Torday has argued recently, “I feel convinced by certain arguments that seem to prove to my satisfaction that we are indebted to the Negro for the very keystone of our modern civilization and that we owe him the discovery of iron.  That iron could be discovered by accident in Africa seems beyond doubt:  if this is so in other parts of the world, I am not competent to say.  I will only remind you that Schweinfurth and Petherick record the fact that in the northern part of East Africa smelting furnaces are worked without artificial air current and, on the other hand, Stuhlmann and Kollmann found near Victoria Nyanza that the natives simply mixed powdered ore with charcoal and by introduction of air currents obtained the metal.  These simple processes make it simple that iron should have been discovered in East or Central Africa.  No bronze implements have ever been found in black Africa; had the Africans received iron from the Egyptians, bronze would have preceded this metal and all traces of it would not have disappeared.  Black Africa was for a long time an exporter of iron, and even in the twelfth century exports to India and Java are recorded by Idrisi.

“It is difficult to imagine that Egypt should have obtained it from Europe where the oldest find (in Hallstadt) cannot be of an earlier period than 800 B.C., or from Asia, where iron is not known before 1000 B.C., and where, in the times of Ashur Nazir Pal, it was still used concurrently with bronze, while iron beads have been only recently discovered by Messrs. G.A.  Wainwright and Bushe Fox in a predynastic grave, and where a piece of this metal, possibly a tool, was found in the masonry of the great pyramid."[45]

The Negro is a born trader.  Lenz says, “our sharpest European merchants, even Jews and Armenians, can learn much of the cunning and trade of the Negroes.”  We know that the trade between Central Africa and Egypt was in the hands of Negroes for thousands of years, and in early days the cities of the Sudan and North Africa grew rich through Negro trade.

Leo Africanus, writing of Timbuktu in the sixteenth century, said, “It is a wonder to see what plentie of Merchandize is daily brought hither and how costly and sumptuous all things be....  Here are many shops of artificers and merchants and especially of such as weave linnen and cloth.”

Long before cotton weaving was a British industry, West Africa and the Sudan were supplying a large part of the world with cotton cloth.  Even to-day cities like Kuka on the west shore of Lake Chad and Sokota are manufacturing centers where cotton is spun and woven, skins tanned, implements and iron ornaments made.