Contents.—The White Race. Synonyms. Properly an African
Race; relative areas; purest specimens. Types of the White
Race; Libyo-Teutonic type; Cymric type; Celtic type; Euscaric
type. Variability of traits. Primal home of the White Race not
in Asia, but in Eurafrica. Early migrations and subdivisions.
North Mediterranean and South Mediterranean Branches.
I. The Hamitic Stock. Relation to Semitic. 1. The Libyan
Group. Location. Peoples included. Physical appearance. The
Libyan blondes: languages. Early history; European affiliations;
relations to Iberian tribes; the names Iberi and Berberi. Government.
Migration. The Etruscans as Libyans. Later history;
present culture. Syrian Hamites and their influence. 2. The
Egyptian Group. Kinship to Libyans. Physical appearance. The
stone age in Egypt. Antiquity of Egyptian culture. Its influence.
Physical traits. 3. The East African Group. Relations to Egypt.
II. The Semitic Stock.—First entered Arabia from Africa.
1. The Arabian Group. Early divisions and culture. The Arabs.
Physical types; mental temperament; religious idealism. 2. The
Abyssinian Group. Tribes included. Period of migration. Condition.
3. The Chaldean Group. Tribes included. The modern
Jew.
The leading race in all history has been the White
Race. It is proper therefore that it should have
our chief attention in the study of the distribution of
the species. By some writers it is called the Caucasian,
by others the Japetic, and by others again the
European race—all inaccurate terms, for the race
never originated in the Caucasus, never descended
from the mythical Japetus or Japheth, and when first
it appeared on the horizon of history, its most extensive
possessions and the seats of its highest culture
were not in Europe, nor yet in Asia, but in Africa.
(Extinct peoples in italics.)
| I. Hamitic Stock. | 1. Libyan Group. |
Numidians, Getulians,
Libyans, Maurianians,, Guanches,
Berbers, Rifians, Zouaves, Kabyles, Tuareks, Tibbus,
Ghadumes, Mzabites, Ghanatas,
Etruscans, Amorites,
Assyrians, Hittites. (?) |
| 2. Egyptian Group. |
Copts, Fellaheen. |
| 3. East African Group. |
Gallas, Somalis, Danakils, Bedjas, Bilins, Afars, Khamirs. |
| |
| II. Semitic Stock. |
1. Arabian Group. |
Himyarites, Sabeans,
Nabotheans, Arabs,
Bedawin, Ehkilis. |
| 2. Abyssinian Group. |
Amharnis, Tigris, Tigrinas, Gheez, Ethiopians, Harraras. |
| 3. Chaldean Group. |
Israelites, Arameans, Samaritans. |
This statement may astonish you, and I know no
writer who has properly emphasized the fact that the
white race is geographically and historically an
African race. I have calculated with some care the
area of its control of the three continents when their
inhabitants first became known. The results are
these: The white race then possessed:49
| In Asia |
2,500,000 |
square |
miles. |
| In Europe |
3,000,000 |
“ |
“ |
| In Africa |
3,500,000 |
“ |
“ |
These figures vindicate for the race the title I have
given it—Eurafrican.
More than this: the purest and finest physical specimens
of the white race always have been and still are
found native to African soil; and the leading nations
of the race, those who have most contributed to its
glory, and to the advance of the civilization of the
world, either have resided in Africa or can be traced
to it as their ancestral home.
Types of the White Race.—Let us first define the
characteristics, physical and mental, of the white race.
In one of its pronounced types, the individuals are
blondes, tall in stature, the eyes blue or grey, the hair
yellow or reddish and wavy, the beard full, the nose
narrow and prominent (leptorhin), the chin well defined,
the jaws straight (orthognathic), the skull long
(dolichocephalic) or medium, the eyes narrow (microsemes),
the supra-orbital ridges rather prominent, the
face moderately oval.
This is the typical appearance of the ancient Goths,
Teutons and Scandinavians, and of the modern
Swedes and Germans. It was also that of the ancient
Libyans, and is still preserved in the greatest purity
among their descendants in Morocco and Algiers;
hence I shall call it the Libyo-Teutonic type.
A second type is also tall in stature, but red-haired,
freckled complexion, the face and forehead broad,
the cheek bones prominent, the eyes nearly circular
(megasemes), the jaws and mouth projecting (prognathic),
the skulls broad and high (brachycephalic-hypsistenocephalic),
the chin square and firm.
This is the type we see preserved in some of the
Highland Scotch clans, and in the “Tuatha de Danann”
of Ireland, recalling the large-limbed and red-haired
“Caledonians” of Tacitus, and those ancient
Britons who, under Queen Boadicea, withstood so
valiantly the Roman legions. The Gauls or Cimbri
of Belgium and northern France were of this type,
and hence it has been called the “Cymric” type.
But there is a second Celtic type, also of vast antiquity,
claimed by some to be the only pure form. In
it the skull is also broad—broader than the former
variety; but the stature is undersized, the hair and
eyes dark-brown, the complexion brunette, the orbits
rounded, the forehead full. Modern representatives
of this type are the dark clans of the Highlanders, the
Irish west of the river Shannon, the Manx, the Welsh,
the Bretons of France, the Auvergnats, the Walloons
of Belgium and the Ladins of eastern Switzerland.
