The prehistoric home of the Arabians was in the southern interior of the peninsula named after them, though some ethnologists are inclined to assign them an original home with other Semites in Africa. In their own poi-sons, or by their language, culture, and religion, they have made their influence felt over a great part of Africa, southern Europe, southern and central Asia, and the Indian Archipelago. They have contributed to the knowledge of the world the pseudo-science of alchemy, a certain number of terms used in the mathematieal and physical sciences, and the Arabic numerals, really borrowed from the Hindu. The Arabic alphabet is found among peoples as widely distant. as the Vci of West Africa and the Bugis of Celebes. The Arabs fos tered commerce and geographical exploration in the Middle Ages, created a new order of archi tecture, made the productions of the ancient Greek intellect accessible to European nations, and in the cultivation of the sciences, philosophy, literature, and art were long in advance of the rest of the world. According to Brinton, the Arab "preserves in his language he oldest and purest form of Semitic speech, and in mind and body its most pronounced mental and physical type"; hut the purity of the Arab type has been exaggerated, for, like the Jew, he presents exam ples of the tall and the short type, the long headed and the broad-headed, the brunette and the blond. the straight-haired and the wavy haired, evidencing considerable intermixture with Negroid and Aryan elements. As a special
branch of the Semitic stock, the Arabians in elude the Bedouins of northern and central Arabia, as well as those who have wandered into Egypt, other parts of northern Africa, Palestine, and Mesopotamia ; the tribes dwelling in Iladramaut, Yemen, Hejaz, Oman, and on the shores of the Persian Gulf ; the various Arab, rather than Bedouin, communities of Asia Minor send other countries to the east. In the Arabian group belong, also. the ancient Ilimyar ites, or Salina ns (the people of the famous Queen of Sheba), who have left behind them in the sout?mest of the peninsula many inscriptions and other relies of an important culture de stroyed by their ruder sueeessors. By language nniny of the peoples of \ byssinia. and some out side its borders, are Arabians, their speech being more or less related to the old Himyaritic. Such are the tribes speaking Tigrel, rigrifia. and Am haric. These Ethiopian Semites—or, rather, Semitized Ethiopians—are the result of a secon dary migration from Arabia into Africa. A great part of the "Arabs" of northern Africa and central and eastern Asia are merely Hamites, Negroes, Aryans, Mongolians, and Malays who have received a large infusion of Arab blood. Keane (MO) is right in emphasizing the ab sorptive power of the Arabs, to whom the mass of the other Semites in Asiatic Turkey are be coming more and more assimilated. See plate,