Temne SpaceAuthor(s): J. Little JohnSource: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1963), pp. 1-17Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3316519 .Accessed: 09/01/2011 08:46

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TEMNE SPACE

J. LITTLEJOHN University of Edinburgh

The Temne number over half a million and inhabit some 10,500 square miles of the northern province of Sierra Leone in the wet Tropics of W. Africa, between latitudes 70 and 100 North and longitudes 100 30' and 13015' West. The land Temne inhabit is mainly low lying, and vegetation is mainly secondary forest and farm bush. As a result of high rainfall the whole terri- tory is exceedingly well watered, with numerous rivers and tribu- taries and many swamps and marshes in the valley bottoms. The vast majority of Temne are farmers living at subsistence level by cultivating rice, mostly dry. The method is to cut down and bum an area of bush and, having lifted one crop, to leave it to regenerate through regrowth of bush. The fallow period in any particular place varies with population pressure, basic level of fertility of soil, labour available, etc., and overall varies from 3-8 years. At any given time the greater part of the land consists of bush of varying age interspersed with swamps, rivers and groves of primary and secondary forest. Isolated homesteads are rare; villages vary greatly in size. A few towns of from 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants have grown up in the last two generations, mainly as centres of administration and commerce.

That is the sort of way in which we are accustomed to describe the habitat of a people. Such a description starts from a stand- point very different from the Temne one. The first sentence espe- cially is based on a conception of space and techniques for par- titioning and measuring it which they do not have; for example a conception of space as "the container of all material objects" (Einstein 1960: XIV) in which the earth is suspended as one (spherical) body in a solar system, traversed by latitudes and longitudes which though purely ideal in essence enable us to measure and guide movement over its surface. The Temne how- ever consider the earth to be a flat circular object resting on the head of a giant, placed there by Kuru (God); trees and plants are the hair of his head and living creatures are the lice on it. The sun moves across the sky and "brings us day," the moon

1

2 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

regulates fertility. Such ideas are incompatible with the concept of space quoted. In this paper I attempt to describe space as the Temne appropriate it; not, perhaps, their concept of space, for since they have no word for space in general it is unlikely that they have a concept of it. In this description I shall refer to our geometrical and physical characterisation of space. It may be objected that such references imply comparison, that it is inad- missible to compare the concepts of a highly sophisticated science with the Temne activities, institutions and ideas from which their manner of appropriating space can be inferred, and that the cor- rect comparison should be with our everyday experience of space. I cannot fully meet this objection here, but should like to remark that our everyday experience of space is very much ruled by geometrical conceptions, and that references to these in this article are intended to guide the description of Temne space, not to set the terms for a full-length comparison.

Max Jammer (1960: 5) writes, "Modem physics on the whole -if we neglect certain relativistic theories--qualifies space as continuous, isotropic homogenous, finite or infinite, insofar as it is not a pure system of relations." The space Temne inhabit is neither homogeneous or isotropic. So far from being homoge- neous it is divided into regions with some differing qualities. These regions are Noru, Rospcki, Roshiron and Rokrifi. Noru No is an adverb for "here," e.g., one says "der no,"

"come here." Ru is the verb "to plait," either hair or a garland. Noru is the world "m'mu se nank yen"- "as we all generally see." It is the "here" Temne normally walk about and live in, the everyday habitat in which people and things are open to human per- ception. The name seems to indicate that the giant's hair has been combed and wrought. The notion of this world as a finely wrought thing was familiar to our ancestors of antiquity, as instanced by the com- mon root of cosmos and cosmetics, or mundus and munditia.

