Hamitic

Hamitic is an historical term for the peoples supposedly descended from Noah's son Ham, paralleling Semitic and Japhetic. It was formerly used for grouping the non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages (which for this reason were described as "Hamito-Semitic"). However, since, unlike the Semitic branch, these have not been shown to form a phylogenetic unity, the term is obsolete in this sense.

In the 19th century, as an application of scientific racism, the "Hamitic race" became a sub-group of the Caucasian race, alongside the Semitic race, grouping the non-Semitic populations native to North Africa, the Horn of Africa and South Arabia, including the Ancient Egyptians. The Hamitic theory suggested that this "Hamite race" was superior to or more advanced than Negroid populations of Sub-Saharan Africa. In its most extreme form, in the writings of C. G. Seligman, it asserted that all significant achievements in African history were the work of "Hamites" who migrated into central Africa as pastoralists, bringing technologies and civilizing skills with them. Theoretical models of Hamitic languages and of Hamitic races were interlinked in the early twentieth century.