evidence, fixed the
approximate date at which the Bantu negroes left their primal home in the
very heart of Africa at not much more than 2000 years ago; and the reason
adduced was worth some consideration. It lay in the root common to a large
proportion of the Bantu languages expressing the domestic fowl--_kuku_
(_nkuku_, _ngoko_, _nsusu_, _nguku_, _nku_). Now the domestic fowl reached
Africa first through Egypt, at the time of the Persian occupation--not
before 500 to 400 B.C. It would take at that time at least a couple of
hundred years before--from people to people and tribe to tribe up the Nile
valley--the fowl, as a domestic bird, reached the equatorial regions of
Africa. The Muscovy duck, introduced by the Portuguese from Brazil at the
beginning of the 17th century, is spreading itself over Negro Africa at
just about the same rate. Yet the Bantu people must have had the domestic
fowl well established amongst themselves before they left their original
home, because throughout Bantu Africa (with rare exceptions and those not
among the purest Bantu tribes) the root expressing the domestic fowl recurs
to the one vocable of _kuku_.[2] Curiously enough this root _kuku_
resembles to a marked degree several of the Persian words for "fowl," and
is no doubt remotely derived from the cry of the bird. Among those Negro
races which do not speak Bantu languages, though they may be living in the
closest proximity to the Bantu, the name for fowl is quite different.[3]
The fowl was only introduced into Madagascar, as far as researches go, by
the Arabs during the historical period, and is not known by any name
similar to the root _kuku_. Moreover, even if the fowl had been (and there
is no record of this fact) introduced from Madagascar on to the east coast
of Africa, it would be indeed strange if it carried with it to Cameroon, to
the White Nile and to Lake Ngami one and the same name. It may, however, be
argued that such a thing is possible, that the introduction of the fowl
south of the equator need not be in any way coincident with the Bantu
invasion, as its name in North Central Africa may have followed it
everywhere among the Bantu peoples. But all other cases of introduced
plants or animals do not support this idea in the least. The Muscovy duck,
for instance, is pretty well distributed throughout Bantu Africa, but it
has no common widely-spread name. Even tobacco (though the root "taba"
turns up unexpectedly in remote parts of