CHAPTER III
Dawn of Civilization
Early Peoples—The Mediterranean Race—Blonde Peoples of Morocco and Southern Palestine—Fair Types in Egypt—Migrations of Mediterraneans—They reach Britain—Early Nilotic Civilizations—Burial Customs—Osiris Invasion—The Set Conquest—Sun Worshippers from Babylonia—Settlement in North—Coming of Dynastic Egyptians—The Two Kingdoms—United by Mena—The Mathematicians of the Delta—Introduction of Calendar—Progressive Pharaohs—Early Irrigation Schemes.
In the remote ages, ere the ice cap had melted in northern Europe, the Nile valley was a swamp, with growth of jungle like the Delta. Rain fell in season, so that streams flowed from the hills, and slopes which are now barren wastes were green and pleasant grassland. Tribes of Early Stone Age savages hunted and herded there, and the flints they chipped and splintered so rudely are still found in mountain caves, on the surface of the desert, and embedded in mud washed down from the hills.
Other peoples of higher development appeared in time,[1]and after many centuries elapsed they divided the valley between them, increasing in numbers and breaking off in tribes. Several small independent kingdoms were thus formed. When government was ultimately centralized after conquest, these kingdoms became provinces,
- ↑ The early Palæolithic men were probably of Bushman type and the later of Mediterranean. Evidences of development from the Palæolithic to the Neolithic Age have been forthcoming