The most ancient known seats of these dark Celts
were in extreme western Europe and the isles adjacent.
This location points them out as one of the
oldest peoples in Europe, whether their presence is
explained by immigration or autochthonous descent.
Part of their possessions in early historic times was in
the Iberian peninsula, along the Cantabrian mountains
in northern Spain. Here they were in immediate contact
with members of the white race of a different
type, the Euscarians or Basques.
In them the stature is medium, the form symmetrical,
hair and eyes are dark but rarely black, the complexion
dark and sallow, the face oval, and the skull
long, the length being in the posterior (occipital)
region. Although the last mentioned is an important
distinction between the Celtic and the Euskaric skull,
there is unquestionably a closer resemblance physically
between the Celts and Basques, who speak
totally diverse tongues, than between the Celts and
Cymri, whose tongue was the same.
In these four typical groups from the extreme west
of Europe we find sharp contrasts within limited areas,
among peoples some of whom are unquestionably
consanguine. Two of the groups, the Teutonic and
Cymric, belong in color and hair and stature to the
blonde type, but differ profoundly in shape of skull
and facial bones; the two others belong to the brunette
type, but differ equally in osseous character. In
general physical traits the Celtic differs less from the
Euskaric than from the Cymric type, as was recognized
by the historian Tacitus.
These facts bring out an ethnic principle of importance—the
variability of traits within the racial
limits—and this becomes more marked as the race is
higher in the scale of organic development. No race
remains closer to its type than the Austafrican, none
departs from it so constantly as the Eurafrican.
Wherever we find the unmixed white race we find its
blonde and brunette varieties, its prognathic and
orthognathic jaws, its long-skulled and broad-skulled
heads.50 To establish genealogic schemes exclusively
upon these differences, as has been the work of so
many living anthropologists, is to build houses of
cards.
These contrasts are presented to us daily. The
researches of Virchow, De Candolle, Kollmann, and
many others, prove that in the same city, in the same
family, the children to-day are born brunettes or
blondes, dark or light eyed, to some degree broad or
narrow skulled, with but partial reference to their
parents’ peculiarities. The aberrant types are usually
about twenty per cent. of the whole. It seems generally
to have been so in the unmixed white race wherever
located.
All such variations, however, remain strictly within
the racial lines, and are not approximations to other
races. Each race retains to-day the characteristics of
its earliest representatives, so far as we know them.
Primal Home of the White Race.—Where should
we look for these earliest representatives, for the primal
home of the Eurafrican race? The usual answer has
been “in Asia,” but now that answer is rejected by
all the younger and most earnest ethnologists.
A steady stream of information has of late been contributed
by the sciences of linguistics, palæontology,
pre-historic archæology and racial anatomy, sufficient
to convince even the skeptical that not Asia, but the
western water-shed of the Eastern Continent, was the
area of characterization which developed this race with
its marked physical traits and singular mental endowments.
In the previous lecture I have shown you that
man himself probably came into being as such within
the limits of that region which I have described as
Eurafrica; and as its conditions were such as to foster
his transformation from some inferior primate, so they
continued, though profoundly altered, to favor his
growth, as they still do continue to-day. It is by no
mere accident or result of political manœuvres that
western Europe has for two thousand years produced
the mightiest nations and greatest minds of the earth.
The discussion of the precise locality where in Europe
the primitive man developed into the white race
has occupied many learned pens in the last score of
years. But by nearly all of them the discussion has
been limited to the birthplace of merely the Aryan
linguistic stock—an unfortunate narrowness of view,
which has prevented a comprehensive grasp of the
question at issue.51
The Aryan peoples present by no means the only,
nor yet the purest types of the white race. I have
seen quite as noble blondes among the Kabyles of the
Djurjura as in Denmark, quite as handsome brunettes
among the Basques of the Pyrenees as among the
Celts of France or the Italians. A broad construction
of the question must include all these, and in this
spirit I approach it.
We must search for the first abode, the primitive
“area of characterization” of the white race:
1. Where its most ancient residence and greatest
numbers were in earliest historic times.
2. Where the prehistoric remains prolong that residence
most remotely back.
3. Where the earliest forms of linguistic structure
continue to exist in large communities.
4. Where its purest types are retained in considerable
numbers.
5. Where the climatic conditions are favorable to
the physical traits of the race.
If we can select a locality in which all of these arguments
unite, the cumulative evidence is so powerful
that we may consider the question settled.
I have already shown that at the dawn of history
the white race possessed either in Europe or Africa a
far larger area than in Asia, and possessed it practically
exclusively. The most recent researches in
the pile dwellings of the Swiss lakes and the plain of
the Po show that the same race inhabited them from
the classic period of Greece to far back in the stone
age.
