movement in human culture, "beyond the pillars of Hercules," which
thirteen centuries before Christ strove with Egypt and the East. It is, at
any rate, clear that ancient commerce reached down the west coast. The
Phoenicians, 600 B.C., and the Carthaginians, a century or more later,
record voyages, and these may have been attempted revivals of still more
ancient intercourse.

These coasts at some unknown prehistoric period were peopled from the
Niger plateau toward the north and west by the black West African type of
Negro, while along the west end of the desert these Negroes mingled with
the Berbers, forming various Negroid races.

Movement and migration is evident along this coast in ancient and modern
times. The Yoruba-Benin-Dahomey peoples were among the earliest arrivals,
with their remarkable art and industry, which places them in some lines of
technique abreast with the modern world. Behind them came the Mossi from
the north, and many other peoples in recent days have filtered through,
like the Limba and Temni of Sierra Leone and the Agni-Ashanti, who moved
from Borgu some two thousand years ago to the Gold and Ivory coasts.

We have already noted in the main the history of black men along the
wonderful Niger and seen how, pushing up from the Gulf of Guinea, a
powerful wedge of ancient culture held back Islam for a thousand years,
now victorious, now stubbornly disputing every inch of retreat. The center
of this culture lay probably, in oldest times, above the Bight of Benin,
along the Slave Coast, and reached east, west, and north. We trace it
to-day not only in the remarkable tradition of the natives, but in stone
monuments, architecture, industrial and social organization, and works of
art in bronze, glass, and terra cotta.