In refinement, the Ethiopians held women in a superior position in the
social scale, which says Dr. Reich, the historian, “Shows a higher point
of delicacy and refinement than either their Eastern or Western
successors. Colossal in art, profound in philosophy and religion, and in
possession of the knowledge of the arts and sciences, =the Ethiopian
race exhibits the astounding phenomenon of an elevated civilization at a
period when the other nations of the world were almost unknown=.”
Referring to this question of psychology in civilization exhibited by
the Ethiopians, the same Dr. Reich, in his “History of Civilization,”
says:
“People, as a rule cherish the idea that nations are like individuals,
and that accordingly nations have their childhood, their youth, and
their old age, and their death just as we are used to see in
individuals. This entire idea is utterly false. There is no such
parallel development. =A nation is a mental thing only.=”
Dr. Scholes, in his “Glimpses of the Ages,” citing Heeren’s “Manual of
Ancient History,” relative to the Ethiopians, says:
“It may be gathered from the monuments and records that Upper Egypt
(Ethiopia) was the first seat of civilization, which originating in the
South, spread by the settlement of colonies toward the North (Egypt).
“These migrations are proved by the representations, both in sculpture
and painting found in the yet remaining monuments throughout Egypt.”
“Glimpses of Ages,” p. 191. Heeren, p. 57.
There were tribes among the Ethiopians which were of a low grade of
civilization, just as in the most civilized countries of the present
times, there are peoples of a very low grade, not only in civilization
but in intelligence. But, there existed a highly cultured and civilized
Ethiopian people, who dwelt in cities, erected temples and other
edifices, and who had good government and humane laws. Moreover, their
fame and progress in knowledge and their social arts spread in the
earliest ages over a considerable part of the earth.
Upon the authority of Heeren, already referred to, and upon their own
investigations, Dr. Glidden and Dr. Morton, who are quoted in Scholes’
“Glimpses of the Ages,” made an examination of the Egyptian skulls, and
gave it as their opinion that the Egyptians and the Ethiopians never
came from Asia, but were indigenous or aboriginal inhabitants of the
African Nile country, and were all of the “Negroid type.”