The most ancient shell-heaps or kitchen-middens
on the shores of Portugal contain skulls of the peculiar
type of the Basques of to-day. The hiatus or gap
which was once supposed to exist between palæolithic
and neolithic culture in France has been bridged over
by numerous observations, showing that the same race
continued to live and grow there.52 As for language,
every linguist recognizes the agglutinative type of the
Basque, and the semi-agglutinative character of the
Berber as more antique forms than the inflectional
caste of Aryan or Semitic tongues. Nowhere else do
white tribes speak an agglutinative tongue, except a
few in the Caucasus, where we know they settled at
a comparatively recent period.
The purest types of the whites in any large number
have always been found in Western Europe and Northwestern
Africa. There the blondes were represented
by the Suevi, the Goths, the Vandals, the Cymri, the
Berbers; the brunettes by the Euskarians, the Celts,
and the native Italic tribes. In the Orient, the Parsees,
the high-caste Brahmins, the Siagosch of the Hindu
Kusch, and some Caucasian tribes, have by close intermarriage
retained in a measure the traits of the race;
but confessedly not in the same distinctness as the
nations of Western Europe; nor do the Semitic peoples
of Asia present the purity of the type with anything
like the distinctness of the descendants of the
Libyans in the valleys of the Atlas. Finally, we do not
anywhere in Asia find the physical conditions favorable
to the development of the white race—the moist,
cool, cloudy climate, the extensive shady forests covering
broad areas of low elevation, with absence of malaria
and diminished demand on the chylopoietic organs.
Ethnic Chart of the Eurafrican Race.
Early Migrations and Subdivisions.—It is not necessary
to suppose that the different peoples of the race
developed themselves from one central point. The
contrary is more probable.
Beginning at the extreme West of Europe, and its
appendix North Africa, the race pursued an easterly
course, divided by the great intervening sea of the
Mediterranean into two sections, which for convenience
I designate as the “North Mediterranean” and
the “South Mediterranean” branches, though it will
be seen that these geographical limits are not to be
taken absolutely.
The North Mediterranean branch embraces as its
most important member the Indo-Germanic peoples.
When first heard of in history, this stock extended
along the shores and islands of Europe from Cape
Finisterre to the Gulf of Finland, occupying all of
Central Europe and much of Asia Minor, the regions
of Modern Persia, and at a later date the southern
vales of the Himalayas. Its northern limits have always
been in contiguity with the Asian or Yellow
race. Stretch a line on the map from Singapore to
St. Petersburg, continue it to the Atlantic, and you
have roughly the ethnic boundary which has ever separated
the races, and does so to-day.
In western Europe, south of the Aryac was the
Euskaric stock, occupying central Spain, central and
southern France, portions of Italy, and various islands
in the Mediterranean.
As speaking a language of a different family from
the prevailing inflectional type of the race, it is spoken
of as “allophyllic.” It does not stand alone in this
respect. Some of the white Caucasian tribes speak
similar agglutinative tongues, and it is supposed by
some that the ancient Pictish, Illyrian, Lycian, Van,
and Etruscan were of similar character. Probably
many such languages obtained which are now extinct.
The South Mediterranean Branch consists of two
related stocks, which have been called the Hamitic and
the Semitic. These names are not objectionable, in so
far as they indicate a distant genealogic unity, still recognizable,
between the two branches; but should not
in any way be accepted as acknowledging as historic
facts the myth of the Deluge and their origin in Asia.
The reverse is true. The migrations of both stocks
have been from west to east, and the two great
branches of the White Race entering Asia, the one
by the Bosphorus and the second by the Isthmus of
Suez, encountered each other after thousands of years
of separation in the region where the venerable myth
locates their point of departure.
I shall begin my survey of the race and its distribution
with the South Mediterranean branch, as that
which has been the more important of the two in history,
controlling by far the greater territory, and developing
the earlier and more potent civilizations. It
has ever been, and still is, the leader in intellectual
acumen, and the monuments of its achievements, both
in the realms of thought and action, remain unrivalled
in the world. With great propriety, therefore, it
claims our first attention.
The affinity between the Hamitic and Semitic stocks
is distinctly shown by their physical traits and the
character of their languages. The latter statement,
which was long in doubt, has now been acknowledged
by the most competent students, such as Friedrich
Müller and A. H. Sayce.53
Within their own lines the Hamites are divided into
three groups, the Libyan, the Egyptian and the East
African groups, each distinguished by physical and
linguistic differences.
Of these the Libyan group occupies the region furthest
to the west, and presents the purest type of the
stock. From time immemorial it has occupied the
land from the Nile Valley to the Atlantic, and from the
Mediterranean to the Soudan. In the classical geographies
its tribes are referred to as Numidians, Libyans,
Mauritanians and Getulians, and at present they
are known as Berbers, Rifians, and Shilhas in Morocco,
the Tuariks and Tibbus of the desert, the Kabyles and
Zouaves in Algeria, the Ghadames, Serkus, Mzabites
of the south, the Senegas of Senegal, and many others.
