We find therefore, in Africa to-day, every degree of development in Negroid stocks and every degree of intermingling of these developments, both among African peoples and between Africans, Europeans, and Asiatics.  The mistake is continually made of considering these types as transitions between absolute Caucasians and absolute Negroes.  No such absolute type ever existed on either side.  Both were slowly differentiated from a common ancestry and continually remingled their blood while the differentiating was progressing.  From prehistoric times down to to-day Africa is, in this sense, primarily the land of the mulatto.  So, too, was earlier Europe and Asia; only in these countries the mulatto was early bleached by the climate, while in Africa he was darkened.

It is not easy to summarize the history of these dark African peoples, because so little is known and so much is still in dispute.  Yet, by avoiding the real controversies and being unafraid of mere questions of definition, we may trace a great human movement with considerable definiteness.

Three main Negro types early made their appearance:  the lighter and smaller primitive stock; the larger forest Negro in the center and on the west coast, and the tall, black Nilotic Negro in the eastern Sudan.  In the earliest times we find the Negroes in the valley of the Nile, pressing downward from the interior.  Here they mingled with Semitic types, and after a lapse of millenniums there arose from this mingling the culture of Ethiopia and Egypt, probably the first of higher human cultures.

To the west of the Nile the Negroes expanded straight across the continent to the Atlantic.  Centers of higher culture appeared very early along the Gulf of Guinea and curling backward met Egyptian, Ethiopian, and even European and Asiatic influences about Lake Chad.  To the southeast, nearer the primitive seats of the earliest African immigrants and open to Egyptian and East Indian influences, the Negro culture which culminated at Zymbabwe arose, and one may trace throughout South Africa its wide ramifications.

All these movements gradually aroused the central tribes to unrest.  They beat against the barriers north, northeast, and west, but gradually settled into a great southeastward migration.  Calling themselves proudly La Bantu (The People), they grew by agglomeration into a warlike nation, speaking one language.  They eventually conquered all Africa south of the Gulf of Guinea and spread their influence to the northward.

While these great movements were slowly transforming Africa, she was also receiving influences from beyond her shores and sending influences out.  With mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest touch, so much so that to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem Egyptian in origin.  The truth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and from her vantage ground as almost the only African gateway received and transmitted Negro ideals.