AFRICAN ETHNIC GROUP LUBA: HISTORY AND ART
Republic of Zaire
The Luba is a town of the bantú linguistic family, who lives in the Southeast of the Republic of Zaire. The Luba is divided in diverse tribes, who exceed means million individuals altogether.
In the middle of s.XVI they constituted a kingdom of feudal type in whose cut a refined art was developed singularly, that has arrived to the present time: figures for the cult to the ancestors, masks, stools maintained by cariátides (made kneel women), glasses, etc.
With regards to the economy, at the present time the region is almost self-sufficient thanks to its rich diamond mines. To emphasize that its economy has not suffered the wild hyperinflation of the rest of the country thing that has caused that this is the main advantage for this region.
The Luba empire was characterized by the existence of a central authority, to which mulopwe was denominated (king), that copying of the European colonizadores, was had with a sacred character.
Its religion, traditionally has been based on the cult the ancestors, but with the arrival of Belgian and the political domination of these, great part of Luba people went to the Christianity. |