Breasted's Ancient Times

Origin of the notion of "the great white race"

James Henry Breasted's Ancient Times (1944 updated from 1916) taught that;
"154. The peoples of the Great Northwest Quadrant, as far back as we know anything about prehistoric man, have all been members of a race of white men, who have been well called the Great White Race. The men of this race created the civilization which we have inherited. If we look outside of the Great Northwest Quadrant, we find in the neighboring territory only two other clearly distinguished races,--the Mongoloids on the east and the Negroes on the south. These peoples occupy an important place in the modern world, but they played no part in the rise of civilization.
155. On the east of the Northwest Quadrant the isolated plateaus of inner Asia, commonly called High Asia, were early inhabited by the Mongols, or Mongoloids, a race of men with straight, black, wiry hair, round head, almost beardless face, and yellow skin. Among these Mongoloids, civilization did not arise until long after it was far advanced in the northwest Quadrant. The migrations of these yellow men out of High Asia finally carried them in all directions, but they did not reach the Northwest Quadrant until long after civilization there was already highly developed. Groups of Asiatic wanderers related to the Mongoloids finally migrated to the far northeast of Asia, and perhaps about ten thousand years ago they crossed to Alaska. As they wandered farther into America they became the ancestors of the North American Indians, whose bodies, especially their faces, continue to show their Asiatic origin.
156. On the south of the Northwest Quadrant lay the booming black world of Africa, as it does today. It was separated from the Great White Race by the broad stretch of the Sahara Desert. The valley of the Nile was the only road leading across the Sahara from south to north. Sometimes the blacks of inner Africa did wander along this road into Egypt, but they came only in small groups. Thus cut off by the desert barrier and living by themselves, they remained uninfluenced by civilization from the north. The Negro peoples of Africa were therefore without any influence on the development of early civilization."
This is an example of textbook teaching from the 1920's to 1940's which appears to be a continuation of the notions of Blumenbach. His idea was of a Great Caucasian race centered on Georgia, wherein he supposed was the birth place of mankind. Later these ideas were modified by T.H. Huxley.