But the vast majority of the Negro race is found in Africa south of the Sahara Desert and the populations sprung from them in the American continent and the West Indies.
The African negro is subdivided into two main groups known respectively as Nilotic and Bantu; but in addition there are the pygmies of the equatorial and Congo regions, and the Bushmen and Hottentots of the Kalahari Desert, Namaqualand, Lake Ngami, and the Orange River. The Nilotic negro ranges across the continent from Somaliland to Nigeria, and is differentiated from the Bantu chiefly from the fact that along this belt there has been a constant passing to and fro of Hamitic and Semitic peoples for many centuries, leading not only to very considerable recent racial admixture, but also to cultural and especially linguistic influences, which have brought about the breaking up of the population into a series of nations of varied speech and customs. Among the Bantus, on the other hand, although their culture is lower than that of the Nilotic negroes, there is more uniformity both of race and customs. In race they are negro mixed in early times with the proto-Hamitic peoples of East Africa, whence the mongrel population moved south, driving the Bushmen and Hottentots before them.
After the ancestors of the Australian and Negro races had separated from the rest of mankind, which had spread throughout a great part of Asia, North-Eastern Africa, and Europe, the coming of the Glacial epoch created barriers of ice which shut up the various groups each within its own domain. Somewhere in Eastern Asia, possibly in the basin of the Yellow River, the proto-Mongolian race gradually assumed its characteristic traits. In East Africa and the neighbouring tract of Asia the ancestors of the Brown or so-called Mediterranean race were free to roam east and west from India to the African and European coasts of the Atlantic. Farther north, probably in Europe, the Nordic or Blond race (in the map labelled Northern or Teutonic race) assumed its distinctive features; and somewhere in the region between its area of characterization and that of the Yellow race—probably in the region to the north-east of the Caspian—the so-called Alpine (Armenoid)
or proto-Slav race developed. It is distinguished from the Brown and Blond races by the broad skull and heavy jaw, no less than by the robustness of build and the great tendency to hairiness; from the Mongolian people the Armenoids are distinguished by the prominence of the nose, the character of the hair, and the colour of the skin. The term Alpine, which is usually applied to this race, is singularly inappropriate; for, although in Europe and Asia Minor the members of this race show a partiality for high mountains, the vast majority of the members of the race dwell in the plains of Russia, which also may have been the original home of the race. In view of the topographical relationship of the area of characterization of this race to the homes of the other races, Nordic, Brown, Negro, Australian, and Mongol, arranged in a great arc around it, it might not be inappropriate to call the so-called Alpine (Armenoid or proto-Slav) race by the non-committal title 'Central'. At the close of the Glacial epoch, when the melting of the ice unlocked the domains of these races, members of the Central race poured into Asia Minor and Syria, and down to the head of the Persian Gulf; they also made their way north of the Caspian and Black Sea into Europe, mingling there with the Nordic people. But they also moved east in Siberia and mingled with the proto-Mongolian race. It was soon after this event that members of the proto-Mongolian stock, possibly with some admixture of people of the Central race, wandered to North-Eastern Asia and crossed the Behring Strait to colonize America for the first time. From the north-west coast of America these immigrants in course of time made their way south and east, until eventually the whole of the New World from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn was inhabited. Many centuries afterward (especially between 300 B.C. and A.D. 1000) there was a great influx of a variety of other peoples from Polynesia and the Old World on to the Pacific coast of the Americas, which profoundly altered the physical type of the population of Central America and the Andean coast.
The members of the proto-Mongolian race who remained in Asia spread over a large area from the Arctic Ocean south to Tibet, China, Indo-China and the Malay Archipelago, the Philippines, Formosa, Nicobar Islands, and Madagascar. Their domain became divided geographically into three minor areas of characterization, of the Northern, Southern, and Oceanic Mongols respectively. In the Northern Mongols are included the Koreans, the Japanese and the people of Liu-Kiu, the Tungus (including the Manchu, Gold, &c.), the Kalmuks, Buriats, Koryaks, Chuckchis, Kamchadales, Gilyaks.
The Central race became differentiated into a considerable number of varieties. Apart from the Slavs, there were several groups which became isolated the one from the other in Asia Minor and Syria. One of these developed in an extreme degree the characteristic features of the race—the brachycephaly, the prominence of the nose and the high-ramus of the jaw. These are the Armenian and kindred people. Another branch gave origin to the Northern Semites, who made their way into Palestine and Mesopotamia. (The Southern Semites belong to another race—the Brown.) Another branch of the Central race preceded these two in making their way to the sea-coasts of the Levant and the Persian Gulf—this may be called the Maritime branch of the Central race.
The Slav branch of the Central race was making its way into Europe long before the Neolithic phase of culture there. It passed north of the Black Sea via Poland. But at the end of the Neolithic phase there were two streams of other branches of the race—the true Alpine subdivision passing from Anatolia into the Carpathians and the Alps, to Switzerland, Bavaria, Savoy, and Brittany, and the Maritime division passing round the coasts to the Iberian Peninsula, the British Isles, and Western Europe.