MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
the filling-up process has continued, until now there are 
but two. The rest have dwindled into mere canals, not 
always navigable. 
Long after the Ice Age, when the country on both sides 
of the valley had assumed nearly the same desert charac- 
ter that it bears now, we find the banks of the Nile occu- 
pied by people physically pretty much like those living 
there today. They resembled the race inhabiting most of 
the countries around the Mediterranean at the present 
time—a race of medium stature, with oval faces, black or 
dark-brown hair and eyes, and complexions varying from 
brown to a rather light olive. 
These early Nile dwellers lived in scattered villages 
placed above the reach of the yearly inundations. They 
supported themselves partly by hunting the animals in the 
marshes along the river and in the jungles covering the 
higher ground, among others the elephant, hippopotamus, 
giraffe, okapi, wild bull, and various kinds of antelopes. 
But they carried on some planting, and in time began to 
make experiments in domesticating certain wild creatures 
about them, such as the cat, the greyhound, and the wild 
ass. The latter seems to occur only in northwestern 
Africa; the animals called ‘“‘wild asses”’ which are found in 
other parts of the Old World are not really such at all. 
In time the donkey, or ass, became the common beast of 
burden. 
At first the Nile dwellers seem to have been almost in- 
distinguishable from most of the other North African 
peoples—not Negroes in any sense, but “dark whites,” 
like their descendants, the modern Moors—who occupied 
the lands stretching indefinitely to the westward, toward 
the Atlantic. But at some uncertain date in prehistoric 
times they came strongly under the influence of peoples 
from the eastern side of the Red Sea. Invasions of the 
Nile Valley from Palestine or perhaps Arabia may easily 
have occurred more than once in prehistoric times, as they 
have since the dawn of the historical period. 
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