Hamites is the name formerly used for some
Northern and
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
peoples in the context of a
now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of
colonialism
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their rel ...
and
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
.
The term was originally borrowed from the
Book of Genesis
The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning" ...
, where it is used for the descendants of
Ham, son of Noah
Ham (in ), according to the Table of Nations in the Book of Genesis, was the second son of Noah and the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan.
Ham's descendants are interpreted by Flavius Josephus and others as having populated Africa and ...
.
The term was originally used in contrast to the other two proposed divisions of mankind based on the story of Noah:
Semites and
Japhetites. The appellation ''Hamitic'' was applied to the
Berber,
Cushitic, and
Egyptian branches of the
Afroasiatic language family, which, together with the
Semitic
Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta.
Semitic may also refer to:
Religions
* Abrahamic religions
** ...
branch, was thus formerly labelled "Hamito-Semitic".
However, since the three Hamitic branches have not been shown to form an exclusive (
monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic ...
) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic family.
Beginning in the 19th century, scholars generally classified the Hamitic race as a subgroup of the
Caucasian race
The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid, Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of human beings based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, de ...
, alongside the
Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern ...
and the
Semitic
Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta.
Semitic may also refer to:
Religions
* Abrahamic religions
** ...
– thus grouping the non-Semitic populations native to
North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...
and the
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
, including the
Ancient Egyptians.
According to the Hamitic theory, this "Hamitic race" was superior to or more advanced than the "
Negroid" populations of
Sub-Saharan Africa. In its most extreme form, in the writings of
C. G. Seligman, this theory asserted that virtually all significant achievements in African history were the work of "Hamites".
Since the 1960s the Hamitic hypothesis, along with other theories of "race science", has become entirely discredited in science.
History of the concept
The "Curse of Ham"
The term ''Hamitic'' originally referred to the peoples said to be descended from
Ham, one of the
Sons of Noah
The Generations of Noah, also called the Table of Nations or Origines Gentium, is a genealogy of the sons of Noah, according to the Hebrew Bible (Genesis ), and their dispersion into many lands after the Flood, focusing on the major known societ ...
according to the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts o ...
. According to the
Book of Genesis
The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning" ...
, after Noah became drunk and Ham dishonored his father, upon awakening Noah pronounced a curse on Ham's youngest son,
Canaan
Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...
, stating that his offspring would be the "servants of servants". Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the
Canaanites, while
Mizraim fathered the
Egyptians,
Cush the Cushites, and
Phut the
Libyans.
During the Middle Ages, Jews and Christians considered Ham to be the ancestor of all Africans. Noah's curse on Canaan as described in Genesis began to be interpreted by some theologians as having caused visible racial characteristics in all of Ham's offspring, notably black skin. In a passage unrelated to the curse on Canaan, the sixth-century
Babylonian Talmud
The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...
says that Ham and his descendants were cursed with black skin, which modern scholars have interpreted as an
etiological myth for skin color.
Later, Western and Islamic traders and slave owners used the concept of the "Curse of Ham" to justify the enslaving of Africans.
[.]
A significant change in Western views on Africans came about when
Napoleon's
1798 invasion of Egypt drew attention to the impressive achievements of
Ancient Egypt, which could hardly be reconciled with the theory of Africans being inferior or cursed.
In consequence, some 19th century theologians emphasized that the biblical Noah restricted his curse to the offspring of Ham's youngest son Canaan, while Ham's son
Mizraim, the ancestor of the Egyptians, was not cursed.
Constructing the "Hamitic race"
Following the
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, many Western scholars were no longer satisfied with the biblical account of the early history of mankind, but started to develop faith-independent theories. These theories were developed in a historical situation where most Western nations were still profiting from the enslavement of Africans.
In this context, many of the works published on Egypt after Napoleon's expedition "seemed to have had as their main purpose an attempt to prove in some way that the Egyptians were not Negroes",
thus separating the high civilization of Ancient Egypt from what they wanted to see as an inferior race. Authors such as
W. G. Browne, whose ''Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria'' was published in 1806, laid the "seeds for the new Hamitic myth that was to emerge in the very near future", insisting that the Egyptians were white.
In the mid-19th century, the term ''Hamitic'' acquired a new anthropological meaning, as scholars asserted that they could discern a "Hamitic race" that was distinct from the "
Negroid" populations of
Sub-Saharan Africa.
Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius ( la, Carolus Richardius Lepsius) (23 December 181010 July 1884) was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist, linguist and modern archaeologist.
He is widely known for his magnum opus '' Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopi ...
would coin the appellation ''Hamitic'' to denote the languages which are now seen as belonging to the
Berber,
Cushitic and
Egyptian branches of the
Afroasiatic family.
"Perhaps because slavery was both still legal and profitable in the United States ... there arose an American school of anthropology which attempted to prove scientifically that the Egyptian was a Caucasian, far removed from the inferior Negro".
Through
craniometry conducted on thousands of human skulls,
Samuel George Morton argued that the differences between the races were too broad to have stemmed from a single common ancestor, but were instead consistent with separate racial origins. In his ''Crania Aegyptiaca'' (1844), Morton analyzed over a hundred intact crania gathered from the Nile Valley, and concluded that the ancient Egyptians were racially akin to Europeans. His conclusions would establish the foundation for the American School of anthropology, and would also influence proponents of
polygenism.
Development of the Hamitic hypothesis
In his influential ''The Mediterranean Race'' (1901), the anthropologist
Giuseppe Sergi
Giuseppe Sergi (March 20, 1841 – October 17, 1936) was an Italian People, Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the Mediterraneanism, racial identity of Mediterranean pe ...
argued that the
Mediterranean race
The Mediterranean race (also Mediterranid race) was a historical race concept that was a sub-race of the Caucasian race as categorised by anthropologists in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. According to various definitions, it was said to be ...
had likely originated from a common ancestral stock that evolved in the
Sahara
, photo = Sahara real color.jpg
, photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972
, map =
, map_image =
, location =
, country =
, country1 =
, ...
region in Africa, and which later spread from there to populate North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the circum-Mediterranean region. According to Sergi, the Hamites themselves constituted a Mediterranean variety, and one situated close to the cradle of the stock. He added that the Mediterranean race "in its external characters is a brown human variety, neither white nor negroid, but pure in its elements, that is to say not a product of the mixture of Whites with Negroes or negroid peoples." Sergi explained this taxonomy as inspired by an understanding of "the morphology of the skull as revealing those internal physical characters of human stocks which remain constant through long ages and at far remote spots
..As a zoologist can recognise the character of an animal species or variety belonging to any region of the globe or any period of time, so also should an anthropologist if he follows the same method of investigating the morphological characters of the skull
..This method has guided me in my investigations into the present problem and has given me unexpected results which were often afterwards confirmed by archaeology or history."
The Hamitic hypothesis reached its apogee in the work of
C. G. Seligman, who argued in his book ''The Races of Africa'' (1930) that:
Seligman asserted that the Negro race was essentially static and agricultural, and that the wandering "pastoral Hamitic" had introduced most of the advanced features found in central African cultures, including metal working, irrigation and complex social structures.
Despite criticism, Seligman kept his thesis unchanged in new editions of his book into the 1960s.
Hamitic hypotheses operated in West Africa as well, and they changed greatly over time.
With the demise of the concept of Hamitic languages, the notion of a definable "Hamite" racial and linguistic entity was heavily criticised. In 1974, writing about the
African Great Lakes
The African Great Lakes ( sw, Maziwa Makuu; rw, Ibiyaga bigari) are a series of lakes constituting the part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift. They include Lake Victoria, the second-largest fresh water lake in the ...
region,
Christopher Ehret described the Hamitic hypothesis as the view that "almost everything more un-'primitive', sophisticated or more elaborate in East Africa
asbrought by culturally and politically dominant Hamites, immigrants from the North into East Africa, who were at least part Caucasoid in physical ancestry".
[Ehret, C, ''Ethiopians and East Africans: The Problem of Contacts'', East African Pub. House, 1974, p.8.] He called this a "monothematic" model, which was "romantic, but unlikely" and "
adbeen all but discarded, and rightly so". He further argued that there were a "multiplicity and variety" of contacts and influences passing between various peoples in Africa over time, something that he suggested the "one-directional" Hamitic model obscured.
Subdivisions and physical traits
Sergi outlined the constituent Hamitic physical types, which would form the basis for the work of later writers such as
Carleton Coon and C. G. Seligman. In his book ''The Mediterranean Race'' (1901), he wrote that there was a distinct Hamitic ancestral stock, which could be divided into two subgroups: the ''Western Hamites'' (or ''Northern Hamites'', comprising the
Berbers of the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Sahara, Tibbu, Fula, and extinct
Guanches
The Guanches were the indigenous inhabitants of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean some west of Africa.
