this division of mankind fall into three groups,—the Hamitic, the Semitic, and the Aryan[1] or Indo-European. The members forming any one of these groups must not be looked upon as kindred in blood; the only certain bond uniting the peoples of each group is the bond of language.[2]
The ancient Egyptians were the chief people of the Hamitic branch. In the gray dawn of history we discover them already settled in the valley of the Nile, and there erecting great monuments so faultless in construction as to render it certain that those who planned them had had long previous training in the art of building.
The Semitic family includes among its chief peoples the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Arabians, and the Ethiopians. Most scholars regard Arabia as the original home of this family, and this peninsula certainly seems to have been the great distributing center.[3]
It is interesting to note that three great monotheistic religions—the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Mohammedan—arose among peoples belonging to the Semitic family.
The Aryan-speaking peoples form the most widely dispersed group of the White Race. They include the ancient Greeks and
- ↑ Ethnologists have ceased to use this name, as well as its equivalents, Indo-European and Indo-Germanic, as an ethnic term; but there is no reason why it should be given up by the historian. It should be carefully noted, however, that where the term Aryan is applied to a people it simply means that the people thus designated use an Aryan speech, and that it does not mean that they are related by blood to any other Aryan-speaking people. Physical or racial relationships cannot be determined by the test of language. Think of the millions of English-speaking African negroes in the United States! For a masterly discussion of the question of the ethnic types or races making up the population of Europe, see Ripley's The Races of Europe (New York, 1899).
- ↑ In the case of the Semites and the Hamites, it is probable that the most of the peoples forming each group are in the main actually of the same ethnic stock; in the case of the Aryans, however, we certainly have to do with peoples belonging to several distinct ethnic subvarieties or types.
- ↑ It is held by some, however, that the Semites at a very early time immigrated to Arabia from Africa, where they had lived in close relations to the Hamites. In successive waves they seem to have settled in the lands adjoining the Syro-Arabian desert, first the Babylonians and Assyrians, then apparently the Canaanitic and subsequently the Hebrew peoples, the Arabians and the Chaldeans, while Abyssinia clearly received its Semitic population from southwestern Arabia.
