|
'Ethnology'is a genre of cultural anthropology and| anthropological study, involving the systematic comparison of the beliefs and practices of different societies. Among its goals are the reconstruction of human history, and the formulation of laws of culture and culture change, and the formulation of generalizations about human nature.
List of scholars of ethnology
Kinga
Wakinga
The Kinga were primarily agriculturalists with millet, beans, and some bananas who inhabited the Livingston Mountains of East Africa to a height of 10,000 feet and maintained a moderate amount of cattle but many sheep and goats. Their Nyakyusa neighbors considered the Kinga to be distinct and different, even though related. They found them to be dirty, fawning, and submissive in their habits and manners, (not a good marrisage prospect but good enough to fight along side of in the Konde revolt), and were eager to acquire Kinga iron and implements in exchange for food.
Kinga priests claimed they belonged to a very old line, a line older than their chiefs. The priests also seemed to interpret subterranian water. The Nyakyusa would watch with fear and dismay as these pilgrims descended the mountain paths each year heading for Lwembe's shrine.
Kinga were to be found in hidden areas, probably haveing been driven there by Magwagwar Ngoni, then the Wasagu, and even the Hehe, and were not easy to locate. They had little intercourse with their neighbors, and felt comfortable only in their mountains. While they provided early warning posts aginst invasion of the Nyakyusa territory from the south and east, the nyakyusa were not thankful and generally held the Kinga in contgempt, there being certainly no love lost between the Kinga and Nyakyusa.
Merensky describes them as having no perticular physical type, their facial featureas and evolpment of the head and physique, all being different. Merensky found only one commons charachteristic; due to their mountain climbing the muscles on their legs were very well developed and they had acquired a distinct type of joggind while going up and down these heights. He, like the Nyakyusa, found personally dirty and their homesteads disordrly, Seemingly they wee adept only at navigation their mountains an skillfully creating beatiful hoes, knives, and spears from iron.
They did, however, join the Nyakyusa in attacking the Germans in 1897, and losing.
Taken from Iliffe, John. (A History of Modern Tanganyika).
Merensky, A. (Deutsch Arbeit am Nyaß). Reader, John. (Africa).
Tew, Mary. (People of the Lake Nyasa Region).
Wilson, Monica. (Good Company).
|