became obnoxious to them was absolute
and unquestioned.

Doubtless, as we have seen, the government of Oman has undergone a
considerable degree of modification since the days of Cushite splendor
and supremacy; that, like all other nations which have come in
contact with the Aryan and Semitic races, the tendency has been
toward monarchial government; nevertheless, with its practically free
institutions, representing as they do, in a measure, the political
system of the grandest and oldest civilizations of which we have any
knowledge, it furnishes an illustration of the degree of progress
possible under gentile organization, at the same time that it points to
the source whence has proceeded the fierce democratic spirit observed
among succeeding nations, notably the Greeks.

Modern writers agree in ascribing to the Touaricks, a people inhabiting
the Desert of Sahara, a considerable degree of civilization. We are
informed that in the Sahara, which, by the way, is far less a barren
waste than we have been taught to suppose it, "the Touaricks have towns,
cities, and an excellent condition of agriculture"; that with them fruit
is cultivated with great success and skill. Their method of
political organization is democratic and similar in construction and
administration to the old Cushite municipalities. Baldwin, quoting from
Richardson, says: "Ghat, like all the Touarick countries, is a republic;
all the people govern. The woman of the Touaricks is not the woman of
the Moors and Mussulmans generally. She has here great liberty, and
takes an active part in the affairs and transactions of life."(68)

68) Prehistoric Nations, p. 341.

One who is disposed to search for it, will find no lack of evidence
going to prove that in an earlier age of the world, prior to the written
records of extant history, the human race had attained to a stage of
civilization equal in all and superior in many respects to that of the
present time.

That this remarkable stage of progress, the actual extent of which
has not yet been fully realized, was attained during a period of pure
Nature-worship, or while the earth and the sun were venerated as emblems
of the great creative energy throughout the universe, is a proposition
which, when viewed by the light of more recently acquired facts, is
perfectly reasonable, and exactly what might be expected.

That this high stage of civilization was reached while women were the
recognized heads of f