Himatic
"The Hamitic Hypothesis:
Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective" 1
By Edith Sanders
Journal of African History 10 (1969): 521-532 The Hamitic hypothesis is well-known to students of Africa. It states that everything of value ever found in Africa was brought there by the Hamites, alledgedly a branch of the Caucasian race. Seligman formulates it as follows:
Apart from relatively late Semitic influence. . .the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of Hamites, its history of the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali. . .The incoming Hamites were pastoral ‘Europeans’—arriving wave after wave—better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes.2
On closer examination of the history of the idea, there emerges of previous elaborate Hamitic theory, in which the Hamites are believed to be Negroes. It becomes clear then that the hypothesis is symptomatic of the nature of race relations, that is has changed its content if not its nomenclature through time, and that it has become a problem of epistemology.
(Version I: Genesis Origin of Hamitic Hypothesis)
In the beginning there was the Bible. The word ‘Ham’ appears there for the first time in Genesis, chapter five. Noah cursed Ham, his youngest son, and said:
Cursed be Canaan,
A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. . .
And he said;
Blessed by Jehovah, the God of Shem;
And let Canaan be his servant.
God enlarge Japheth,
And let him dwell in the tent of Shem;
And let Canaan be his servant.
Then follows an enumeration of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their sons who were born to them after the flood. The Bible makes no mention of racial differences among the ancestors of mankind. It is much later that an idea of race
Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective" 1
By Edith Sanders
Journal of African History 10 (1969): 521-532 The Hamitic hypothesis is well-known to students of Africa. It states that everything of value ever found in Africa was brought there by the Hamites, alledgedly a branch of the Caucasian race. Seligman formulates it as follows:
Apart from relatively late Semitic influence. . .the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of Hamites, its history of the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali. . .The incoming Hamites were pastoral ‘Europeans’—arriving wave after wave—better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes.2
On closer examination of the history of the idea, there emerges of previous elaborate Hamitic theory, in which the Hamites are believed to be Negroes. It becomes clear then that the hypothesis is symptomatic of the nature of race relations, that is has changed its content if not its nomenclature through time, and that it has become a problem of epistemology.
(Version I: Genesis Origin of Hamitic Hypothesis)
In the beginning there was the Bible. The word ‘Ham’ appears there for the first time in Genesis, chapter five. Noah cursed Ham, his youngest son, and said:
Cursed be Canaan,
A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. . .
And he said;
Blessed by Jehovah, the God of Shem;
And let Canaan be his servant.
God enlarge Japheth,
And let him dwell in the tent of Shem;
And let Canaan be his servant.
Then follows an enumeration of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their sons who were born to them after the flood. The Bible makes no mention of racial differences among the ancestors of mankind. It is much later that an idea of race
Cited: by T. Bendyshe, The History of Anthropology: Memoir read before the Anthropological Society of London I (1863-4), 371. 17 Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version modernized by W. J. Fleming (New York, 1901); and Lord Kames, Sketches of the History of Man (Edinburgh, 1780), are examples of this group. 18 E. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (University of Carolina Press, 1944); P. D. Curtin, Passage of Africa (New York, 1964). 19 V. Denon, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt (London, 1803). 20 Volney, Travels through Syria and Egypt, 1783-1784-1785 (1787), 83. Work on the Hamiti 'c language family was done by R. N. Cult, A Sketch of African Linguistics (London, 1883): al»o Lepiiui md Meinhof. Africa, the Politics of Independence (New York, 1961), ia-l3; D. McCaM, Africa m Tim Perspective (Boston, 1964), 136-138.