C H A P T E R VI.
AFRICAN TYPES.
Our preceding chapters have established that the so-called Caucasian
types may he traced upwards from the present day, in an infinite
variety of primitive forms, through every historical record, and yet
farther hack through the petroglyphs of Egypt (where we lose them,
in the mediaeval darkness of the earliest recorded people, some 3500
years before Christ), not as a few stray individuals, but as populous
nations, possessing distinct physical features and separate national
characteristics. ¥ e now turn to the African types, not simply because
they present an opposite extreme from the Caucasian, but
mainly because* from their early communication with Egypt, much
detail, in respect to their physical characters, has been preserved in
the catacombs and on the monuments.
In our general remarks on species, we have shown that no classification
of races yet put forth has any foundation whatever in nature;
and that, after several thousands of years of migrations of races and
comminglings of types, all attempts at following them up to their
original birth-places must, from the absence of historic annuls of
those primordial times, and in the present state of knowledge, be
utterly hopeless. This remark applies with quite as much force to
Negroes as to Caucasians: for Africa first exhibits herself, from one
extreme to the other, covered with dark-skinned races of various
shades, and possessing endless physical characters, which, being distinct,
we must regard as primitive, until it can be shown that causes
exist capable of transforming one type into another. The Negroes
may be traced on the monuments of Egypt, with certainty, as nations,
back to the XHth dynasty, about 2300 years b . c. : and it cannot be
assumed that they were not then as old as any other race of our geological
epoch.
In order to develop our ideas more clearly, we propose to take a rapid
glance at the population of Africa. We shall show, that not only is
that vast continent inhabited by types quite as varied as those of Europe
or Asia, but that there exists a regular gradation, from the Cape of Good
Hope to the Isthmus of Suez, of which the Hottentot and Bushman
form the lowest, and the Egyptian and Berber types the highest links;
that all these gradations of African man are indigenous to the soil;
and that no historical times have existed when the same gradations
were not.
When we compare the continent of Africa with the other great
divisions of the world', it is apparent that it forms a striking contrast
in every particular. Its whole physical geography, its climates, its
populations, its faunas, its florae, &c., are all peculiar. Upon examination
of maps of Europe, Asia, and America, we see indeed, in each
continent, great diversities of climate, soil, elevations of surface, and
other phenomena; still no natural barriers exist so insurmountable
as to prevent the migrations and comminglings of races, and consequent
confusion of tongues and types: but in Africa the case is
quite different. Here stand obstructions, fixed by nature, which man
in early times had no means of overcoming. Not only from the time
of. Menes, the first of the Pharaohs, to that of Moses, but from the
latter epoch to that of Christ, Africa, south of the Equator, was as
much a terra incognita to the inhabitants of Eusope, Asia, Egypt, and
the Barbary States, as certain interior parts of that continent are to
us at the present day. We know that, long after the Christian era,
the nautical skill necessary for exploring expeditions, no less than for
the transportation of emigrants to those distant latitudes, was wanting;
and we have only to turn to any standard work (R it t e r ’s , for
instance) on Ancient Geography, to be satisfied of these facts. I t is
equally certain that what is now termed “ Central Africa” could not
have been reached by caravan from the Mediterranean coast, before
the introduction of camels from Asia, through Egypt, into Barbary.
The epoch of this animal’s introduction is now known to antedate
the Christian era but a century or two. I t is contended, by the advocates
of a common origin for mankind, that this African continent
was first populated by Asiatic emigrants into Egypt; that these immigrants
passed on, step by step, gradually changing their physical
organizations, under climatic influences, until the whole continent,
from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, was peopled by
the various tribes we now behold scattered over that enormous space.
But such an hypothesis can hardly be maintained, in the face of the
fact asserted by Lepsius, and familiar to all Egyptologists, that Negro
and other races already existed in Northern Africa, on the Upper Nile,
2300 years b . c. — existed, we repeat, in despite of natural barriers
which could not have been passed by any means previously known;
and, moreover, that all truly African races have, from the earliest
epochas, spoken languages radically distinct from every Asiatic tongue.
Linguistic researches have established that, prior to the introduction
of Asiatic elements into the Lower Valley of the Nile, the speech of