THE ORIGIN OF THE NEGRO RACE.

BY SIR HENRY M. STANLEY.

THE indefinite extension of time which we must allow to cover the numberless migrations of families, tribes and sub-tribes from Asia to Africa, the natural overlapping of one by the other which must necessarily have occurred, and the consequent mixture of types from this and countless other causes, make it impossible to unravel the tangle of humanity that was formed in Egypt, the threshold of the Dark Continent, in the earliest ages.

Discoveries have lately been made in Egypt by Flinders Petrie, De Morgan and Amelineau, and in South Africa near the Buffalo River by Dr. Hillier, which go to prove that, though the old Egyptian kingdom may have been founded between six and seven thousand years ago, this lapse of time is but insignificant compared to that between to-day and that far-reaching date in the neolithic age when the first human family entered Egypt.

Before stating my theory as to the origin of the negro race, I should like to lead the reader in a general way from that period just preceding the legendary and historic period down to the present condition of negro types found in Africa. At the outset I frankly confess my agreement with those savants who give an Asiatic origin to man, because, first of all, the very earliest records, monumental or written, prove the influence of Asia on Africa, while there seems to be nothing to exhibit African influence on Asia. On the sculptures of Egyptian monuments, on the face of the Sphynx, in the features of the most ancient mummies, and in those of Egyptian wooden and stone statues, I see the AfroAsiatic type as clearly as I see it in the faces of the fellaheen and nobles of the present day.

Down to the fifth century before Christ, Egypt was commonly believed to belong to Asia; but though since that period she has

been admitted to belong to Africa, because of her river and the land formed by it, moderns as well as the ancients have persisted in acting on the supposition that she is Asiatic. Before the later Asiatics crowded into Egypt, there was, no doubt, an earlier race which we distinguish by the term African, because we find comparatively little of that type in other continents; but it is clear that, whatever proportion of it sought refuge in the interior of Africa, enough individuals were left to make an indelible impression on the newcomers, and form a separate race, which on account of its peculiar character came to be known as Egyptian. From the time when this new race founded the kingdom, formulated its severe religion, and distinguished itself by its aloofness from other peoples, there appears to have been a perpetual struggle as to whether Asiatic or African blood should predominate; and ancient writers were as much puzzled as moderns are as to what continent the old Egyptian race was originally derived from.

Leaving the primitive African out for the present, let me say that we must go back to pre-Aryan times to find the ancestry of those early Asiatics who, entering Egypt, originated the peculiar Egyptian race. These people are commonly called Turanians, and they have been variously described as "dusky, dark, black, blackskinned, and their hair as varying from coarse, straight, black hair," to "curly," "crinkly" and "woolly." The centre of this race appears to have been in the neighborhood of Accad, where, it has been found, a King Sargon reigned about 3800, B. C.

Sixteen hundred miles to the northeast there was developed in process of time a different race altogether, of light complexion, with blue or gray eyes, and "blood brown" and light hair. It was called "Arya," which means the noble or ruling race. Finding its habitat near the Hindoo Koosh too limited, it spread itself westward over the Iranic plateau, and across the Tigris into the Euphrates Valley.

At what early date the Turanians near Accad first felt the pressure of the Aryan multitudes, history makes no mention; but when the Aryans, still expanding, reached the Indus about 2000, B. C., they found India peopled by a Turanian population. Therefore, by inference we may assume that, if the Indian peninsula from the Himalaya to the Deccan was already so well filled at 2000, B. C., Egypt, lying much nearer and smaller, must have been occupied some thousands of years previous.

In the Mahabharata, the Aryan epic written about 1500, B. C., we find earnest invocations to the gods against the Turanians, and such allusion to their appearance as to leave no doubt of their color. The gods are implored to give the Aryans power over the "black-skinned" Dasyus, the black inhabitants of Himavat (Himalaya) and the "Black Cudra of the Ganges.'

We cannot dogmatize upon the true date when the Turanian centre at Accad was pierced by the Aryan wedge; but it is natural to suppose that, as the Aryans were advancing from the East, the alarmed Turanians would take the direction furthest from the pressure. By the traces they left behind them we know that some fled to Egypt and to Southern Arabia, along the shore of the Persian Gulf, and others to the Armenian mountains-the southern shore of the Black Sea toward the Caucasus on one hand and the Bosphorus on the other-and so northward to Hyperborean climes in the tracks of a still earlier type of man.

Long continued research by Egyptologists has fixed the age of Menes at about 5000, B. C., or 3000 years earlier than the Aryan descent upon India. As the consolidation of tribes into a nation would require 500 years at least, we must add about that number of years to the age of Menes to find the beginning of the people who consolidated themselves into national strength.

