The Nile quest : $b a record of the exploration of the Nile and its basinJohnston, Harry
History
The Nile quest : $b a record of the exploration of the Nile and its basin
Johnston, Harry
Nile River
The first men who entered Egypt and travelled up the valley of the
Nile came, almost unquestionably, from the east, and were part of
those radiations from the central focus of humanity, India. It is
possible that the first men who entered the valley of the Nile from
this direction may have been of so primitive, simian, and undetermined
a type--so “Neanderthaloid”--as not to belong definitely to any one
of the three main species of humanity. At that distant time, however
(let us say at the end of the Pleistocene period or beginning of the
Quaternary Epoch), there was undoubtedly a land connection over the
south as well as over the north end of the Red Sea, joining Arabia to
Ethiopia as well as to Egypt; and across this bridge came many types
of Asiatic mammals, also man,--possibly in the form of a low Negroid,
a type represented to-day (much changed and modified, of course) by
the Congo Pygmies and South African Bushmen. As regards the history
of humanity, however, the valley of the Nile has been divided into
two very distinct parts. The southern half of its basin--in common
with all Africa south of the Sahara and the fifteenth degree of north
latitude--was peopled from the east, through southern Arabia, and by
the Negro species in the main. Egypt proper and the adjoining regions
of Arabia once lay within the domain of the Negroid Pygmies, but
these indigenes were overwhelmed at a relatively early period by more
or less “negrified” branches of the Caucasian stock coming from the
direction of Syria or from Libya. Before the dawn of the historical
epoch--say nine thousand years ago--an element in the population of
Lower Egypt certainly showed Bushmen affinities. These steatopygous
Bushmen were perhaps Proto-negroes, who may have branched off from
the Nigritic stock when first that species reached the Mediterranean
regions. This Bushman element in Egypt was for some time distinct,
prior to the historical period, as the characteristic type of the
servile class. Following on these dwarfish people came races bearing
some slight resemblance to the Dravidians of India or the Brahuis of
Baluchistan,--a somewhat Australoid stock which has left traces in
Elam and around the shores of the Persian Gulf. Then came an aquiline
type of nearly pure Caucasian stock, usually known by Egyptologists as
the “Khafra” race. This probably arrived from Syria or Cyprus. But the
men of the northern half of the Nile basin who fathered the principal,
dominating type of ancient and modern Egyptian emigrated seemingly
from the direction of Galaland, Somaliland, or Abyssinia. In these
countries, or originally perhaps in southern Arabia, there was formed a
handsome race mainly of Caucasian stock, but which had mingled somewhat
considerably with the Proto-negroes and Dravidians in Arabia and in
northeast Africa, and so had acquired darker skins, and hair with
more or less tendency to curl. The men of this race, like the modern
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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