The Guanches, who once inhabited Teneriffe, and are
now extinct, belonged to the Rifian tribes of this
stock,54 and the rulers of the once powerful empire of
Ghanata, which for centuries before the rise of Mohammedanism
controlled the valley of the Upper Niger,
were allied to the Moroccan family.55 Arab historians
of the seventh century tell us that at that time the
Berbers were “the lords of Maghreb (Africa), from
the Arabian Gulf to the western ocean, and from the
middle sea to the Soudan.”56
The physical appearance of the Libyan peoples distinctly
marks them as members of the White Race,
often of uncommonly pure blood. As the race elsewhere,
they present the blonde and brunette type, the
latter predominant, but the former extremely well
marked. Among the Kabyles in Algeria, I have seen
many fine specimens of blondes, with yellow hair,
light eyes, auburn beard, and tall stature. An English
traveller who visited last year some remote villages
in the mountains of Morocco, describes their
inhabitants as “for the most part fair, with blue eyes
and yellow beards, perfectly built and exceedingly
handsome men.”57 This has been from the earliest
times the characteristic of the Libyans, and there is
abundant evidence that it was more general in former
centuries than it is now. The Guanches of Teneriffe
are described by the first voyagers as unusually tall
and fair, their yellow hair reaching below their waists.58
The Greek poet Callimachus, who was librarian of
the famous library at Alexandria two hundred and
fifty years before the Christian era, applies the same
adjective ξανθος, blonde or auburn, to the Libyan women,
which Strabo and other Greeks do to the Goths and
blonde Celts of Germany.59
Long before this, again, in monuments of the XIXth
dynasty of Egypt, the Libyans are painted as of a pronounced
blonde type, with light eyes and skins, and
are mentioned by a term which signifies fair or
blonde.60 The extended researches of ethnologists on
this point have accumulated a mass of facts proving
that the ancient Libyans were in appearance strikingly
similar to the North Germans and Scandinavians, having
a fair skin, yellow or auburn hair, blue or grey
eyes, full blonde beards, the face medium, the skull
dolichocephalic, the orbital ridges prominent, the chin
square and firm, forehead vertical or slightly retreating,
the stature tall, and the body powerful.61
This identity of type impressed me very much
among the Kabyles, and I note that the German ethnologist,
Quedlinfeldt, who was among the Berbers in
Morocco lately, writes of them: “I very often met individuals
with flaxen hair and blue eyes, who in face
and form corresponded perfectly to the ordinary type
of our North German people.”62 For this reason, I
give it the name of the “Libyo-Teutonic” type.
In the pure-blooded clans who still dwell in the
fastnesses of the Atlas and the Djurdjura, this antique
type is that which is general; but in the valleys, in the
desert and in Tunisia the type is darker, having been
corrupted by admixture with negro, Arabic and other
stocks.63 The fact which I wish especially to impress
on you is that nowhere do we find a purer type of
the white race than in northern Africa, and that this
was recognized by the earliest writers and records as
that especially belonging to this stock.
The languages spoken by the various Libyan peoples
prove on examination to be dialects of one tongue,
all so much alike that a few days’ practice will enable
the speaker of any one of them to express himself in
another. In its grammatical formation, it is inflectional
with agglutinative tendencies. Its radicals are
made up of consonants, the indications of time and
place being formed by changes in the vowel sounds.
In this respect it resembles the Semitic tongues, but
differs from them in having radicals of one, two, three,
or four consonants, while they have usually those of
three consonants only. In many other respects it presents
analogies to the Semitic dialects, of such a nature
that these latter seem to have developed themselves
out of conditions of speech as represented by
the Libyan. Hence some writers have called it and
its allied tongues “proto-Semitic languages.” It
stands in distinct relation to the Coptic or ancient
Egyptian, and to some East African dialects.
The Libyans have possessed from time immemorial
the country in which we find them. They are its
indigenous inhabitants—all others, as Carthaginians,
negroes and Arabs, being demonstrably intruders.
Can we obtain any clue to their monuments in prehistoric
times by the aid of archæology and linguistics?
Some able students have thought they could,
and have brought forward some singular surmises.
There is a series of structures of huge stones, called
dolmens, menhirs and cromlechs, extending over
northern and central France, southern England, northern
Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algiers, and central
Tunisia. They are much alike, and seem to have
been constructed by some one people in very ancient
times. The skulls in them are often long, like those
of the Libyans and Teutons. Hence several French
writers have suggested that the ancestors of the white
Libyans moved from central Europe into Morocco,
along the line of these megalithic structures.64
In spite of a good deal of severe criticism, there remains
much in favor of the view that these remains
mark a route by which some neolithic people extended
their conquests. But it seems to me the trend of migration
was in the other direction, toward the east,
and not from it. The white race began as such during
the glacial epoch; it could scarcely have developed
north of the Pyrenees, for the climate was so cold that
the reindeer, which to-day cannot breed in Stockholm,
found a suitable home in the valley of the Garonne.
The Iberian peninsula and the Atlas at that time possessed
climatic conditions about like those of Great
Britain to-day.
