• The Races of Europe, ch. vi, especially pp. 121-130.
' Cf. The Lake Dwellings of Europe, by Robert C. Monro, London,
Paris, Melbourne, 1890.
» See op, cit., pp. 247 and 276.
• The Mediterranean Race, New York, Scribners, 1901.
*^ Iconographic Encyclopcedia, Vol. I, pp. 369, 370.
Digitized by



Google



THE CRADLE OF THE SEMITES 17

to rest on a sufiSciently secure basis. The occasional
prognathism and woolly hair observed among the modern
Arabs, on which he relies,^ is much more likely due to
mixture brought about in recent times by the Arabic slave
raids into Africa, which have been going on for centuries.
Travellers in Arabia testify that, in consequence of this,
amalgamation of races is still going on there. ^

The Bantu languages, as described by Miiller,® exhibit,
so far as I can see, no real kinship to the Semitic tongues.
The pronouns are not similar to the Semitic, as is the case
with the Hamitic pronouns ; the tenses of the verbs are
more like those of the Aryan than those of the Semitic
tongues, so that the similarity seems to be reduced to the
fact that the Bantu languages have causative, reflexive,
reciprocal, and causative-reflexive stems. These are, how-
ever, formed, for the most part, by afformatives instead of
preformatives, as in Semitic, and cannot be held to prove
kinship. It seems safe, therefore, to follow the prevailing
opinion and class the Semites with the white races. Sergi,
moreover, has pointed out that many of the Hamites in
North Africa are to-day blonds, and that they are probably
native there. The pigmentation of the skin is, he believes,
due to the altitude of the country in which a people lives.^
If this be true, the question of complexion need not
seriously trouble us.