Rospcki Ro is the adverb "there" and the preposition "to," "from," "at" and occasionally "in" or "into." It is a frequent prefix in place names, indicating a "place of," as in Rosint ("place of sand") or Rogbane

TEMNE SPACE 3

("meeting place"), etc. Spcki is from the verb spk meaning "to dawn," both of daylight and the under- standing. As an adjective applied to persons spcki qualifies a person as one with a special understand- ing, as against one who is not spcki. A member of the Poro society for example is spcki as regards Poro affairs as over against a non-member. However as a chief explained, "A society is a thing made by man so if you are spcki for a society you are only a second- class spcki." A first-class spcki is one who can see into Rospcki; this is rather a marvellous thing to be able to do, for what marks off this region from Noru is that it and whatever is in it is generally invisible. To be able to see into Rospcki a person must have four eyes, which the following categories always have-- witches, each of a pair of twins, and the child born after twins. Rospcki is inhabited by demons.

Roshiron Oshir means "the witch," accordingly this is the place of witches, "a sort of village witches start out from" as one informant put it. As with Rospcki it is not penetrable by ordinary human perception.

Rokrifi This is where the ancestors live; like the two preced- ing regions its inhabitants and the events it contains are ordinarily invisible.

The main difference among these regions is between the first which is open to human perception and the other three which are not. As indicated those regions of space correspond to differ- ent modes of existence, to that of ordinary humans, to demons, to witches (who are ordinary humans most of the time), and to ancestors (i.e. humans who have died). We are familiar with the use of spatial adjectives to denote modes of existence as for example "worldly" and "other-worldly," but for us these are metaphoric or allegoric usages. Worldly and other-worldly per- sons inhabit the same space, differences in their modes of exist- ence would be ascribed to their own subjectivity, their ideas, psychological constitution and so forth. The Temne regions described are on the other hand for them actual, objectively pres- ent in their world. A person can move from one to another re-

4 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

gion, suffering metamorphosis as he goes. I shall deal with meta- morphosis below, first I want to show a) that ordinary space noru is not ordered through arithmetical systems of measurement and geometrical analysis, b) but through the confluence of these other regions in noru and physiognomic features of landscape.

Ordinary Temne space is neither arithmetically measured nor geometrically analysed. The main unit for denoting medium-long distances is anfgwula, which means both "the interval between any two villages" and "waste-land." As villages are not evenly spaced this is not so much a measure applied to space as a mean- ing proferred by the physiognomy of Temne landscape as they have appropriated it. For larger distances estimates are used like "a day's journey" and for shorter distances the earshot. Ap- proaching a village one places one's distance from it by the noises one hears, particularly that of rice being thumped, then that of human voices. For short lengths the main unit is anfatim, which is the outstretched arms of any adult man. It was Pa Nes the spider who taught men how to measure in this way. The pace, the foot, the span and lengths between knuckles in the forefingers can also be used. These units do not in any way form a system, none being determined as a proportion of another. For the most part where equal lengths have to be found for the construction of a large object (e.g. a house) a stick of the wanted length is cut and the others produced against it as model.

As for geometrical figures, they distinguish straight lines from "bent," foh-conah serves for square, rectangle and cube, and kil-kil is the term for circle. In no case is the law which consti- tutes these figures known. It follows from this and the preceding that areas can never be measured. The size of a farm for example is arrived at by estimating the number of bags of rice it ought to produce. (If it does not produce them the farmer imputes this to the malice of demons or witches.) When men hire themselves out to hoe for a farmer, the farmer and the labourer agree on an area which the labourer should complete in a day's work. The day's work however consists of completing the area. We have become so accustomed to organizing our space through geomet- rical analysis and arithmetical measurement that it has come to seem the natural thing to do. Temne space is ordered otherwise, and particularly through the interpenetration of these three other regions with noru.

TEMNE SPACE 5

When asked about demons Temne first reply with a classifica- tion of them into bush demons, town demons and river demons, each type inhabiting and "owning" the area from which it gets its type name. These correspond to the main features of Temne landscape-bush, river and town (i.e. village). The bush demons inhabit anhgwula the (mainly) "waste" land between villages. Like the bush they are wild and not easily controlled; unless placated they will destroy what fertility produces, in farms and in women. They are most feared for causing miscarriages by co- pulating with women. All miscarriages are due to them. As shown below the landscape is dotted with reminders of their presence.

