ETHIOPIC DIVISION 



51 



Ethiopic Division. 



It is possible that this division took its origin in the Indo-African 

 continent. 



Characters. — The characters of Ethiopic man are : — Height, either above the 

 average (negro) or dwarfish (negrito) ; colour, blackish or yellowish brown ; hair, 

 short, frizzy, flat in section, or reddish-brown and woolly; skull, dolicho- 

 cephalic (negro) or brachycephalic (negrito) ; eyes, large, round, prominent, 

 black, with yellowish cornea; nose, flat and broad, platyrrhine; cheek-bones, 

 small; jaws, prognathous; teeth, large; beards, absent or small; speech, 

 agglutinating, with prefix and postfix types, or inflectional. In negroid 

 Africa there are numerous languages in the Sudan and West Africa, but in 

 the east, centre, and south there are only variants of the Bantu stock language ; 

 in the far south there are the Hottentot and Bushmen languages. In Mada- 

 gascar and Oceania the Malayo-Polynesian stock langiiage is prevalent. In 

 America the speech of the negroes has approached that of the European 

 languages. Temperament, indolent, sensuous, passionate, and cruel. In 

 Africa there is a lack of self-respect, thus readily permitting slavery. The 

 development of the mind is believed to be arrested at puberty by the closure 

 of the cranial sutures, and there is also a belief that the negro, left to himself, 

 without Caucasic migrations, would have retrograded enormously, some 

 stating that he would have retrograded to the condition of an animal (these 

 statements may be received with caution). Religion, fetishism, nature and 

 ancestral worship ; medicine, primitive, being closely associated with religion, 

 and therefore with the fetish priest, and therefore with magic, charms, invoca- 

 tions, and sacrifices; but there is a knowledge of poisonous plants, which are 

 used in trials by ordeal, in hunting, fishing, and war. 



Population. — Ethiopic man is guessed to number some 175,000,000 of 

 persons, of whom perhaps 155,000,000 are in Africa, 3,000,000 in Madagascar, 

 20,000,000 in America, and 2,000,000 in Oceania. 



Migrations. — From his Indo-African home Ethiopic man wandered west- 

 wards into Africa and eastwards into Oceania. 



Africa. — One of the first of the westward waves must have been that caused 

 by Palaeolithic man migrating into Africa, wherein he spread north and south. 

 Another very early wave was that of the pygmies, who gave rise to the 

 Bushmen and negritoes or negrillos, and spread along the whole east side of 

 Africa from the Mediterranean to the extreme south. With, or perhaps not 

 long after, the pygmy migration came the taller negro, who possibly wandered 

 into East Africa and through the forests, together with the pygmies, to the 

 west coast, and possibly northwards as far as the northern shores of the 

 Mediterranean; but these migrations of Ethiopic man in Northern Africa were 

 stopped by the evolution of Caucasic man, who not merely drove the negro 

 southwards, but made some remarkable race fusions with him. Thus, for 

 example, the Hottentots are believed by some to be of Hamitic-Bushmen 

 origin, although others consider it safer to place them as intermediates between 

 the Bantu peoples and the Bushmen. These Hottentots were stronger than 

 the Bushmen peoples, but not so strong as the Bantu peoples, by whom they 

 were eventually driven into Southern Africa. 



Another remarkable race fusion is that which produced the Fulani, who 

 are believed to have been originally Berbers (Caucasics), but who have inter- 

 mingled with the negro races among whom they have migrated. Thus their 

 residence on the Senegal River is traced by the Wolofs of the Senegambia, 

 who are a negroid Fulani race; and along the Niger by the Mandingoes, who 

 possibly have also Tuareg and Arab infusions. These Mandingoes, driven by 

 Fulani migrations, have to-day approached the coast south of the Senegal 

 River, displacing the Krus and Kpwesi, who now live in Liberia. Migrat- 

 ing farther inland, these Fulanis compelled the Ashantis and Fantis to travel 

 coastwards, and then settling in the Hausa States, and forming the Sokoto 

 Empire, they compelled the Hausas to move southwards and to force the 

 Yorubas to approach the coast, who in their turn drove the weaker indigenous 



