Let the Colored American live up to the records of the past history of
his race and prove himself worthy of his great ancestry.
It was said in another place in this article that there appear to have
been two great civilizations at a very early period of time. One
flourished in the Nile country, maintained by black men, and the other
in Crete.
It is an astonishing fact, for it is fast developing into a historical
fact, that a common race of men arose, and that in the course of
centuries, they developed differing physical characteristics, due to
climatic necessities, either black, brown or swarthy, and that they
peopled Europe and Africa, the first civilizations arising in Crete and
the Soudan, which is the very heart of the continent of Africa,
extending from the Equator to 25 degrees north latitude, and from 20
degrees west longitude to 50 degrees east longitude. A territory
comprising 1,650 by 4,650 miles extent, and including the “Phut”
territory, it is nearly as large again.
All this vast territory constituted the Empire of Ethiopia. An empire
that was able more than 600 years before the Christian era to send a
million of fully equipped soldiers against a Jewish king.
A very slight circumstance has been the beginning of explorations that
will undoubtedly alter all of our text-books upon the subject of the
origin of the human race.
A German explorer recently unearthed, in a remote region in the Soudan,
a bronze head of fine and exquisite workmanship. This has been taken as
another evidence of an ancient African civilization—indeed, a black
men’s civilization, and has operated as an incentive for other
explorations.