The town demons are as Temne say "more tractable" than the bush ones. They are "owned" mostly by women, inhabiting pebbles which the owners keep hidden in cigarette-tins or boxes. Though most are inherited from grandmother to granddaughter, a town demon can be acquired by paying a diviner-doctor to en- tice one of them into one's service. What it is most often asked to do is help its mistress get babies, which it does by copulating with her. Part of the initial compact between mistress and demon is that should the mistress successfully deliver a baby, the demon will be offered a chicken. Should she neglect to keep her promise the demon takes his revenge by making the baby ill--one of the commonest causes of sickness in babies. However the town demon only does this if the compact is broken, unlike the bush demon it is not wilfully destructive. Town is the area in which law and reciprocity hold sway, unlike the bush where crop fail- ures, accidents and harm from beasts are to be expected.

Temne villages have to be situated beside some source of water, normally a stream or river. The river joins bush with town. The river demon occupies a place midway between the other two, as powerful as the one but like the other bestowing riches; the riches in this case are mineral-money, precious metals and diamonds. The term for diamond is literally "water demon's stone." Mer- chants and diamond diggers are often thought to have formed a liaison with a water demon. Like the town demon it will turn against and harm a defaulter.

Demons are responsible for a great many natural phenomena (as we call them), lightning, sudden gusts of wind, lights on marshes at night, and as indicated above many illnesses and crop

6 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

failures. One interesting range of illnesses due to them are skin diseases, caused by the wind of a demon as it rushes past you. Illness and accident are also caused by witches. Animal attacks on humans are the work of witches. A favourite trick of theirs is to spread a blanket underneath the farmer as he sows his grain and to carry it away. Illness in which the patient slowly wastes away is also due to them, they gather at night and eat away the sick man's vital organs. Nature in some of its phases is inten- tionally oriented against the Temne, and it is clear that they could hardly bear to live noru without taking preventative meas- ures. This they do by closing off selected areas against demons and witches.

The room Temne inhabit is accordingly divided into two sorts of space, closed and not closed. This constitutes one of the most important features of Temne space. The verb to close is kanta, the instrument used to close off space in this way is ankanta, and the same noun is used for the area so closed off. Space not so closed off is never in ordinary speech designated the opposite, i.e. "open" (kanti), (though Temne assured me it would not sound foolish to them to do so) ; closure is effected against a background of the rest of space. Three sorts of space regularly closed off are those occupied by farms, houses and the human body. Here is an example of closure of a farm, done immediately before burning the chopped down and now dry bush.

First on the verandah of his house the farmer offered a sacrifice to his ancestors. Sacrifice is done facing rokrifi where the ancest- ors are (see below). The gear consisted of a three-legged iron pot containing water, cowrie shells and kola nuts; strips of red and blue and white cloth covered it, two matchets were laid cross- wise on it and his sandals placed beside it, and on a plate beside it was a heap of rice flour. With his household squatting round he handed over (lankeli) the farm to his ancestors, imploring them to let no evil thing prevent a successful burning, and so that their descendant should not be disgraced, to protect the seeds and crop. Two torches of dried blades of ebankr bound with strips of coloured cloth were dipped briefly in the water and laid in the sun to dry. Shortly after with several male relatives he walked down to his farm carrying a kanta which had been prepared be- forehand. It had two components, the first consisting of scrap-

TEMNE SPACE 7

ings of the roots and bark of ebankr washed in water and mixed with rice grain, both wrapped in red cloth. The second consisted of a sheet of Arabic writing, numerals and numbered squares wrapped in a leather container. The virtue of the first was this- if witches and destructive bush demons came near the farm would seem to be ablaze and they would retreat. The second contained exorcising sentences from the Koran and a coding formula by which the farmer's name was changed into a set of numbers and then into another name. Evil creatures would be deceived as to the ownership of the farm and go away. The complete kanta was buried in a small hole within the boundary of the farm before the bush was set alight.