In that peninsula, at that time connected with Morocco
by a land bridge at the straits of Gibraltar, are
the oldest forms of languages spoken by the race, the
Euskaric dialects. There is reason to believe that at
the dawn of history these occupied the centre of the
peninsula; north of them, in the Cantabrian mountains
and along the shores of the Bay of Biscay, were
the Celtiberians, the rearguard of the migratory hordes
of Aryans; and along the southern shores and in North
Africa extended the tribes whose direct descendants
are the Libyan peoples. The name Iberi, Iberians
applied by the ancients to the inhabitants of the eastern
and southern shores of Spain, testifies to this. It
means in the Libyan tongue freemen, and in the plural
form berberi or Berbers, is that by which the old
Egyptians knew them, and which from the same root
is their own favorite designation to-day.65
That the Iberians were Hamites, and not Basques,
has long been suspected, and is plainly the opinion to
be derived from the statements of the ancients and the
presence of Libyan proper names in the south of
Spain.66
When the Berber chieftain Tarik crossed the straits
in the seventh century, and gave to the great rock his
name (Gibraltar, Djebel-el-Tarik), he was but returning
to seize anew the land from which his ancestors
had been driven by Carthaginians and Romans.
From the remotest times the Libyans have had the
same form of government—village communities,
united by loose bonds into federations. The Egyptians
referred to them as “the Nine Bows,” or Bands,67
the Romans as the “Quinquigentes,” the Five Peoples,
the Arabs as “Qabail” or Kabyles, Confederates.
These confederations were sufficiently powerful,
even so far back as 1400 years before Christ, to
put in the field an army of 30,000 or more men for an
attack on Egypt; and that the general culture of their
country was quite high is shown by the character of
the spoils obtained by the Egyptians—horses, chariots,
vessels of brass, silver, copper and gold, swords, cuirasses,
razors, etc.68
At that date the nations of the North Mediterranean
branch were yet in the stone age, and the sites of
Greece and Rome were the homes of savages.69
It is probable that this defeat of the Libyans by
the armies of Rhamses gave a serious shock to their
progress, by disintegrating their growing state. It
appears that about this time there were various colonies
which migrated to sites on the northern shores of
the Mediterranean. One of these I have believed to
be the Etruscans, who settled on the west coast of
Italy about 1200 years before our era. They were
tall blondes, dolichocephalic, speaking an un-Aryan
language, and by their traditions came by sea from
the south.70
The Libyans were at times partially under the dominion
of the kings of Egypt, and many of them entered
the Egyptian armies as mercenaries. They allowed
the Phenicians peaceably to found the great city
of Carthage on their shores, and from these early colonists
they learned the art of writing. The alphabet
which is still preserved among some of their hordes
is derived from the Punic letters.71 When Carthage
fell, Rome seized the mastery of the coasts and productive
valleys, but her legions never penetrated to
the inland fastnesses. When the great empire tottered
to its fall, Goths and Vandals poured across and
over the straits of Gibraltar to found an ephemeral
empire in Africa; but these cavalry soldiers, knowing
to fight only on horseback, scarcely touched the
confines of the Libyan mountain homes. Even the
Arabs, sweeping resistlessly across their land in the
beginning of the eighth century, failed to penetrate
many of these fastnesses. To this day no Arab dares
venture into the land of the Rifian Berbers, and many
a tribe of the Djurjura keeps its customs and its blood
unaltered by the Koranic laws, or the Semitic intruders,
or the Code Napoleon of the French invaders.
The ancient elements of their culture are still largely
retained. Among the Kabyle and Touareg tribes of
to-day, in spite of the liberty authorized by Islam,
monogamy is the almost invariable rule, the women
are not only respected, but generally possess most of
the property, and prostitution is unknown. They are,
moreover, usually the learned class, and most of the
“tifinar” manuscripts come from the hands of these
fair scribes.72 As to the general character of the Berbers
of Morocco, we may take Sir Joseph Hooker’s
word when he tells us that they are “decidedly superior
in intelligence, industry and general activity to
their neighbors.”73
The wander-loving Libyan tribes pursued other
journeys far to the east. Following the coast of the
Mediterranean, they formed settlements on the Syrian
shore, and extended their possessions into the Mesopotamian
valley, and north into the mountain vales of
Asia Minor. The Phenicians and Canaanites, the
Amorites, who were blonde Berbers of true Libyan
type, the Hittites, and the old Assyrians, who were the
builders of Babylon and Nineveh, were of Hamitic
stock, as is shown by the accordance of the ancient
biblical statement with modern linguistic and archæological
research.74
From these culture-centres of the Hamitic stock
followed the mighty stream of human progress back
along the southern shores of the Mediterranean to Cyrene
and Carthage, and along its northern shores to
Cyprus, Greece, Italy and beyond; while the Accadian
and Summerian learning, preserved for all time in the
cuneiform writing, made its beneficient influence felt
far into India and China, and reacted beneficially on
the older wisdom of Egypt, from which it had at first
largely drawn its inspiration.
From this all too hasty survey of this most ancient
people we must turn to another, akin to it, which has
played an important, yes, the most important part in
the culture-history of our species. I refer to the ancient
Egyptians. They belonged to the Hamitic stock,
but wandering eastward from its primal seats certainly
more than ten thousand years before our era,
had possessed themselves of the Nile valley from the
mouth of the stream quite up to and beyond the first
cataract.
