of
the dominant race has been maintained.[442] Scholars have for
centuries differed as to the composition of the mixed breed stock
constituting the Mediterranean race and especially about that in Egypt
and the Barbary States. In that part of the dark continent many
inhabitants have certain characteristics which are more Caucasian than
negroid and have achieved more than investigators have been willing to
consider the civilization of the Negro. It is clear, however, that
although the people of northern Africa cannot be classed as Negroes,
being bounded on the south by the masses of African blacks, they have
so generally mixed their blood with that of the blacks that in many
parts they are no nearer to any white stock than the Negroes of the
United States.

This miscegenation, to be sure, increased toward the south into
central Africa, but it has extended also to the north and east into
Asia and Europe. Traces of Negro blood have been found in the Malay
States, India and Polynesia. In the Arabian Peninsula it has been so
extensive as to constitute a large group there called the Arabised
Negroes. But most significant of all has been the invasion of Europe
by persons of African blood. Professor Sergi leads one to conclude
that the ancient Pelasgii were of African origin or probably the
descendants of the race which settled northern Africa and southern
Europe, and are therefore due credit for the achievements of the early
Greek and Italian civilizations.[443]

There is much evidence of a further extension of this infusion in the
Mediterranean world.

"Recent discoveries made in the vicinity of the principality of
Monaco and others in Italy and western France," says MacDonald,
"would seem to reveal ... the actual fact that many thousand
years ago a negroid race had penetrated through Italy into
France, leaving traces at the present day in the physiognomy of
the peoples of southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and western
France, and even in the western parts of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland. There are even at the present day some
examples of the Keltiberian peoples of western Scotland, southern
and western Wales, southern and western Ireland, of distinctly
negroid aspect, and in whose ancestry there is no indication
whatever of any connection with the West Indies or with Modern
Africa. Still more marked is this feature in the peoples of
so