a that the natives simply mixed powdered
ore with charcoal and by introduction of air currents obtained the metal.
These simple processes make it simple that iron should have been
discovered in East or Central Africa. No bronze implements have ever been
found in black Africa; had the Africans received iron from the Egyptians,
bronze would have preceded this metal and all traces of it would not have
disappeared. Black Africa was for a long time an exporter of iron, and
even in the twelfth century exports to India and Java are recorded by
Idrisi.

"It is difficult to imagine that Egypt should have obtained it from
Europe where the oldest find (in Hallstadt) cannot be of an earlier period
than 800 B.C., or from Asia, where iron is not known before 1000 B.C., and
where, in the times of Ashur Nazir Pal, it was still used concurrently
with bronze, while iron beads have been only recently discovered by
Messrs. G.A. Wainwright and Bushe Fox in a predynastic grave, and where a
piece of this metal, possibly a tool, was found in the masonry of the
great pyramid."[45]

The Negro is a born trader. Lenz says, "our sharpest European merchants,
even Jews and Armenians, can learn much of the cunning and trade of the
Negroes." We know that the trade between Central Africa and Egypt was in
the hands of Negroes for thousands of years, and in early days the cities
of the Sudan and North Africa grew rich through Negro trade.

Leo Africanus, writing of Timbuktu in the sixteenth century, said, "It is
a wonder to see what plentie of Merchandize is daily brought hither and
how costly and sumptuous all things be.... Here are many shops of
artificers and merchants and especially of such as weave linnen and
cloth."

Long before cotton weaving was a British industry, West Africa and the
Sudan were supplying a large part of the world with cotton cloth. Even
to-day cities like Kuka on the west shore of Lake Chad and Sokota are
manufacturing centers where cotton is spun and woven, skins tanned,
implements and iron ornaments made.

"Travelers," says Buecher, "have often observed this tribal or local
development of industrial technique. 'The native villages,' relates a
Belgian observer of the Lower Congo, 'are often situated in groups. Their
activities are based upon reciprocality, and they are to a certain extent
the complements of one another. Each group has its more or less strongly
defined specialty. One carries on fishing; another produces palm