Their kinship to the Libyans is proved by numerous
linguistic identities between the ancient Coptic
and the Libyan dialects, and by their physical appearance.
In color they are yellowish-white, passing to a
reddish-brown though the women who are not exposed
to the sun would pass in Europe as merely
dark brunettes. In the bony structure, the skull, the
face, and the proportions, they assimilate entirely with
the white race and the Libyan type. This has been
shown by the researches of Virchow and others.75
The ancient Egyptian is represented to-day by the
modern Fellah or field-laborer of the Nile. The type
has been very well preserved, for though the riches
of this wonderful valley have attracted myriads of
foreigners in peace and war from the earliest times, all
have suffered greatly in longevity and fertility compared
to the native population. This type is of
medium stature, the limbs and body symmetrical and
delicately moulded; the skull is long, the face oval,
the hair dark and straight, or slightly curly; the eyes
are brown and small, the nose straight, the lips rather
full, the mouth small, the chin not prominent, the
beard scanty.
In all respects, in the pure Copt we must recognize
a delicate, thorough-bred member of the Eurafrican
race, in spite of his reddish-brown hue. These traits
are to be explained by the narrow limits of the Nile
valley, shut in by trackless deserts from the rest of
the world. Here for thousands of years lived this
stock, closely intermarrying, and under climatic conditions
of singular uniformity.
Whether they were the first inhabitants of the valley
has not been ascertained. Certain it is that at a
period long before the date we usually assign to Egyptian
civilization, a people dwelt on the Nile ignorant
of any implements but those of rough stone. Their
relics have been found in the stratified gravels of the
hills, and on the summits of the arid plateaus.76 I
know no reason, however, to suppose that the tribes of
the Egyptian stone age were other than the ancestors
of those who were brought under the control of the
founder of the first dynasty, the historic king Mena.
This was about 4000 B. C. But previous to him
the ancient Egyptian priests claimed some 25,000 years
of occupation under various gods and demi-gods; and
the general accuracy of their claim I am not prepared
to dispute.77 Certainly the culture of lower Egypt
must have been at a high level for thousands of years
before the date of Mena, or he could never have established
the state which we know he did. From all that
archæology has yet taught us, we must place the beginnings
of Egyptian civilization earlier than that in
the valley of the Yang tse Kiang, earlier by far than
any other on the globe. Its streams have permeated
all the lands to which the Eurafrican race have extended;
fecund as the waters of its own Nile, its elements
have nourished and developed the best intellectual
powers of the race through all subsequent
ages; to it we owe the seeds of our arts, the germs of
our sciences, the forms of our religion, the schemes of
our literatures, and the inestimable boon of our written
language. Look where you will among the most ancient
remains of the Old World culture, you find the
impress of Egypt’s Land and mind—in Etruscan
tombs, in Guanche mummy caves, in treasure houses
of Mycenæ, in Cypriote vaults, in Assyrian mounds,
under Carthagenian foundations.78 The species Man
owes nowhere else such gratitude as to these African
nations of the Eurafrican race.
The Egyptian presents the best known and complete
type of the psychical traits of the Hamitic stock.
Unideal, laborious, utilitarian, he was devoted to material
progress and the gross animal enjoyments of life.
His preferred employment was agriculture, his favorite
art the huge in architecture, his religion was a
polytheism with numberless images and pictures, his
pleasures were those of the appetite, his hopes of immortality
were bound up with the preservation of the
present body.
The singular uniformity of the Egyptian type does
not allow us to divide it into several branches, and on
account of its segregated position, it does not seem to
have had much intercourse with the east African
group of the Hamitic stock, living to the south of it.
At present this east African group of the Hamites
includes the Bedjas and Bilins between the Nile and
the Red Sea, the Afars or Danakils near the mouth of
the Red Sea, Gallas and Somalis between the gulf of
Aden and the Indian ocean, and the adjacent tribes of
the Agaouas, Adals, Khamirs, and others. In appearance
these peoples are usually reddish brown in
color, with dark wavy hair, of moderate stature and
symmetrical form, the face oval and the skull moderately
long, the nose aquiline and the chin well shaped,
and heavier built than the Egyptians.
Their life is principally nomadic, living in tents of
skin, and governed by chiefs who rule over small
communities. The descent is reckoned and property
passes on the female side. Some are Mahommedans,
but hold the faith lightly, and like the Kabyles, attach
more importance to the customs of their clan than to
the precepts of the Prophet. In many parts they
betray admixture with the Negro tribes to whom they
are neighbors, and from whom they have always obtained
slaves.
Thus the Danakils are described as sooty black,
with scanty beards, thin calves, and thick lips, but with
features and hair in other respects quite European,
their faces rarely prognathic, and their bodies symmetrical.79
The Somalis are lighter in color, but like the
Danakils, do not cultivate the soil nor establish fixed
abodes.