There are numerous ankanta. Another 6ne I saw set on a farm consisted of a horn stuffed with such ingredients as sand, rice flour, leaves, a dead spider and with the claws of a bird of prey pro- truding from the top. The horn was bound in red cloth. If a demon came near the claws would fight it. Another consisted of a kola nut wrapped in leaf and bound round with thread. Two needles were stuck through the thread and four cowrie shells tied on by means of it. Kola nut juice had been spat on it, so that it was rustry orange in colour ("red" according to Temne classi- fication of colours). The instrument was spcki, the cowries being its four eyes to spy witches and demons with; the needles were projectiles to be sent shooting after them by the force of the kola nut in a "sort of explosion" as the farmer said.

It is difficult to convey the importance of this operation and those devices for the Temne. Most farms are closed and certainly all houses. In some houses each room is separately treated in this way, the kanta being hung above the doorway. Sometimes how- ever the object hung above the doorway is said to be only a sacri- fice to the ancestors and not strictly speaking ankanta. Even in these cases however the intention is the same; presumably in their own houses ancestors are strong enough by themselves to repel the attacks of evil invaders. There are other areas which are nor- mally closed, the meeting places of the "secret societies" for ex- ample which abound among the Temne. These are closed in two senses, first in that non-members are forbidden to enter them. When Temne speak of them as kanta in this sense they are refer- ring merely to their laws of trespass, and distinguish this from the second sense, namely in which the meeting places are closed

8 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

against evil creatures. Especially at initiation time when youths have to be purified with lustrations and medicines it is important to keep out all destructive evil influences, hence ankanta are set up against them. A girl who dies while undergoing initiation into the Bundu society (which includes cliterodectomy) is thus re- vealed as a witch.

A somewhat special type of enclosure is that a chief-elect lives in between election and coronation. The closing instruments here are extremely powerful, though I was unable to discover what they are. Writing in 1912 Esu Biyl (1912:190-199) remarked that the chief stays in kanta for six days prior to coronation. Chiefs nowadays stay in for much longer, up to a year even, for (as a chief's son remarked), "They feel that if they stay in kanta not even the government can touch them. They have very power- ful medicine in kanta."

A people's conception of space in one way or another enters into their idea of the human body. Our conception of space as the empty form in which things are located relatively to each other in mathematically determined relations dominates our idea of the body, in the study of which the "localisation of function" is a leading concept. So with the Temne the body is closed off like farms and houses; all space being penetrable by evil, that occu- pied by the body is no different from any other. As indicated above witches and demons can penetrate the body. A type of kanta for closing the body which is popular among women is this: appropriate exorcising sentences from the Koran are written on a writing board and washed off into a bucket of water, used for lustration. A sheet of paper bearing the device described above for name-changing (or a similar one) is sewn inside a pouch along with prepared leaves. The pouch is attached to one or several thongs which are worn around the waist. These ones are specifically intended to prevent bush demons copulating with their wearers; doctors say that all women wear them. Children on the other hand being "less strong in the head" than adults are more vulnerable to witch attacks, to wasting disease. There are many sorts of kanta for children, a specially powerful one which must be rather rare nowadays consists of stones taken from an elephant's stomach and wrapped in a piece of its intestine.

From time to time some area not normally kanta will be made so--a village suffering continuous attacks from witches or dem-

TEMNE SPACE 9

ons, for example. The attacks take two main forms, epidemics or plagues of animals such as snakes or chimpanzees. For both dem- ons and witches can change their forms. Before turning to the subject of metamorphosis however, I want to complete this form- al analysis of Temne space by showing its anisotropic character.

