ne, of
presenting a vivid mind picture of the character of the men with
whom it deals. It has been called the 'Epic of the Sudan.' It
lacks the charm of form, but in all else the description is well
merited. Its pages are a treasure house of information for the
careful student, and the volume may be read many times without
extracting from it more than a small part of all that it
contains."

Barth, who obtained some fragments of an Arabic copy when he was on
his way to Timbuctoo, goes so far as to say that the book forms "one
of the most important additions that the present age has made to the
history of mankind."[5] Like the unknown culture which the Benin
bronzes revealed, the translation of these documents brought to the
attention of the learned and academic circles of the Western World, in
a more available form, surprising accounts of the sometime existence
of powerful and age-old kingdoms and empires in the heart of Black
Africa, which hitherto had scarcely been suspected.

Following close upon this was the cursory but illuminating report of
_Une mission archeologique au Sudan francais_, headed by the
soldier-ethnologist, Lieutenant Louis Desplaynes. The report, _Le
Plateau Central Nigirien, Paris, 1907_, brought to Europe much
valuable information bearing upon the past cultures of the practically
unknown Nigerian plateau regions.

Passing over a few very important ethnological studies bearing for the
most part upon present-day cultures, we come last of all to what is in
the truest sense of the word the wonderful and astounding revelations
regarding the pre-historic culture of an ancient Negro race on the
West Coast of Africa. These revelations were brought to light as the
result of the publications by Leo Frobenius of his _Der Afrika Sprach_
in Berlin in 1913.[6] This was a popular account of the experiences
and findings of the German Inner African Exploration Expedition during
its travels in the Nigerian area for the years 1910-1912. As important
as are the ethnological and archaeological finds of this expedition,
which will be considered further on, one of its most significant
features was its bold advocacy and support of an idea which has been
hesitantly advanced in a few circles ever since the study of the Benin
bronzes and the Nubian monuments, namely, the existence of a genuinely
superior type of culture in Central Africa in pre-classical and
pre-Christian times.

Such