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Updated: September 16, 2025
If we take it for granted that the Africans have never achieved a civilisation similar to those that date back beyond the limits of history, a premiss by no means assured seeing that there are signs of cycles of civilisations coming before those of which we have written or monumental records and of whose ethnic origin there is no certain knowledge, then the question may appear to have no other answer than the assumed lack of inherent capacity in the black race, but let us consider the matter closely.
This is because the Near and Middle East have been racially a vast melting-pot, or series of melting-pots, wherein conquest and migration have continually poured new heterogeneous elements, producing the most diverse ethnic amalgamations.
The Jews may be cited to show how a separate and peculiar people may be able to live together with other races without either clashing with or being assimilated by these but we must remember that the ethnic difference between the Jews and Europeans are too slight to sustain serious and lasting race-antipathy.
And the prevalent type of transmitted aptitudes, or in other words the type of temperament belonging to the dominant ethnic element in any community, will go far to decide what will be the scope and form of expression of the community's habitual life process.
Some variation of the ethnic types has resulted under the protracted selective process to which the several types and their hybrids have been subjected during the prehistoric and historic growth of culture.
But as to the line of ethnic contacts which has transfused this peculiar literary quality into Malay myth, whether it is to be traced solely to the influence exerted by Hindoo religion and Hindoo literature during ages of domination in the Malay archipelago, or whether we must reconsider the hypothesis of an Indonesian migration, this is a problem of great complexity, for which no satisfactory solution has yet been offered.
Owing to the attitude and ethnic temperament of the Greeks, the glorious anthropomorphism of their Olympus arose in a more vivid form than elsewhere, and it was impersonated in the all-powerful and all-seeing Zeus, ruler of the world, of gods and men. This process, modified in a thousand ways, was carried on in all races.
In two passages, indeed, the name appears to be used in an ethnic sense, once in Gen. xxxvi. 2, where we read that Esau married the granddaughter of "Zibeon the Hivite," and once in Josh. xi. 3, where reference is made to "the Hivite under Hermon in the land of Mizpeh." The four last sons of Canaan represent cities, and not tribes.
One of the latter a very good fellow, by the way had not altogether approved of the way he was treated, and the climax came when he said good-by to the General who had special charge of him. The General in question was not accustomed to nice ethnic distinctions, and grouped all of the representatives from Continental Europe under the comprehensive title of "Dutchmen."
The Mohammedan population, being of very heterogeneous ethnic composition, and having adopted a culture of foreign origin, which may be better studied in other regions of the earth where the Malay type and culture is more truly indigenous, seems to us to be of secondary interest to the anthropologist as compared with the less cultured pagan tribes.
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