For us the cardinal points are co-ordinates for establishing loca- tion. The Temne never use them in this way, though should the necessity arise they will use one of them to indicate the general direction in which a place lies. Their cardinal points contain meanings which qualify activities and events in various ways. This is indicated in their account of the creation of the world by Kuru. After the world was put on his head the giant turned East. When the giant turns West there follow earthquakes and destruction. East and West are not only opposite directions in an operation of the intellect but existential contraries with East the life-sustaining direction, West the destructive one. East is singled out above the other directions, literally. "We think of East as rising up like a hill, of everything going up to the East," Temne say. The adverb for "up" (rokom) is often used in place of the word for East (rotoron), and correspondingly the word for West (ropil) is fre- quently used for "down," both in the sense of down a slope and in the social sense as in "down town." Among the reasons they give for the preeminence of East is that the ancestors came from there and still are there. Hence all sacrifices and prayers to them have to be done facing East "otherwise your prayer won't be an- swered." If the sacrifice is an animal or bird its throat must point East so that blood flows towards there, blood being the ancestors' share of the offering on which they live. Conversely it is through the ancestors that the Temne live in the mode in which they do. "We owe everything to the ancestors, land, blood, houses." Each living Temne is a re-incarnation of a grandfather, not in the sense of a re-instatement of the complete person of a grandfather but in that conception occurs only by the instigation of one, whose name the individual bears and whose body he reproduces. Each Temne has "come from" the East.

It is accordingly no mere metaphor to say that for the Temne East is the life-sustaining direction. The movement of life from the East to the "here" where one is becomes incorporated into medicine as an active component of it. As a doctor explained, "In

10 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY the East, there life started and came over, so East-West medicine should start in the East and come over to the West." East-West medicine is bark taken first from the East then the West sides of the trunk of the same tree and boiled together. It is by no means the whole content of Temne pharmacology, but is nevertheless an important item in several specifics, for example those used to cure stomach ache caused by poisoning, blisters all over the body, yaws and leprosy.

Other institutions besides sacrifice and medicine embody the principle that life comes from the East, Poro society' initiations for example. The Poro was founded through the marriage of a woman to a demon, but at length the men of the village "took the demon out of town as they feared his sweet voice would lead others of their women to stray and to forsake them.... They took him out by the West road; there they made a house for him in the bush, that they might go and hear him sing... ." The procedure is followed to this day: the Poro bush where young men are initiated is at the Western side of the town. The youths die at ini- tiation, being swallowed by the demon, and are re-born. Hence when they return to town they re-enter by the East road.

Since East is "where you take direction from" the word for North is that for "left" and the word for South is that for "right." North and South as directions do not seem to qualify existence in any marked way, though most Temne believe that peoples in the North have the strongest destructive and protective medicines. Left and right however are existential contraries, left ominous and right propitious. If on setting out on a journey you stub the toes of the left foot it is best to turn back, stubbing the right indicates the journey will be fruitful. If the muscles round the left eye start twitching you are being gossipped about in a malicious way, if those round the right eye, in a reputation-enhancing way. This quality of "left" as a region of space is quite distinct from the utilisation of the maladroitness of the left hand and arm of the normal person to form metaphors; e.g. anyone singing out of tune may be called "left-handed" but there is no implication here that his behaviour is ominous for anyone. The ominous quality of left can be incorporated into medicine, not as metaphor, but as

1 For an account of this society among the neighbouring Mende people see K. L. Little, The Mende of Sierra Leona, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1951, CH. XII.

TEMNE SPACE 11

a constituent of the power one is setting to work. The Temne construct objects called anwanka2 for inflicting illness on thieves who steal vegetables. Most of these objects contain leaves, which must be plucked with the left hand. Some of them are laid on the ground in the middle of the vegetable plot, and if so must be laid with the left hand. Just as if you were to pray to the West "your prayer would not be answered," so if you omit "left" in these actions there will be no virtue in the object.

The right hand on the contrary is the one you must use to touch the thing sacrificed when sacrificing. One does not sacrifice with the aim of having someone harmed, but in order to secure blessings and good fortune for oneself. It is the right hand that is used to withdraw anwanka from the vegetable garden at the end of the season. The qualitative opposition of right-left appears in numerous details in daily life. In general one must not receive anything in one's left hand. An educated Temne once com- plained to me that one of the minor annoyances of returning to the village after attending college was that "If you use a knife and fork people don't like it. They think it's dirty. But they don't mind if you just use the fork in your right hand."

