Progress and Achievements of the Colored People / Containing the Story of the Wonderful Advancement of the Colored Americans—the Most Marvelous in the History of Nations—Their Past Accomplishments, Together With Their Present-day Opportunities and a Glimpse Into the Future for Further Developments—the Dawn of a Triumphant Era. A Handbook for Self-improvement Which Leads to Greater Success

by Kelly Miller; Joseph R. Gay

ETHIOPIAN WOMEN HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM

In refinement, the Ethiopians held women in a superior position in the social scale, which says Dr. Reich, the historian, “Shows a higher point of delicacy and refinement than either their Eastern or Western successors. Colossal in art, profound in philosophy and religion, and in possession of the knowledge of the arts and sciences, the Ethiopian race exhibits the astounding phenomenon of an elevated civilization at a period when the other nations of the world were almost unknown.”

Referring to this question of psychology in civilization exhibited by the Ethiopians, the same Dr. Reich, in his “History of Civilization,” says:

“People, as a rule cherish the idea that nations are like individuals, and that accordingly nations have their childhood, their youth, and their old age, and their death just as we are used to see in individuals. This entire idea is utterly false. There is no such parallel development. A nation is a mental thing only.”

Dr. Scholes, in his “Glimpses of the Ages,” citing Heeren’s “Manual of Ancient History,” relative to the Ethiopians, says:

“It may be gathered from the monuments and records that Upper Egypt (Ethiopia) was the first seat of civilization, which originating in the South, spread by the settlement of colonies toward the North (Egypt).

“These migrations are proved by the representations, both in sculpture and painting found in the yet remaining monuments throughout Egypt.” “Glimpses of Ages,” p. 191. Heeren, p. 57.

There were tribes among the Ethiopians which were of a low grade of civilization, just as in the most civilized countries of the present times, there are peoples of a very low grade, not only in civilization but in intelligence. But, there existed a highly cultured and civilized Ethiopian people, who dwelt in cities, erected temples and other edifices, and who had good government and humane laws. Moreover, their fame and progress in knowledge and their social arts spread in the earliest ages over a considerable part of the earth.

Upon the authority of Heeren, already referred to, and upon their own investigations, Dr. Glidden and Dr. Morton, who are quoted in Scholes’ “Glimpses of the Ages,” made an examination of the Egyptian skulls, and gave it as their opinion that the Egyptians and the Ethiopians never came from Asia, but were indigenous or aboriginal inhabitants of the African Nile country, and were all of the “Negroid type.”