Owing to the unreasoning acceptance of myths as
history, it is generally believed that the Semites originated
in Asia. From what I have already said you
will appreciate that such an opinion is quite inconsistent
with modern research. We may, at the most, concede
that the peculiar form of their language and certain
physical traits were developed during their long
residence in the peninsula of Arabia, where history
first finds them. But that they entered Arabia in remote
pre-historic times from Africa, and not from
Asia, is now acknowledged by an increasing number of
learned and unprejudiced writers.80
There is a difference of opinion whether this immigration
was by the way of the Isthmus of Suez or the
Straits of Bab el Mandeb, but the course of their wanderings
in Arabia seems to have been from north to
south, the Ethiopian Semites being distinctly emigrants
from the other side of the Red Sea. Hence
the probability is that the ancestors of the ancient
Arabians wandered from the Libyan plateau, or the
eastern Atlas, through the Delta into the region of the
Sinaitic mountains, whence they spread south and
east, forming several distinct groups.81
The first of these included the Arabians proper. At
a very early period they became divided into a northern
and southern portion, the former represented by
the Ishmaelites and Bedawins, the latter by the ancient
Himyarites, Sabeans and Nabotheans, and the
modern Ehkili and kindred clans. The Himyaritic
nations had important cities, and possessed a written
literature at least 700 B. C., and probably much
earlier.82 The Queen of Sheba, who paid a memorable
visit to King Solomon, came from one of these cities,
and her journey is strong testimony to the admiration
for learning which prevailed in her land, and which
she so evidently fostered.
At that time, and for centuries afterwards, there
were few parts of the world more favored than the
southern portions of the peninsula. It was known as
“Arabia felix,” Araby the Blest, and was famed for
its abundant products, its spices and perfumes, and the
wealth and luxury of its inhabitants. Some change
of climate apparently, and the inroads of the Ishmaelitic
hordes, quite destroyed this happy condition about
the fifth century, A. D. The Himyaritic language
disappeared, the cities were laid waste, many of the
people migrated to Africa or sank into despised outcasts,
as the present Ehkili of the Hadramaut. In
this manner the whole of the great peninsula fell under
the control of the true Arab.
It is he who preserves in his language the oldest and
purest form of Semitic speech, and in mind and body
its most pronounced mental and physical type. He is
rather tall (1.65), his face oval, the nose straight or
aquiline, the features sometimes singularly noble and
prepossessing, the skull long (index 73°-75°), the
complexion ruddy rather than brown, when due allowance
is made for the tan, and the hair slightly wavy
or straight. Crisp hair is looked upon with disapproval,
as indicating mixed and ignoble blood.83 In temperament
the Arab is abstemious, and his powers of
physical endurance are phenomenal. His mental temperament
is that of an idealist; he has added nothing
to the grand creations of plastic art, nothing to inventions
of utility in life, nothing to the marvels of architecture
or the beauties that appeal to the senses; he
cares neither for history nor the drama. In his dreams
he conquers the world, and it falls at his feet; in fact,
his greatest states have been ephemeral bubbles.
Yet his dreams have been realized. The Semite has
conquered the world, and it is at his feet. Twice have
arisen among his people majestic forms, before whom
all civilized nations bow, Jesus and Mahomet.
The religious idealism which led the Semite in the
days of Moses to reject the images of stone and wood
and proclaim that God is one, overawed in its later
expressions the whole of the white race, and now extends
its sway to the farthest seas.
Though the Aryan to-day may dislike the Semite
and doubt of the God whom he preached, let him not
forget that the first vivid impression of such a great
idea came from the Semitic stock. If in his marts,
his diplomacy and his learned professions, he finds the
Semites still pressing him aside, let him remember
that this is the people whose destiny seems to be to
own no country, but to rule all.
Of tribes is evidently descended from fugitives from
the Arabian peninsula. The Ethiopians, or Geez
(a word meaning emigrants), speak a dialect the nearest
related to the Himyaritic of the inscriptions. It
has a literature and an ancient alphabet of its own.
The Tigre, the Massawa, the Amhara, and, further to
the south, the Harrari, are Semitic dialects, more or
less akin to the Ethiopic.
The period when this migration took place is not
precisely known, but it was at a calculable period before
the beginning of our era. Quite likely it was
about the time of the dissolution of the Joktanide
monarchy in the Hadramaut. There can be no question
but that the course of migration at this point was
from Arabia into Africa.
The Tigre is the predominant nation of North
Abyssinia, the Amhara in the south of that region.
The Harrari extends into the land of the Somalis.
All these are of Himyaritic descent, but near them
are a number of later Arab tribes who speak dialects
of the modern Arabic. These are the Jalin about
Khartoum, and others near Senaar and Baqqara, west
of the Nile. There are also many Jews, who have
inhabited the country from the early centuries of our
era.
An infusion of negro blood is visible in much of
the population. Their color is dark brown, the hair is
crisp, and the features are negroid. Where this
mingling is absent, the color is a light or bright
brown, the face oval, the nose thin, lips not at all
thick, and the hair wavy and straight. In other
words, the features are truly European, framed in a
brown setting.
