At an altitude of probably over 2000 feet the Sahara must have enjoyed an almost ideal climate during late pliocene and pleistocene times, when Europe was exposed to more than one glacial invasion, and to a large extent covered at long intervals by a succession of solid ice-caps. We now know that these stony and sandy wastes were traversed in all directions by great rivers, such as the Massarawa trending south to the Niger, or the Igharghar[1007] flowing north to the Mediterranean, and that these now dry beds may still be traced for hundreds of miles by chains of pools or lakelets, by long eroded valleys and by other indications of the action of running waters.
Nor could there be any lack of vegetable or animal life in a favoured region, which was thus abundantly supplied with natural irrigation arteries, while the tropical heats were tempered by great elevation and at times by the refreshing breezes from sub-arctic Europe.
From these well-watered and fertile lands, some of which continued even in Roman times to be the granary of the empire, came that succession of southern animals—hippopotamus, hyaena, rhinoceros, elephant, cave-lion—which made Europe seem like a "zoological appendix of Africa." In association with this fauna may have come man himself, for although North Africa has not yet yielded evidence of a widespread culture comparable to that of the Palaeolithic Age in Europe, yet the negroid characters of the Grimaldi skeletons have been held to prove an early connection between the opposite shores of the Mediterranean. The hypothesis of African origin is supported by archaeological evidence of the presence of early man all over North Africa from the shores of the Mediterranean through Egypt to Somaliland. Thus one of J. de Morgan's momentous conclusions was that the existence of civilised men in Egypt might be reckoned by thousands, and of the aborigines by myriads of years. These aborigines he identified with the men of the Old Stone Age, of whom he believed four stations to have been discovered—Dahshur, Abydos, Tukh, and Thebes[1008].
Of Tunisia Arsène Dumont declared that "the immense period of time during which man made use of stone implements is nowhere so strikingly shown." Here some of the flints were found in abundance under a thick bed of quaternary limestone deposited by the waters of a stream that has disappeared. Hence "the origin of man in Mauretania must be set back to a remote age which deranges all chronology and confounds the very fables of the mythologies[1009]."
The skeleton found in 1914 by Hans Reck at Oldoway (then German East Africa) was claimed to be of Pleistocene Age, but according to A. Keith "the evidence ... cannot be accepted as having finally proved this degree of antiquity[1010]."
The doctrine of the specialisation of the dolichocephalic European types in Africa, before their migrations northwards, lies at the base of Sergi's views regarding the African origin of those types. Arguing against the Asiatic origin of the Hamites, as held by Prichard, Virchow, Sayce and others, he points out that this race, scarcely if at all represented in Asia, has an immense range in Africa, where its several sub-varieties must have been evolved before their dispersion over a great part of that continent and of Europe. Then, regarding Hamites and Semites as essentially one, he concludes that Africa is the cradle whence this primitive stock "spread northwards to Europe, where it still persists, especially in the Mediterranean and its three principal peninsulas, and eastwards to West Asia[1011]."
The theory of an African cradle for the dolichocephalic Mediterranean type does not lack supporters, but when, relying on the undeniable presence of brachycephals, some writers would derive the Alpine type from the same area, the larger aspect of continental migrations appears to be overlooked (see pp. 451-2 below). To constitute a distinct race, says Zaborowski, a wide geographical area is needed, such as is presented by both shores of the Mediterranean "with the whole of North Africa including the Sahara, which was till lately still thickly peopled[1012]." Then to the question by whom has this North African and Mediterranean region been inhabited since quaternary times, he answers "by the ancestors of our Libyans, Egyptians, Pelasgians, Iberians"; and after rejecting the Asiatic theory, he elsewhere arrives at "the grand generalisation that the whole of North Africa, connected by land with Europe in the Quaternary epoch, formed part of the geographical area of the ancient white race, of which the Egyptians, so far from being the parent stem, would appear to be merely a branch[1013]."
Early European and Mauretanian types.
Coming to details, Bertholon[1014], from the human remains found by Carton at Bulla-Regia, determined for Tunisia and surrounding lands two main long-headed types, one like the Neandertal (occurring both in Khumeria, and in the stations abounding in palaeoliths), the other like the later Cro-Magnon dolmen-builders, whom De Quatrefages had already identified with the tall, long-headed, fair, and even blue-eyed Berbers still met in various parts of Mauretania, and formerly represented in the Canary Islands[1015]. Bertholon agrees with Collignon that the Mauretanian megalith-builders are of the same race as those of Europe, and besides the two long-headed races describes (1) a short round-headed type in Gerba Island and East Tunisia[1016] representing the Libyans proper, and (2) a blond type of the Sahel, Khumeria, and other parts, whom he identifies with the Mazices of Herodotus, with the "Afri," whose name has been extended to the whole continent, and the blond Getulians of the Aures Mountains.
The Three Great European Ethnical Groups.