It is believed that they may have arrived on the archipelago some time in the first millennium BCE. The Guanches were the only nativ ...
), and the ''Eastern Hamites'' (or ''
Ethiopids'', comprising Ancient and Modern Egyptians (but not the Arabs in Egypt),
Nubians
Nubians () ( Nobiin: ''Nobī,'' ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles ...
,
Beja, Abyssinians, Galla, Danakil,
Somalis
The Somalis ( so, Soomaalida 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒆𐒖, ar, صوماليون) are an ethnic group native to the Horn of Africa who share a common ancestry, culture and history. The Lowland East Cushitic Somali language is the shared mo ...
, Masai, Bahima and
Watusi).
[.]
According to Coon, typical Hamitic physical traits included narrow facial features; an orthognathous visage; light brown to dark brown skin tone; wavy, curly or straight hair; thick to thin lips without eversion; and a
dolichocephalic to
mesocephalic cranial index.
According to
Ashley Montagu
Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu (June 28, 1905November 26, 1999) — born Israel Ehrenberg — was a British-American anthropologist who popularized the study of topics such as race and gender and their relation to politics and development. He w ...
"Among both the Northern and Eastern Hamites are to be found some of the most beautiful types of humanity."
"Hamiticised Negroes"
In the African Great Lakes region, Europeans based the various migration theories of Hamitic provenance in part on the long-held oral traditions of local populations such as the Tutsi and
Hima (Bahima, Wahuma or Mhuma). These groups asserted that their founders were "white" migrants from the north (interpreted as the Horn of Africa and/or North Africa), who subsequently "lost" their original language, culture, and much of their physiognomy as they intermarried with the local
Bantus
The Bantu peoples, or Bantu, are an ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. They are native to 24 countries spread over a vast area from Central Africa to Southeast Africa and into Southern A ...
. Explorer
J.H. Speke recorded one such account from a Wahuma governor in his book, ''Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile''. According to
Augustus Henry Keane
Augustus Henry Keane (1833–1912) was an Irish Roman Catholic journalist and linguist, known for his ethnological writings.
Early life
He was born in Cork, Ireland.George Grant MacCurdy, James Mooney and A. B. Legía - Antonio Flores, ''Anthrop ...
, the Hima King Mutesa I also claimed Oromo (Galla) ancestors and still reportedly spoke an
Oromo idiom, though that language had long since died out elsewhere in the region.
The missionary R. W. Felkin, who had met the ruler, remarked that Mutesa "had lost the pure Hamitic features through admixture of Negro blood, but still retained sufficient characteristics to prevent all doubt as to his origin". Thus, Keane would suggest that the original Hamitic migrants to the Great Lakes had "gradually blended with the aborigines in a new and superior nationality of
Bantu speech".
Speke believed that his explorations uncovered the link between "civilized" North Africa and "primitive" central Africa. Describing the Ugandan
Kingdom of Buganda, he argued that its "barbaric civilization" had arisen from a nomadic pastoralist race who had migrated from the north and was related to the Hamitic
Oromo (Galla) of Ethiopia.
In his ''Theory of Conquest of Inferior by Superior Races'' (1863), Speke would also attempt to outline how the
Empire of Kitara in the African Great Lakes region may have been established by a Hamitic founding dynasty. These ideas, under the rubric of science, provided the basis for some Europeans asserting that the Tutsi were superior to the
Hutu
The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group which is native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the pr ...
. In spite of both groups being
Bantu
Bantu may refer to:
*Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages
*Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language
*Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle
*Black Association for Nationali ...
-speaking, Speke thought that the Tutsi had experienced some "Hamitic" influence, partly based on their facial features being comparatively more narrow than those of the Hutu. Later writers followed Speke in arguing that the Tutsis had originally migrated into the lacustrine region as pastoralists and had established themselves as the dominant group, having lost their language as they assimilated to Bantu culture.
