Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/16

4 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES But ages before these two civilisations, which are generally called the Egyptian and the Akkadian or Sumerian, had come into existence, Man had spread over the globe. At present nobody knows in what part of the world Man first appeared, 2. The Races though most people are still inclined to think that of Mankind. the cradle of the human race was somewhere in Central Asia. But wherever Man spread from we are pretty sure of this : in the hottest parts of the world, at any rate of our Eastern Hemisphere, there were races with black skins and black hair who are referred to as negroes, or negroid. In the regions not quite so hot there were races who were not quite so dark, with brown, or red-brown, or yellowish skins. To a group of these in Northern Africa is given the name of Hamitic, because they were supposed to be descended from Ham, the son of Noah. The peoples who were spread over Europe and Asia are generally classed indiscriminately as Mongolians. The Egyptians belonged to the Hamitic group and the Akkadians to the Mongolian group. A long time after both the Egyptian and Akkadian civilisations had been well established, two new groups of races appeared The Cau- which are both sometimes classed under the name casian Races. Caucasian. That name was given when it was supposed that both of them came at different times out of the regions where the Caucasian mountains are, on the east of the Black Sea. Also they are classed together because, although their languages were very unlike each other, they had some common characteristics which are not found in the languages of any other races. The first of these two groups is called the Semitic, from Noah's son Shem. The second group is sometimes called Japhetic after Japhet j more often it is called Indo-European, because the races which belonged to it made themselves masters of India and Europe ; but the commonest name for it is Aryan, because the branch which left the earliest records of itself called itself by that name. It is probable that before the first appearance of the Semites, between the years 3000 and 4000 B.C., there was another Mongolian civilisation beginning in the Far East to which China and Japan owe their origin.