Ethnology and Ethnogeography

The origin, whether European, Asiatic, or African, of the Hamitic race—which, with the Arabs, now shares that part of Africa which lies north of lat. 10° N.—yet awaits solution. A host of theories, a few of them plausible, none of them sufficiently supported, and most of them in direct contradiction to each other, have been launched as solutions to this problem, and have but rendered it more obscure. At present, and until a great mass of new and scientifically gathered evidence shall have been collected, only one main fact is indisputable—Υiz. that the so-called Hamitic race has absorbed a number of foreign ethnic elements, ¹ which it has not succeeded in wholly assimilating physically, though it has imposed upon them this or that Hamitic dialect. The original pure Hamitic type seems to be that found among the Ṣa?aran Berbers—a type tall, spare, long-limbed, and dark (bruri); ² hair black or dark brown, straight or wavy ; head dolichocephalic, orthognathous; nose slightly aquiline or straight; eyes dark and piercing, set rather widely apart; mouth well-defined; facial capillary system slightly developed; movements generally slow and dignified. In the west, between the Wady Dra ah (“Wed Draa”) and the Senegal, this type has become fused with the Negro elements from the south, the resultant type sharing the physical peculiarities of both progenitors. The same thing appears to have happened in the case of the various Hamitic peoples of East Africa.