The movements of prehistoric man can be seen as yet but dimly in the
uncertain mists of time. This is the story that to-day seems most
probable: from some center in southern Asia primitive human beings began
to differentiate in two directions. Toward the south appeared the
primitive Negro, long-headed and with flattened hair follicle. He spread
along southern Asia and passed over into Africa, where he survives to-day
as the reddish dwarfs of the center and the Bushmen of South Africa.
Northward and eastward primitive man became broader headed and
straight-haired and spread over eastern Asia, forming the Mongolian type.
Either through the intermingling of these two types or, as some prefer to
think, by the direct prolongation of the original primitive man, a third
intermediate type of human being appeared with hair and cranial
measurement intermediate between the primitive Negro and Mongolian. All
these three types of men intermingled their blood freely and developed
variations according to climate and environment.
Other and older theories and legends of the origin and spread of mankind
are of interest now only because so many human beings have believed them
in the past. The biblical story of Shem, Ham, and Japheth retains the
interest of a primitive myth with its measure of allegorical truth,[3] but
has, of course, no historic basis.
The older "Aryan" theory assumed the migration into Europe of one dominant
Asiatic race of civilized conquerors, to whose blood and influence all
modern culture was due. To this "white" race Semitic Asia, a large part of
black Africa, and all Europe was supposed to belong. This "Aryan" theory
has been practically abandoned in the light of recent research, and it
seems probable now that from the primitive Negroid stock evolved in Asia
the Semites either by local variation or intermingling with other stocks;
later there developed the Mediterranean race, with Negroid
characteristics, and the modern Negroes. The blue-eyed, light-haired
Germanic people may have arisen as a modern variation of the mixed peoples
produced by the mingling of Asiatic and African elements. The last word on
this development has not yet been said, and there is still much to learn
and explain; but it is certainly proved to-day beyond doubt that the
so-called Hamites of Africa, the brown and black curly and frizzly-haired
inhabitants of North and East Africa, are not "white" men if we draw the
line between white and black in any logical way.
The primitive Negroid race of men developed in Asia wandered eastward as
well as westward. They entered on the one hand Burmah and the South Sea
Islands, and on the other hand they came through Mesopotamia and gave
curly hair and a Negroid type to Jew, Syrian, and Assyrian. Ancient
statues of Indian divinities show the Negro type with black face and
close-curled hair, and early Babylonian culture was Negroid. In Arabia the
Negroes may have divided, and one stream perhaps wandered into Europe by
way of Syria. Traces of these Negroes are manifest not only in skeletons,
but in the brunette type of all South Europe. The other branch proceeded
to Egypt and tropical Africa. Another, but perhaps less probable, theory
is that ancient Negroes may have entered Africa from Europe, since the
most ancient skulls of Algeria are Negroid.
The primitive African was not an extreme type. One may judge from modern
pygmy and Bushmen that his color was reddish or yellow, and his skull was
sometimes round like the Mongolian. He entered Africa not less than fifty
thousand years ago and settled eventually in the broad region between Lake
Chad and the Great Lakes and remained there long stretches of years.
After a lapse of perhaps thirty thousand years there entered Africa a
further migration of Asiatic people, Negroid in many characteristics, but
lighter and straighter haired than the primitive Negroes. From this
Mediterranean race was developed the modern inhabitants of the shores of
the Mediterranean in Europe, Asia, and Africa and, by mingling with the
primitive Negroes, the ancient Egyptians and modern Negroid races of
Africa.
As we near historic times the migrations of men became more frequent from
Asia and from Europe, and in Africa came movements and minglings which
give to the whole of Africa a distinct mulatto character. The primitive
Negro stock was "mulatto" in the sense of being not widely differentiated
from the dark, original Australoid stock. As the earlier yellow Negro
developed in the African tropics to the bigger, blacker type, he was
continually mingling his blood with similar types developed in temperate
climes to sallower color and straighter hair.
We find therefore, in Africa to-day, every degree of development in
Negroid stocks and every degree of intermingling of these developments,
both among African peoples and between Africans, Europeans, and Asiatics.
The mistake is continually made of considering these types as transitions
between absolute Caucasians and absolute Negroes. No such absolute type
ever existed on either side. Both were slowly differentiated from a common
ancestry and continually remingled their blood while the differentiating
was progressing. From prehistoric times down to to-day Africa is, in this
sense, primarily the land of the mulatto. So, too, was earlier Europe and
Asia; only in these countries the mulatto was early bleached by the
climate, while in Africa he was darkened.
It is not easy to summarize the history of these dark African peoples,
because so little is known and so much is still in dispute. Yet, by
avoiding the real controversies and being unafraid of mere questions of
definition, we may trace a great human movement with considerable
definiteness.
Three main Negro types early made their appearance: the lighter and
smaller primitive stock; the larger forest Negro in the center and on the
west coast, and the tall, black Nilotic Negro in the eastern Sudan. In the
earliest times we find the Negroes in the valley of the Nile, pressing
downward from the interior. Here they mingled with Semitic types, and
after a lapse of millenniums there arose from this mingling the culture of
Ethiopia and Egypt, probably the first of higher human cultures.
To the west of the Nile the Negroes expanded straight across the continent
to the Atlantic. Centers of higher culture appeared very early along the
Gulf of Guinea and curling backward met Egyptian, Ethiopian, and even
European and Asiatic influences about Lake Chad. To the southeast, nearer
the primitive seats of the earliest African immigrants and open to
Egyptian and East Indian influences, the Negro culture which culminated at
Zymbabwe arose, and one may trace throughout South Africa its wide
ramifications.