On the Asiatic continent there are still abundant evidences of the color of early man. In the Dravidian Hill tribes, in Eastern Assam, the Malacca peninsula, Perak, Cochin China, the Andaman, Sandal and Nicobar Islands, we find from a host of authorities that it was black, and that some of the people had decidedly woolly hair, others kinky or frizzly hair, others straight and coal black. A still earlier man may be represented by the Negrillosthe Ainus, the Esquimaux and the Lapps.

On the African continent may be found their congeners in the pure negroes and the pigmies.

Logan, a prolific writer upon Asiatic ethnology, appears to be convinced that early man's first home was in Africa. Sir Wm. Flower believed that he originated in Southern India and, spreading east and west, peopled Melanesia and Africa. Allen derived the African negroes from Asia. Professor Seeley claimed that the negro race occupied a belt of land extending from Africa to Melanesia, which has since been submerged. De Quatrofages' theory was that man originated in tertiary times in Northern Asia,

that the glacial period caused a great migration, but that the greatest mass of primitive humanity grouped itself in the Central Asiatic highlands, whence the three fundamental types, physical and linguistic, arose. The black race, he thought, appeared first. in Southern Asia between the highlands and the sea.

The earliest writers, such as Herodotus, Aristotle, Pliny and Pomponius Mela mention the countries which were peopled by the Asiatic blacks. Thus, at the eastern extremity of the Black Sea, Herodotus relates that he found the Colchians were "blackskinned," with "woolly black hair," and conjectured therefrom that they were of an Egyptian race. By inference we learn that the Egyptians or some of them were of that type, "black and woolly haired," but, in his description of the troops under the Persian banner, he draws a distinction between the Eastern and Western Ethiopians. The first, he says, had "straight, black hair," while that of the latter was "quite woolly."

When the Aryans finally extended their conquests to Egypt, we may reasonably suppose that, however few or many of the primitive people had already started on their wanderings into unknown Africa, the shock of the Aryan advent must have then given those remaining a stronger impulse to scatter inland. It is clear from the tributes illustrated on the Theban monuments, that some of these fugitives from Egypt had prospered in the African interior; and it is just as clear from the brilliancy of their painted portraits in the tombs near Karnak, that the prisoners brought from Inner Africa resembled the average brown and black woollyhaired African of to-day. As early at 2500, B. C., Sankhara invaded Ophir and Punt (Somali Land) and brought much booty therefrom. In 2400, B. C., Osirtasen I. repeated the expedition. In 1600, B. C., Thothmes III. returned victorious from Punt; and in 1322, B. C., the great Sesostris inscribed his exploits in Ethiopia on the monuments. The Ethiopians built cities of renown, and grew into a proud and conquering nation, having at an early period found that across the Red Sea their Turanian congeners were settled in Southern Arabia, with whom they established a valuable trade. The ruins of Meroé, their ancient capital, between Berber and Khartoum, rival those of Egypt. The effect of these on Diodorus was such that he ascribed to the Ethiopians the origin of Egyptian religion and art! A prince of Ethiopia-the famous Memnon-lent aid to Troy in the

thirteenth century before Christ. An army under Shishak, of Ethiopia, invaded Palestine with 1,200 chariots and 60,000 horsemen. Zerah, an Ethiopian, had started to fight Asa, King of Judah, with "a thousand thousand" men. Tirhakah, the "Melek Cush," King of the Ethiopians, defeated Sennacherib.

In the reign of Psammetichus I., successor of Tirhakah, 240,000 Egyptian soldiers affronted by their king emigrated to Ethiopia and were allotted lands in the region of the Automolii, probably near the modern Senaar. Until the seventh century, A. D., Ethiopia experienced the ups and downs of Egypt; but at this period the fanatic Arabs, unable to conquer the people of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), succeeded in isolating them, with the rest of the African continent to the south, from the civilized world.

It will thus be seen that another barrier, no less rigid and strong than the first, was raised against the African race.

The severe and exclusive Egyptians by their occupation of Egypt had blocked the return of the primitive settlers in Africa, at the northeastern end; the 1,500-mile wide Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea prevented communication with the progressive nations of Europe; the Atlantic and Indian Oceans separated them from all mankind on the west, south and east. The Straits of Babel Mandeb had, however, afforded Ethiopia means of communication with the people of Arabia, the Sabeans and the Jews, and the Ethiopians had profited in culture and wealth; but the fanatical Arabs closed even this passage to the outside world.

This is what makes Africa the best place in which to study primitive man, as he must have been in Asia, Europe and America, before history was conceived.

It is only, in fact, within the last thirty years that civilization can be said to have obtained a sure footing in the interior, and that we have been enabled to take note of the effects of certainly 7,000 years of in-breeding, consequent upon the long segregation of the black people within their impassable boundaries.

To-day, the descendants of the primitive Africans are to be found south of the twentieth degree of north latitude; and, despite the thousands of years during which they have been imprisoned within the continent, they have retained in a remarkable degree the physical characteristics of their primeval progenitors. The dwarfish tribes who captured the five Nasamonian explorers in the fifth century, B. C., near the Niger, are still represented by