south of Ethiopia. Here lay the ancient Punt of the Egyptians (whether we
place it in Somaliland or, as seems far more likely, around the Great
Lakes) and here, as the Egyptians thought, their civilization began. The
earliest inhabitants of the land were apparently of the Bushman or
Hottentot type of Negro. These were gradually pushed southward and
westward by the intrusion of the Nilotic Negroes. Five thousand years
before Christ the mulatto Egyptians were in the Nile valley below the
First Cataract. The Negroes were in the Nile valley down as far as the
Second Cataract and between the First and Second Cataracts were Negroes
into whose veins Semitic blood had penetrated more or less. These mixed
elements became the ancestors of the modern Somali, Gala, Bishari, and
Beja and spread Negro blood into Arabia beyond the Red Sea. The Nilotic
Negroes to the south early became great traders in ivory, gold, leopard
skins, gums, beasts, birds, and slaves, and they opened up systematic
trade between Egypt and the Great Lakes.

The result was endless movement and migration both in ancient and modern
days, which makes the cultural history of the Great Lakes region very
difficult to understand. Three great elements are, however, clear: first,
the Egyptian element, by the northward migration of the Negro ancestors of
predynastic Egypt and the southern conquests and trade of dynastic Egypt;
second, the Semitic influence from Arabia and Persia; third, the Negro
influences from western and central Africa.

The migration of the Bantu is the first clearly defined movement of modern
times. As we have shown, they began to move southward at least a thousand
years before Christ, skirting the Congo forests and wandering along the
Great Lakes and down to the Zambesi. What did they find in this land?

We do not know certainly, but from what we do know we may reconstruct the