It is implicit in the data presented above that movement be- tween various regions of Temne space is possible, for example there would be no need to close off areas noru if demons and witches remained sealed within their own domains; while one movement is inevitable for all Temne, that from noru to rokrifi (place of the dead). Such movement is accomplished by a change of form, metamorphosis, first of all in a broad sense in that it is a change from one mode of existence to another, but also in a more specific sense in that it involves a change in bodily shape, for example from human to animal. The Temne verb to denote this metamorphosis is lufte, e.g. oshir olufte owoto-"the witch has turned into a chimpanzee." The verb is also used in everyday contexts to mean "to turn round," for example one shouts "lufte" at someone's back if one wants him to face one, to proffer a different appearance.

The clearest illustration is from witchcraft. Almost every animal which attacks a human being is held to be a witch who has taken that form precisely in order to attack. A witch is a

2 For further details regarding these devices see J. Littlejohn, "The Temne House," Sierra Leone Studies, December 1960.

12 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

person who ordinarily exists noru as an ordinary person and lufte (s) at the moment of turning into a witch; the turning is a movement from noru into roshiron and at the same time an as- sumption of animal form. The sentence above, "the witch has turned into a chimpanzee" was spoken to me by a chief shortly after a dramatic series of events in one of the larger towns. For some time women travelling out of town on a particular bush path had reported being attacked by a chimp. One day an old man was dragged into town who had been "found sleeping in the bush." He was unusually hairy for a Temne and had a beard, which Temne rarely wear; he was also suffering from a skin disease whereby he had patches of mottled white skin, and from his movements seemed to be ill or senile. Immediately word spread through the town that a witch had been apprehended in the process of turning into a chimp, and in a few minutes a mob of thousands was struggling and screaming round the town court- house trying to see the old man squatting under guard of several policemen. Though during my stay in this town there were sev- eral public events during which feeling ran high, a strike of mine- workers for example, this was the only occasion on which mob hysteria broke out.

Demons are also capable of metamorphosis, sometimes appear- ing noru in the form of animals and sometimes in the form of people. They are very fond of mingling with crowds of people, specially where there is noise and an atmosphere of excitement. They can be recognized by a peculiar way they have of talking through the nose. "Often," I was told, "at dances in the village at night we suddenly notice strangers in the crowd. We chase them away, we know they are demons."

A form of metamorphosis all Temnes suffer occurs at death. There are three main constituents of the person, nesim (breath, life,) oder (body) and angina. At death breath departs, the body is as the Temne put it, "hidden" (i.e. buried), and angina goes to rokrifi to join the ancestors. Sometimes the Temne talk as if the body went there too, though in some altered condition. At any rate, as anfgina the ancestor continues to see and hear his descend- ants, though usually invisible to them. Occasionally a Temne sees an ancestor noru in the form of a fleeting shadow (m'umpl), while some among the vultures which appear from nowhere at

TEMNE SPACE 13

an animal sacrifice are sure to be ancestors of the people present. Experience of the presence of ancestors also provides an illus-

tration of the proposition that a people's conception of space enters into their conception of the body. For some changes in body tonality indicate to Temne that ancestors are present. One verb indicating this is ninsne, "to apprehend the presence of an- cestors," for which there is no English equivalent. To come to or wake up from a dream is nisne, to feel someone touching one without being able to see the person is tilne; ninsne is somewhere in between. Asked to describe ninsne Temne say, "You just feel it in your body."

