Therefore, the study of Africans and the African past was left to the anthropologists. On their part, the anthropologist concerned themselves with the study of what they called "primitive societies" untouched by civilization. They searched for the small and isolated African ethnic groups, which they called tribes, and made them the subject of their study. These small and isolated groups were taken as representative of the whole continent. And when they studied the groups, the anthropologists stressed their static nature rather than their dynamic nature.

They did not bother to examine the larger and more complex societies, such as Ethiopians in East Africa, the Bantu of central and the southern half of the continent, the Hausa, the Mande (Mandinka) or the Songhay of West Africa. Having studied these small groups, the anthropologists concluded that African societies were timeless entities, without past or future. Naturally, this kind of study of African people was convenient to the European and British colonial administrations, specially the British who went about inventing chiefs to suit the colonial system they called 'Indirect Rule'. Small wonder, anthropology was viewed with suspicion by educated Africans as the handmaiden of colonialism.

First, they were telling their audience in Europe that the superior white men with his superior culture were justified in colonizing the so-called inferior and primitive African. Only then would the African be guided to Christianity and civilization.

Secondly, the anthropologists were conveying to the European colonizer that the African was primitive and weak and would never have the strength to challenge them effectively.

Thirdly, the anthropologists were confirming to the colonizers that Africans were children, who were incapable of growing up, but were dangerous and had to be subjugated by force.

One may ask the question why the anthropologists reached such conclusions. In general, the European anthropologists of the colonial period were attempting to justify the colonization of Africa by Europe: Having exhausted the study of the small isolated African societies, the anthropologists were faced with the larger and more complex African societies. They came to realize that some of these complex political, economic and social systems were comparable and at times more advanced that those developed in Europe. In spite of the evidence, they denied these African achievements to the Africans, and looked for their origins outside the continent.

Their immediate reaction was that the civilizations of Egypt (KMT), Meroe, Axum, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mali, Songhay, etc., must have been developed by invaders from the outside. These so-called invaders they called "Hamites" whom they described as white, inherently culturally superior, nomads who came to Africa in successive waves in the course of which they conquered the Africans who were then living in settled agricultural communities, and galvanized them into civilization.

The chief exponent of the "Hamitic Myth" was the British anthropologist, C.G. Seligman who in 1930 wrote in his Races of Africa, "The civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites. Its history is the record of these people and of their interaction with the two African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman the incoming Hamites were pastoral Europeans, arriving in wave after wave, better armed as well as quicker outwitted than the dark agricultural Negroes."

Today, of course, we know better. African historiography since the attainment of independence in the 1960s has completely shattered the Hamitic myth and allied European racist writing on Africa and the Africans masquerading as science. Ethiopia is an ancient polity that managed to sustain an unbroken civilization free of foreign influences. Like ancient Egypt, and other civilization in Africa, Ethiopian civilization was systematically de-Africanized in Western literature.

As anthropologists were faced with the larger and complex societies, they looked for external influences when faced with our civilization. Accordingly, in the case of Ethiopia, they came up with a new lie called the Semitic hypothesis. According to the Semitic hypothesis or myth the Ethiopians are actually not a member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East who settled by the Red Sea.

In saying this they included and still include, for example Professor Greenberg's thesis in The Languages of Africa (1954), the Ethiopian alphabet with Afro-Asiatic languages that includes the Arabic and Hebrew. In addition they say these Semitic people were the Habshit ethnic group with an alphabet called Geziet, which they used for writing.

Therefore they associated the current Amharic alphabet, which evolved from Geez with the Habsha people who live in Ethiopia today are called or Semites. Habshit (Semite). However, this myth or hypothesis is completely false because there is no evidence to prove it. In fact neither the Habshit people nor the Geziet alphabet exists in any part today's of Near East (Middle East) where they claim to have originated but only in Ethiopia. Ethiopians (Africans) invented the alphabet Geez between 2000-5000 B.C by Ethiopians in Ethiopia according to the clergy who kept the record in Ethiopia for thousands of years.

The period after World War II, (1945), is considered a turning point in the writing of African History. During the era of the Slave Trade, Africa was not considered as a historical part of the world and the African was regarded as sub-human. In the colonial period, the Europeans academics recognized the humanity of the Africans but still considered them an inferior and primitive without a history worthy of study. Hence, the African history that existed was "the history of Europeans in Africa" i.e. is colonial history. However, with the struggle for independence after 1945, the reconstruction, decolonization, and rehabilitation, of African history began, and are still progressing. The last 50 years have witnessed the establishment of Research Institutes, and the establishments of departments and Centers specializing in African Studies (including African history) not only in Africa but also in all parts of the world.

By 1963 thirty or forty universities in the U.S.A were offering courses in African History. This was followed by the setting up of special programs for graduate study and research in Africa. In Africa itself, the independent nations began to build their national archives in which historical data is made available for researchers and museums to preserve and project their cultural heritage. International conferences on African History were organized in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Books including textbooks on African History as well as journals specializing in African History filled the shelves of libraries and bookstores. African history has come of age.

Nonetheless, the mistakes of the past still linger on in the writings of some historians of Africa and in the minds of some of us. Many but not all European academics and historians have forgotten the racist notion that "Africa has no History." We have indeed come a long way but there is still much to be done, beginning with the decolonization of our minds. "We learn the past to predict the future and to form the present." (End of quote)"