The classical home of the ancient Ethiopians was the Eastern Sudan, although Homer and Herodotus mentioned other Ethiopians dwelling in Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Western Asia and India. To cite Lady Lugard: "The fame of the ancient Ethiopians was widespread in ancient history. History describes them as the tallest, most beautiful and long-lived of the human races, and before Herodotus, Homer, in even more flattering language, described them as the most just of men, the favorites of the gods. The annals of all the the great early nations of Asia Minor are full of them. The Mosaic records allude to them frequently; but while they are described as the most powerful, the most just, and the most beautiful of the human race, they are constantly spoken of as Black, and there seems to be no other conclusion to be drawn than that at that remote period of history, the leading race of the Western World was a Black race."
The ancient Kushite or Ethiopian culture may be called the Archaic Civilization. Even before the rise of the culture of Egypt, there was the great Kushite, or Ethiopian civilization, which was widespread in both Africa and Asia. One of the greatest African Ethiopian temples was located at Abu Simbel, or Ipsambul, in Nubia. When an English traveler named Wilson visited this temple, he saw sculptured on its walls the story of the Fall of Man as told in Genesis. Adam and Eve were shown in the Garden of Eden as well as the tempting serpent and the fatal tree. Commenting on this fact, Godfrey Higgins asked: "How is the fact of the mythos of the second book of Genesis being found in Nubia, probably a thousand miles above Heliopolis, to be accounted for?" Higgins then added that: "The same mythos is found in India." For evidence he cited Colonel Tod's History of Rajputana as follows: "A drawing brought by Colonel Coombs, from a sculptured column in a cave-temple in the south of India represents the first pair at the foot of the ambrosial tree, and a serpent entwined among the heavily laden boughs, presenting to them some of the fruit from his mouth." The ancient peoples of India were Asiatic Ethiopians and it should not surprise us that they shared common traditions with their brothers in Africa.
SOURCE:
African Presence in Early Asia, edited by Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima
REFERENCES:
Analcalypsis, by Godfrey Higgins
A Tropical Dependency, by Lady Lugard
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