There have been repeated efforts to discover, by measurements of various
kinds, further and more decisive differences which would serve as really
scientific determinants of race. Gradually these efforts have been given
up. To-day we realize that there are no hard and fast racial types among
men. Race is a dynamic and not a static conception, and the typical races
are continually changing and developing, amalgamating and differentiating.
In this little book, then, we are studying the history of the darker part
of the human family, which is separated from the rest of mankind by no
absolute physical line, but which nevertheless forms, as a mass, a social
group distinct in history, appearance, and to some extent in spiritual
gift.

We cannot study Africa without, however, noting some of the other races
concerned in its history, particularly the Asiatic Semites. The
intercourse of Africa with Arabia and other parts of Asia has been so
close and long-continued that it is impossible to-day to disentangle the
blood relationships. Negro blood certainly appears in strong strain among
the Semites, and the obvious mulatto groups in Africa, arising from
ancient and modern mingling of Semite and Negro, has given rise to the
term "Hamite," under cover of which millions of Negroids have been
characteristically transferred to the "white" race by some eager
scientists.

The earliest Semites came to Africa across the Red Sea. The Phoenicians
came along the northern coasts a thousand years before Christ and began
settlements which culminated in Carthage and extended down the Atlantic
shores of North Africa nearly to the Gulf of Guinea.

From the earliest times the Greeks have been in contact with Africa as