The Abyssinians proper have always been an agricultural,
pastoral and manufacturing people. The
soil is fertile and the climate temperate, but there are
no large rivers, and communication is difficult. The
crops are barley, dates, millet, sugar-cane, etc.
Formerly the country was under one ruler, who was
called the Grand Negus. The late “Negus,” Theodoras,
could put in the field over fifty thousand fighting
men, and made himself so obnoxious to Europeans
that the English sent an expedition against him in
1868, and he perished under the ruins of his capital,
Magdala.
From the fourth century the principal religion in
Abyssinia has been Christianity, but in a corrupt form,
mixed with the ancient heathen observances, such as
ceremonies at the rise of certain stars, and veneration
of holy stones and springs. The clergy are numerous,
estimated at about 72,000, and exert a leading
influence in the state. There are many monks and
nuns living in cloisters, and possessing extensive
holdings. The church service is conducted with an
effort at pomp, and there is a considerable sacred
literature, of very little value. The influence of the
religious teaching on the people is scarcely visible
except in making them fanatical, superstitious and
averse to enlightenment. Abyssinia thus presents the
picture of a country which for more than 1500 years
has been a Christian state, and where Christianity has
wholly failed to render the people moral, intelligent
or pure.
The third group of the Semites was the Chaldean,
including the Syrians and Arameans, the later Assyrians
and Babylonians, the Israelites, Samaritans
and Jews. All these were from early times deeply
tinged with other blood. The Syrians and Chaldeans
removed first from the Arabian peninsula, and their
dialects depart the furthest from the pure stock.
Abraham, the traditional ancestor of the Israelites, left
northeastern Arabia for Mesopotamia about 2000
B. C., to dwell in “Ur of the Chaldees,” a city near
the mouth of the Euphrates. Already the Chaldees
had secured from the older Hamitic settlers a portion
of Mesopotamia, and gradually extended their conquests.
Many of the Syrians united with the Hamitic residents
on the coast, so that the Phœnicians became
largely Semitized. All these nations were in constant
intercourse with the highly developed civilization of
Egypt, as is shown by the Mosaic books, and from that
source derived most of the germs of their intellectual
growth. In spite of their love of travel and commerce,
in spite of their dispersion over the earth, this group
has retained a striking individuality. Many ethnographers
charge it against the Jews that the presence
of blondes among them, and of brachycephalic heads,
proves a crossing of the blood. This is not the case.
The Semitic stock is a markedly white type of the
race, and in all ages fair complexion, light eyes and
hair, have been admired as especially beautiful. This
is repeatedly referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures, and
is shown by observation among these people at the
present day.84
The physical type of the Jew is well known and
unmistakable; wavy hair, dark or blonde, full beard,
eyes soft, nose prominent, rather heavy, with an accentuated
and peculiar outline, lips full, face oval, skull
medium or long. Nor are his mental traits less familiar;
a pliant, supple disposition, a distaste for physical
labor or the toil of the pioneer or soldier; deficiency
in personal courage; subtlety in monetary
transactions; quickness in applying social or individual
weaknesses to his own benefit; industry in intellectual
pursuits; love of display and of position; strong
devotion to family ties.
This is the Jew as we know him in the tussle of
modern life, a character prominent in all European and
American cities, without a nationality, in conflict with
the prevailing religion, suspected and disliked, but
wielding an influence out of all proportion to the
numerical strength of his people. It may be regarded
as continuing in his person that remarkable intellectual
superiority which the South Mediterranean Branch of
the white race has from the earliest time exerted on
the history of man.
(Tribes in italics are extinct.)
| I. Euscaric Stock. |
1. Euscaric group. |
Euscaldonac, Basques, Sards, Siculi, Aquitanians, Picts (?),
Ligurians (?), Cantabrians. |
| |
| II. Aryac Stock. |
1. Celtic group. |
Gauls, Highland Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Manx, Bretons,
Celtiberians, Cymri. |
| 2. Italic group. |
Latins, Umbrians, Oscans, Sabines, Italians, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, Roumanians, Wallachians. |
| 3. Illyric group. |
Illyrians, Albanians, Thracians,Japyges (?). |
| 4. Hellenic group. |
Pelasgi, Phrygians, Lydians, Macedonians, Greeks. |
| 5. Lettic group. |
Letts, Lithuanians, Old Prussians. |
| 6. Teutonic group. |
Goths, Vandals, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Suevi,
Scandinavians, Germans, Danes, Dutch, English, Anglo-Americans. |
| 7. Slavonic group. |
Russians, Poles, Czechs, Servians, Croatians, Wends, Bulgarians,
Montenegrins. |
| 8. Indo-Eranic group. |
Armenians, Persians, Bactrians, Hindoos,
Kafirs, Dards, Beluchis, Hunzas, Gypsies. |
| |
| III. Caucasic Stock. |
1. Lesghic group. |
Avars, Laks, Udes, Kurins. |
| 2. Circassic group. |
Circassians, Abkhasians. |
| 3. Kistic group. |
Tush, Karaboulaks. |
| 4. Georgic group. |
Georgians, Mingrelians, Lazs. |