Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/43

Rh likely, because it is more central in position, and from it waves of human migrations could more easily be thrown out westward to Europe, south-westward to Africa, and south-eastward to the Malayan peninsula and thence to Japan.

They may have extended over a much larger surface even than this, but they were not the only people then living. Other races were in existence in Europe and Asia, races more capable of improvement, though originally starting from the same low level. A struggle for the possession of the fairest tracts of country took place, and the more intelligent and consequently the stronger races were the victors. It was for the good of all the world that it should be so. It seems to be God's law that man must raise himself constantly higher, and he who cannot as well as he who will not conform to that law must pass out of existence. And these Aurignacians, Bushmen, and pygmies of the north, though gifted with artistic tastes, were an almost unimprovable race: already, in those far off times, they had attained the highest point of their progress, and had then become inert and stagnant. What progress has the little remnant that still remains made during the countless centuries that have since passed away? They have learned how to drill a hole through a stone, that is nearly all, and that is not sufficient to satisfy God's law of progress.

And so at some time, which cannot be ascertained, but must have been many thousands of years ago, a stronger and better equipped race entered the north-eastern extremity of the continent, and gradually spread along the Mediterranean coast and up the valley of the Nile, exterminating the earlier inhabitants, or possibly taking the young females and killing all the others. This went on until the country as far south as the great desert was filled with the people now usually termed Hamites, who were a little darker in colour than modern Europeans, and who had long black hair. The purest descendants of these people at the present day are believed by many ethnographers to be the Guanches in the Canary islands and the Basques in Spain, the Copts in