Africa is not, nor in the past has it been, a black man's land. The Hamites, who in earliest record occupied its northern shores and eastern prolongation, were not negroes. The true Hamite is Caucasian. The Hamitic domination of North Africa yielded to the conquering Aryan, the Aryan to the Arab Semite, and the Semite, in turn, to the modern European-the English, French, Spanish and Italian,—all of whom are of the white race.1 Because of the absence of written record, we are not to infer that the determining of prehistoric migrations is a task yielding doubtful results. Race movement, particularly that of the Caucasian, is determinable by race culture which has everywhere waymarked Caucasian migrations; whilst the physical modification of the peoples with whom the white man has come into contact furnishes also satisfactory data. Language, too, may be offered as evidence. But such evidence, while valuable, is not always trustworthy; for the white man has often imposed his language upon the non-white and, in turn, he has, in some instances, acquired the tongues of other races. When two races come into permanent contact, there is blood amalgamation, creating a mongrel race; but the language of the one or the other will prevail. "No language is mixed in its inner mechanism." Mankind grouped in race divisions has ever been 1See notes at the end of this chapter. in a state of flux, moving, counter-moving, conquering, amalgamating. Just as in recorded history we know that the Caucasian has been in motion, restless, daring, seeking unknown lands and dominating other peoples; so, in the vast period before the light of record, we can infer that such were his characteristics, for it is certain that no race has suddenly assumed world dominion. Such pre-eminence implies ages of preparation. Civilization dawns upon the Nile and the Euphrates, and, after some centuries, its center is shifted to Greece. But before Socrates and Plato taught, the Eastern Aryans (Nordics) had transplanted Caucasian culture along the Indus and the Ganges, and had penetrated through India to Oceania. Rome, Carthage and Greece struggled for supremacy and Rome prevailed. After five centuries of conflict, Rome's scepter passed to Germanic hands and since that time, apart from the temporary ascendency of the Moslem Arab, Teutonic peoples have dominated progress. Thus is briefly summarized the shifting of higher culture centers for the past ten thousand years, all of which owe origin and sustenance to Caucasian peoples. But scientific research and exploration enable us to peer beyond this short period in human history into the untold ages of which there is no written record. Anthropology, archaeology, and philology have given up their secrets to the extent of enabling scientists to deduce reasonable conclusions as to race origins and to follow more certainly race movements. The constancy of skull formation, identifying the race type of skeletal remains; the remote antiquity of the implements of primitive man found in his caves and burial mounds; the dispersion throughout vast areas of allied language groups give data no less certain than written history in determining early race movements. While the present peoples of Europe, which for convenience we group together as the Caucasian race, have left their impress by a modification of the physical type of the races with which they have dwelt, and to a certain extent have modified their speech, yet the most conspicuous waymark of their migrations is not their mongrel offspring, nor the spread of the Caucasic tongue, but their great stone monuments, their burial mounds, and the ruins of their ancient cities. Hybrid groups have migrated to localities which have not been occupied by the true Caucasian, and, likewise, peoples who have learned a Caucasic speech; but the white man's cultural centers cannot have arisen in any portion of the world where the white man has not been. However, these cultural centers of the early white man nowhere exist apart from mongrel Caucasic peoples, while speech also often attests the white man's earlier presence. Great numbers of the megalithic monuments, which mark generally the distribution of the early Mediterranean race, are in North Africa and in North and West Europe. From these centers the monuments or well defined burial mounds extend in two routes across Asia-a northern route through Siberia, Manchuria and Korea into Japan, and a southern route beginning in North Africa and passing through Asia Minor and Arabia into India and Oceania. Similar monuments are found elsewhere in territory occupied by the early white man, but the routes indicated mark their main extensions. The ancient monuments, the use of which was to mark the burial places of the early Caucasian, exist in two types, the cell and the block, which have developed into the modern family vault and the tombstone. The block type was used to designate the location of the cell type, which was covered by a mound. The value of these widely dispersed prehistoric monuments as waymarks in following the migrations of the early white man is recognized by ethnologists. J. McMillan Brown calls them "a Caucasian track across the earth." E. B. Taylor speaks of the "rude stone monuments which may be traced in a remarkable line on the map. A. H. Keane, one of the foremost British ethnologists, places great emphasis upon their value. "More im 1Maori and Polynesian, p. 7. 992 portant, especially in connection with early migrations, is the subject of the geographical distribution of the neolithic monuments. Broadly speaking, all the stone structures of the cell and block types are mainly confined in Asia to the south (Naga, Khasi and Jaintea Hills, the Deccan south of the Vindyha Range, Irania, Asia Minor, Moab, Syria, Palestine, Arabia); in Africa to Mauritania taken in its widest sense (Tripolitana to the Atlantic); in Europe to the south (Crimea, Mediterranean Islands, Iberia); the west (Gaul, Belgium, and the British Isles); and the north (Scandanavia)." This megalithic engineering skill is not a stage in the development of the several races. It is not found among blacks or yellows. The Asiatics, in whose countries these monuments are found, are the mixbreed descendants of the megalithic builders, or later intruders. The monuments along the ancient migrant routes show that the Caucasian of the stone age, like his descendants of today, was a maritime race, the only race that has not halted at the sea.2 The monuments generally adhere to the seas or to minor water courses. Water is an effective barrier to the negro's 1Ethnology, p. 133. 2The Nordic race is master of the sea as it is master of the land, but the Mediterranean race has distinguished itself upon the water. The Phoenicians were Mediterraneans. The Polynesians in colonizing the remote islands of the Pacific Ocean proved that race to be among the world's greatest sailors, but the Polynesians were clearly not of the yellow or black races, though at the present time they may show admixture with both of these races. |