486 



ANTHROPOLOGY 



Africa. Yet, though in this way superior races coming from the more 

 arid countries of Southern Abyssinia and ,-Galaland have continually 

 leavened the mass of ugly Negroes pullulating in [the richly endowed 

 countries between and around the Nile lakes, it is very doubtful whether 

 the ancient Egyptians ever penetrated directly up the Nile beyond the 

 vicinity of Fashoda, or had any direct intercourse with Uganda (though 

 their traders may have gone south-westward towards the Bahr-al-Grhazal). 

 Eather it would seem as though ancient Egypt traded and communicated 

 directly with what is now Abyssinia and the Land of Punt (Somaliland), 

 and that the Hamitic peoples of these countries facing the Red Sea and 

 Indian Ocean carried a small measure of Egyptian culture into the lands 

 about the Nile lakes. In this way, and through Uganda as a half-way 

 house, the totally savage Negro received his knowledge of smelting and 

 working iron, all his domestic animals and cultivated plants (except those, 

 of course, subsequently introduced by Arabs from Asia and Portuguese from 

 America), all his musical instruments higher in development than the 

 single bowstring and the resonant hollowed loo - , and, in short, all the 

 civilisation he possessed before the coming of the white man — Moslem 



or Christian — 1,000 years ago. The 

 establishment by sea of gold-working 

 colonies of South Arabians in Southern 

 Zambezia, that commenced to take 

 place perhaps 2,500 years ago, in- 

 troduced a local civilisation which 

 did not spread to any appreciable 

 extent, perhaps because it was planted 

 among brutish Hottentots and apish 

 Bushmen. These Sabsean colonies 

 in South-Easteru Africa were finally 

 swamped between the fifth and 

 seventh centuries of the present era 

 by the Bantu — at any rate by the 

 Zulu — invasion of Southern Africa. 

 Their influence, from whatever cause,* 



* Perhaps because the trend of Negro 

 and negroid migrations and race move- 

 ments has always been — with only two 

 well-known exceptions — the eastward 

 march of the Fulahs and the northward 

 raids of the Zulus — from north to south 

 and from east to west, and it would be 

 difficult for foreign influence to travel 

 266. a muhima OFiMPORORO against the current. 