All these movements gradually aroused the central tribes to unrest. They
beat against the barriers north, northeast, and west, but gradually
settled into a great southeastward migration. Calling themselves proudly
La Bantu (The People), they grew by agglomeration into a warlike nation,
speaking one language. They eventually conquered all Africa south of the
Gulf of Guinea and spread their influence to the northward.
While these great movements were slowly transforming Africa, she was also
receiving influences from beyond her shores and sending influences out.
With mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest touch, so much so
that to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem Egyptian in origin. The
truth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and from
her vantage ground as almost the only African gateway received and
transmitted Negro ideals.
Phoenician, Greek, and Roman came into touch more or less with black
Africa. Carthage, that North African city of a million men, had a large
caravan trade with Negroland in ivory, metals, cloth, precious stones, and
slaves. Black men served in the Carthaginian armies and marched with
Hannibal on Rome. In some of the North African kingdoms the infiltration
of Negro blood was very large and kings like Massinissa and Jugurtha were
Negroid. By way of the Atlantic the Carthaginians reached the African west
coast. Greek and Roman influences came through the desert, and the
Byzantine Empire and Persia came into communication with Negroland by way
of the valley of the Nile. The influence of these trade routes, added to
those of Egypt, Ethiopia, Benin, and Yoruba, stimulated centers of culture
in the central and western Sudan, and European and African trade early
reached large volume.
Negro soldiers were used largely in the armies that enabled the
Mohammedans to conquer North Africa and Spain. Beginning in the tenth
century and slowly creeping across the desert into Negroland, the new
religion found an already existent culture and came, not a conqueror, but
as an adapter and inspirer. Civilization received new impetus and a wave
of Mohammedanism swept eastward, erecting the great kingdoms of Melle, the
Songhay, Bornu, and the Hausa states. The older Negro culture was not
overthrown, but, like a great wedge, pushed upward and inward from Yoruba,
and gave stubborn battle to the newer culture for seven or eight
centuries.
Then it was, in the fifteenth century, that the heart disease of Africa
developed in its most virulent form. There is a modern theory that black
men are and always have been naturally slaves. Nothing is further from the
truth. In the ancient world Africa was no more a slave hunting ground than
Europe or Asia, and both Greece and Rome had much larger numbers of white
slaves than of black. It was natural that a stream of black slaves should
have poured into Egypt, because the chief line of Egyptian conquest and
defense lay toward the heart of Africa. Moreover, the Egyptians,
themselves of Negro descent, had not only Negro slaves but Negroes among
their highest nobility and even among their Pharaohs. Mohammedan
conquerors enslaved peoples of all colors in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but
eventually their empire centered in Asia and Africa and their slaves came
principally from these countries. Asia submitted to Islam except in the
Far East, which was self-protecting. Negro Africa submitted only
partially, and the remaining heathen were in small states which could not
effectively protect themselves against the Mohammedan slave trade. In this
wise the slave trade gradually began to center in Africa, for religious
and political rather than for racial reasons.
The typical African culture was the culture of family, town, and small
tribe. Hence domestic slavery easily developed a slave trade through war
and commerce. Only the integrating force of state building could have
stopped this slave trade. Was this failure to develop the great state a
racial characteristic? This does not seem a fair conclusion. In four great
centers state building began in Africa. In Ethiopia several large states
were built up, but they tottered before the onslaughts of Egypt, Persia,
Rome, and Byzantium, on the one hand, and finally fell before the
turbulent Bantu warriors from the interior. The second attempt at empire
building began in the southeast, but the same Bantu hordes, pressing now
slowly, now fiercely, from the congested center of the continent,
gradually overthrew this state and erected on its ruins a series of
smaller and more transient kingdoms.
The third attempt at state building arose on the Guinea coast in Benin and
Yoruba. It never got much beyond a federation of large industrial cities.
Its expansion toward the Congo valley was probably a prime cause of the
original Bantu movements to the southeast. Toward the north and northeast,
on the other hand, these city-states met the Sudanese armed with the new
imperial Mohammedan idea. Just as Latin Rome gave the imperial idea to the
Nordic races, so Islam brought this idea to the Sudan.
In the consequent attempts at imperialism in the western Sudan there
arose the largest of the African empires. Two circumstances, however,
militated against this empire building: first, the fierce resistance of
the heathen south made war continuous and slaves one of the articles of
systematic commerce. Secondly, the highways of legitimate African commerce
had for millenniums lain to the north. These were suddenly closed by the
Moors in the sixteenth century, and the Negro empires were thrown into the
turmoil of internal war.
It was then that the European slave traders came from the southwest. They
found partially disrupted Negro states on the west coast and falling
empires in the Sudan, together with the old unrest of over-population and
migration in the valley of the Congo. They not only offered a demand for
the usual slave trade, but they increased it to an enormous degree, until
their demand, added to the demand of the Mohammedan in Africa and Asia,
made human beings the highest priced article of commerce in Africa. Under
such circumstances there could be but one end: the virtual uprooting of
ancient African culture, leaving only misty reminders of the ruin in the
customs and work of the people. To complete this disaster came the
partition of the continent among European nations and the modern attempt
to exploit the country and the natives for the economic benefit of the
white world, together with the transplanting of black nations to the new
western world and their rise and self-assertion there.