In the story "The Shadow out of Time" H.P. Lovecraft mentions "a general of the great-headed brown people who held South Africa in B.C. 50,000" as one the Yithian's mental abductees.
Perhaps HPL's inspiration for this was Boskop Man aka Homo Capensis, a separate species of ancient humans theorized to have a much greater brain capacity based on some big skulls found in South Africa in 1913 (the idea has since been discredited). Was HPL imagining them in his mythos as a prehistoric empire since they had a general smart enough to get mind switched with a Yithian cone creature?
Not much online about Boskop Man since it's now considered just some unusually big skulls and not a separate race of early man but here's an image and a couple of articles.
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