An analysis of Temne space would be incomplete without ref- erence to dreaming, to which I turn now. While demons and witches may appear noru in various shapes to people who are awake, most encounters between people and these two sorts of "evil creatures" occur while people are asleep, dreaming. The Temne verb "to dream" is wirp, used as in the phrase "i wirp oshir"-"I dream a witch." Any dream in which large animals appear, specially chimpanzees, crocodiles, leopards and bush-cows means that witches are attacking the dreamer. In the Temne view the dreamer is not dreaming of being attacked, he is being attacked. Similarly it is mostly in dreams that demons are en- countered. As described above they copulate with women at night, when the women are asleep; they can always be identified as bush demons because they appear to the dreaming woman dis- guised as her brother, occasionally as her father; as we would say, a dream of incest. Doctors often in dreams get advice from demons, and some claim to be able to dream demons at will. A female doctor remarked to me ". . . I can lie down at any time and dream what I have to do next. I sleep and dream the demons and talk with them, they tell me. Sometimes a woman comes to me who can't get pregnant. I dream and the demons tell me- maybe they say the woman's a witch. I tell her to confess and give her medicine."

I do not want to treat the subject of dreams fully in this paper, but would like to remark that not all dreams are of this sort, though it is this type--encounter with the creatures of rospcki and roshiron-which impress Temne most. Nothing illustrates better the difference between Temne space and our own than this

14 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

assimilation of dream space to that of wakeful life.3 For them happenings in the one are as real as happenings in the other. With us a sharp distinction is drawn between the two, the space of wakeful life is objective, that of dreaming subjective; what happens in dreams is therefore not real in the sense in which happenings in objective space are, but are mere symbols of the unconscious tensions, repressions and psychological conflicts of the subject. "Assimilation" is perhaps the wrong word to use here, for it is not that Temne first distinguish the space of wake- ful life from that of dreaming then subsequently equate them. The point is that the two are not separated to begin with. To understand this we must place ourselves firmly in Temne space, i.e. return to the points made earlier in this paper that ordinary Temne space is not the featureless container of things it is for us, analysed through ideal forms and bearing systems of numerical measurement; instead it falls round them in meanings read off from the physiognomy of landscape and the human body, com- bined with images embodying notions of good and evil.

Not only are the main features of the landscape linked with demons of different quality, but signs and reminders of their presence are everywhere. Bush demons inhabit ant-hills, caves, huge trees which remain from the primary forest; a clump of bush definitely known to belong to one has the special name of e-kin^a, and is avoided. Demons are always in couples; two large hills near the town I lived in were a demon husband and wife. The rule concerning contacts between people and demons is that a person must contract only with a demon of opposite sex. Hence sexuality figured in demons pervades the landscape; most known river-demons for example are female, most town-demons are male. Since a crossroads is a favourite meeting place of demons and witches people prefer to avoid being on them, spe- cially after about five o'clock (our time) when they start to be- come more active. The bush, haunt of destructive demons, im- presses its nefarious character on activity there; plots, murders, meetings of witches are all supposed to be held in the bush.

In the concrete room Temne have appropriated for themselves

3 Though he did not offer the explanation put forward here, Taylor un- doubtedly apprehended this assimilation when he spoke of the life of primi- tive man as resembling "a long dream." See E. B. Taylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, 1878, p. 137.

TEMNE SPACE 15

space alters its total quality with unvarying regularity from night to day. On dark nights it is impenetrable to human perception and is to that extent like rospcki and roshiron. It is not surprising that demons and witches are most active then, and that night is marked with the index "evil" and day that of "good." People who move about at night are suspected of evil intentions, even of being witches. Temne are early risers, most are up at dawn to experience light issuing again from where the ancestors are, those great protectors whose help is invoked in closing off protected em- placements against evil. Stepping on to the verandah of the house at first light, a Temne walks upon a sort of altar, for the verandah is the ancestors' part of the house, and many sacrifices to them are performed on it.

And finally, wherever he goes, the person carries in his body the distinction between left and right, the nefasteous and the fortunate.

Colours to some extent fall under the meanings which space offers. White, colour of day, is good; hence sacrifices should contain white material-a white chicken, a white cloth, etc. Black, colour of night, is bad, and is often used as an active com- ponent of harmful medicines. Red, however, is felt to be more powerful than black, and all attacking medicines contain red.

