Who are the modern descendants of Ham in Genesis?

A:Genesis 10:6: "And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan." While the Book of Genesis never says that Ham was black, the name can be read as suggesting 'dark' and eventually Jewish tradition decided that the 'curse of Ham' meant that he would have black skin and was therefore an attempted explanation why there are black people in the world, something that the Book of Genesis had not really considered. The curse of Ham was originally intended to explain why the Canaanites should be subservient to the Israelites, but the subsequent tradition that Ham was cursed by being given black skin came to be used to justify the enslavement of African people. This view means that the descendants of Ham were black Africans even though, for example, the actual Canaanites, supposedly descended from Ham's son Canaan, were brown-skinned Semitic people.

A completely different, and equally irrational explanation that began in the Middle Ages is that serfs were descended from Ham, while nobles were descended from Japheth and free men descended from Shem.