Seligman and other early scholars believed that, in the African Great Lakes and parts of Central Africa, invading Hamites from
North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...
and the
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
had mixed with local "Negro" women to produce several hybrid "Hamiticised Negro" populations. The "Hamiticised Negroes" were divided into three groups according to language and degree of Hamitic influence: the "Negro-Hamites" or "Half-Hamites" (such as the
Maasai,
Nandi and
Turkana), the Nilotes (such as the
Shilluk and
Nuer), and the Bantus (such as the
Hima and
Tutsi
The Tutsi (), or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi (the other two being the largest Bantu ethnic gr ...
). Seligman would explain this Hamitic influence through both demic diffusion and cultural transmission:
European colonial powers in Africa were influenced by the Hamitic hypothesis in their policies during the twentieth century. For instance, in Rwanda,
German and
Belgian officials in the colonial period displayed preferential attitudes toward the Tutsis over the Hutu. Some scholars argued that this bias was a significant factor that contributed to the 1994
Rwandan genocide
The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu ...
of the Tutsis by the Hutus.
African-American reception
African-American scholars were initially ambivalent about the Hamitic hypothesis. Because Sergi's theory proposed that the superior
Mediterranean race
The Mediterranean race (also Mediterranid race) was a historical race concept that was a sub-race of the Caucasian race as categorised by anthropologists in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. According to various definitions, it was said to be ...
had originated in Africa, some African-American writers believed that they could appropriate the Hamitic hypothesis to challenge
Nordicist claims about the superiority of the white
Nordic race. The latter "Nordic" concept was promoted by certain writers, such as eugenicist
Madison Grant. According to Yaacov Shavit, this generated "radical Afrocentric theory, which followed the path of European racial doctrines". Writers who insisted that the Nordics were the purest representatives of the
Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern ...
indirectly encouraged "the transformation of the Hamitic race into the black race, and the resemblance it draws between the different branches of black forms in Asia and Africa."
In response, historians published in the ''Journal of Negro History'' stressed the cross-fertilization of cultures between Africa and Europe: for instance,
George Wells Parker adopted Sergi's view that the "civilizing" race had originated in Africa itself. Similarly, black pride groups appropriated the concept of Hamitic identity for their own purposes. Parker founded the
Hamitic League of the World
The Hamitic League of the World was an Black nationalism, African American nationalist organization. Its declared aims were:
The word ''Hamitic'' derives from Ham (son of Noah), Ham the son of Noah in the Old Testament. The organisation was f ...
in 1917 to "inspire the Negro with new hopes; to make him openly proud of his race and of its great contributions to the religious development and civilization of mankind." He argued that "fifty years ago one would not have dreamed that science would defend the fact that Asia was the home of the black races as well as Africa, yet it has done just that thing."
Timothy Drew and
Elijah Muhammad developed from this the concept of the "Asiatic Blackman." Many other authors followed the argument that civilization had originated in Hamitic Ethiopia, a view that became intermingled with biblical imagery. The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) (1920) believed that Ethiopians were the "mother race". The
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930.
A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...
asserted that the superior black race originated with the lost
tribe of Shabazz, which originally possessed "fine features and straight hair", but which migrated into Central Africa, lost its religion, and declined into a barbaric "jungle life".
Afrocentric writers considered the Hamitic hypothesis to be divisive since it asserted the inferiority of "Negroid" peoples.
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...
(1868–1963) thus argued that "the term Hamite under which millions of Negroes have been characteristically transferred to the white race by some eager scientists" was a tool to create "false writing on Africa". According to Du Bois, "
Livingstone
Livingstone may refer to:
* Livingstone (name), a Scottish surname and a given name.
**David Livingstone (1813–1873), Scottish physician, missionary and explorer, after whom many other Livingstones are named
Places
*Livingstone Falls, on the Con ...
,
Stanley, and others were struck with the Egyptian features of many of the tribes of Africa, and this is true of many of the peoples between Central Africa and Egypt, so that some students have tried to invent a 'Hamitic' race to account for them—an entirely unnecessary hypothesis."
See also
*
Afroasiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic ...
*
Generations of Noah
*
Japhetites
*
Semites
References
Bibliography
;Hamitic theory
* .
* .
* .
;Other
* .
* .
* .
* .
External links
*
A Theory You've Never Heard Of , Michael Robinson , TEDxUniversityofHartford 9 November 2015.
{{Sons of Noah
Afroasiatic peoples
Ham (son of Noah)
Historical definitions of race
History of North Africa
Horn of Africa
Prehistoric Egypt
Ancient Egyptian race controversy