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Page 4
In the seventh century the All-Mother, Asia, claimed Africa again for her
own and blew a cloud of Semitic Mohammedanism all across North Africa,
veiling the dark continent from Europe for a thousand years and converting
vast masses of the blacks to Islam. The Portuguese began to raise the veil
in the fifteenth century, sailing down the Atlantic coast and initiating
the modern slave trade. The Spanish, French, Dutch, and English followed
them, but as traders in men rather than explorers.
The Portuguese explored the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, visiting the
interior kingdoms, and then passing by the mouth of the Congo proceeded
southward. Eventually they rounded the Cape of Good Hope and pursued their
explorations as far as the mountains of Abyssinia. This began the modern
exploration of Africa, which is a curious fairy tale, and recalls to us
the great names of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Stanley, Barth,
Schweinfurth, and many others. In this way Africa has been made known to
the modern world.
The difficulty of this modern lifting of the veil of centuries emphasizes
two physical facts that underlie all African history: the peculiar
inaccessibility of the continent to peoples from without, which made it so
easily possible for the great human drama played here to hide itself from
the ears of other worlds; and, on the other hand, the absence of interior
barriers--the great stretch of that central plateau which placed
practically every budding center of culture at the mercy of barbarism,
sweeping a thousand miles, with no Alps or Himalayas or Appalachians to
hinder.
With this peculiarly uninviting coast line and the difficulties in
interior segregation must be considered the climate of Africa. While there
is much diversity and many salubrious tracts along with vast barren
wastes, yet, as Sir Harry Johnston well remarks, "Africa is the chief
stronghold of the real Devil--the reactionary forces of Nature hostile to
the uprise of Humanity. Here Beelzebub, King of the Flies, marshals his
vermiform and arthropod hosts--insects, ticks, and nematode worms--which
more than in other continents (excepting Negroid Asia) convey to the skin,
veins, intestines, and spinal marrow of men and other vertebrates the
microorganisms which cause deadly, disfiguring, or debilitating diseases,
or themselves create the morbid condition of the persecuted human being,
beasts, bird, reptile, frog, or fish."[2] The inhabitants of this land
have had a sheer fight for physical survival comparable with that in no
other great continent, and this must not be forgotten when we consider
their history.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Von Luschan: in _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 16.
[2] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, pp. 14-15.
II THE COMING OF BLACK MEN
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.
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