This sort of space is identical with dream space. Dream space is poorly organized as far as mathematics and geometry are con- cerned, but in it are presented compelling images meaningful in terms of the major concerns of existence; good and evil, good and bad fortune, sexuality, light and darkness (in all senses). Direc- tions and regions in dreams proffer, though perhaps in a more ambiguous way, significations akin to those of Temne space.

The nature of ordinary Temne space provides an understand- ing of a phenomenon recently noted, namely a high frequency of 2-D perception of pictorial matter among Africans. This was demonstrated in a recent article by W. Hudson (1960:183-208). In a series of experiments drawings were presented to Africans in which the cues by which we simulate perspective were stressed, such as convergence of parallel lines with distance, overlap and diminishing size with increasing distance. From subjects' replies to questions afterwards it was clear that they had not used these cues in interpreting the contents of the drawings. Among the

16 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

African groups tested were some who had received a certain amount of European-type education.4 Hudson concluded "The process of pictorial depth perception is not beyond the capacity of the black man, but it is a skill in which he has a good deal of lee- way to make up. Both cultural and genetic factors play their role in the process, but the elucidation of their relative contribu- tion is beyond the scope of this paper." I am in no position to argue about the assumption of "genetic factors" in Hudson's sum- ming up, but I cannot see why in the absence of definite proof of their existence they should be assumed at all. A people inhabiting the sort of space I have described for the Temne (and there is plenty of evidence in the literature that African peoples other than the Temne inhabit the same sort of space) obviously are accustomed to perceive in a different mode from that normal to Europeans. The two modes of perception have been named by H. Werner (1948) "physiognomic"5 and "geometrical-techni- cal." Concerning the former he remarks that in it what is seized upon as significant in objects perceived is not their properties as revealed by geometric analysis, but their expressive value. A people who are accustomed to this type of perception in ordinary life are hardly likely to alter it when it comes to viewing pictures, or drawing or painting them for that matter. Temne wall paint- ings are all in 2-D even when "representational" in intention. The expressiveness of their contents is in no way diminished by this, but often enhanced.

I am not arguing here that Africans ordinarily perceive the actual world in 2-D. It would be foolish to suggest so. They must inhabit the same "objective space" which geometrical anal- ysis has revealed to us; but for them "objective space" is a not- explicitly apprehended background to the space in which they are conscious of living, a space such as I have described above.

4Research on this topic recently conducted among the Temne by my col- league Mr. J. Dawson yields somewhat different results from Hudson's ex- periments, e.g., decreasing frequency of 2-D perception with increased ex- posure to European education. Dawson's results will be published in due course.

5Though Hudson does not analyse how his African subjects in fact per- ceived the pictures, apart from the dimension of 2-D and 3-D perception, it seems from some information he provides that they interpreted them in the mode of physiognomic perception.

TEMNE SPACE 17

REFERENCES CITED

BrYL, Esu. 1912-13--The Temne people and how they make their kings. Journal of the African Society 12:190-199.

EINSTEIN, A. 1960--Foreword. In Concepts of Space, by Max Jammer, Harper

Torchbooks, New York. HUDSON, W.

1960---Pictorial depth perception in sub-cultural groups in Africa. Journal of Social Psychology 52:183-208.

JAMMER, MAX 1960--Concepts of space. Harper Torchbooks, New York.

WERNER, H. 1948--Comparative psychology of mental development. Revised edi-

tion. Follett Publishing Company.

Article Contentsp. 1p. 2p. 3p. 4p. 5p. 6p. 7p. 8p. 9p. 10p. 11p. 12p. 13p. 14p. 15p. 16p. 17

Issue Table of ContentsAnthropological Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1963), pp. 1-42Front MatterTemne Space [pp. 1-17]The Size and Nature of Children's Peer Groups among Nonliterate Peoples: A Significant Gap in Ethnographic Literature [pp. 18-26]The Non-Literate, the Psychotic, and the Child: A Reconsideration [pp. 27-33]Utilitarian Pottery Manufacture in a North Indian Village [pp. 34-42]Back Matter