„Hamitische Wanderungen“: Die Prähistorie Afrikas zwischen Fiktion und Realität

The so called ‘Hamitic migration’ is a scientific theorem elaborated in the late 19th Century, which aimed to give the supposedly ahistorical continent of Africa a historical background. According to it, in prehistoric times fair-skinned pastoral ethnic groups migrated from Asia to Africa. Because of their cultural superiority they were, for instance, able to introduce organization into state forms. The theory of the Hamites peaked when Europeans exercised their ‘white supremacy’ in Africa during the imperialistic colonial period. In the postwar period it was then largely abandoned. This paper elaborates on the ideological components of this ‘dynamic view’ of prehistoric Africa. It further depicts how a methodological problem arises if linguistic, ethnology and anthropology data are correlated in an inappropriate way.