the cultivation is non-intensive. In nearly all cases where cultivation is by men and intensive, it is associated with the older form of patriarchy, the older kinds of African grains are used, government is associated with the ownership of farms, and inheritance is the right of the elder brothers. Cultivation by both sexes, with a preponderance of male labour, is characterised by the fact that the men who mainly grow grain still retain in their processes of hoe culture much of the older root cultivation methods of the women. The rough work, digging, making beds and mounds, is the work of the men; weeding is done by the men when the hoe is exclusively the man's tool. In sowing, the man makes the hole for the seed, the woman puts it in, while at harvest the men dig up the roots, and the women carry or cart the corn. Each sex has its special crop. The evidence from Africa thus tends to confirm the theory that the culture of root crops associated with female labour is the most ancient, and that female labour is associated with matriarchy.
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Research Items. Nature 122, 328–330 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122328a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122328a0