THE NEANTHROPIC DISPERSION AND ALLIED TOPICS
The remarkable record of the early distribution of the sons of Noah
('Toledoth' of the sons of Noah) in Genesis x. may be regarded,
relatively to most of the nations it refers to, as a scrap of
prehistoric lore of the most intensely interesting character. From the
old 'Phaleg' of Bochart to the recent commentaries of Delitzsch and
other German scholars, it has received a host of more or less
conjectural explanations; and while all agree in extolling its value and
importance as a 'Beginning of History,' nothing can be more various than
the views taken of it. Only in the light of the recent discoveries and
researches already referred to can we arrive at a clear conception of
its import; but with these and some common sense we may hope to be more
fortunate than the older interpreters. It is necessary, however, to
explain here that, for want of a little scientific precision, many
modern archæologists still fail in their interpretations. They tell us
that the Toledoth are not properly 'ethnological,' but rather
'ethnographical,' and that we are to regard the document as referring,
not to the genealogical affiliations of nations, but to their accidental
geographical positions at the time of the record.
Now this is precisely what the writer, with a sure scientific instinct,
carefully guards against, and explicitly informs us he did not intend.
He tells us that he gives the '_generations_ of the sons of Noah' and
their descendants, and at the ends of the three lists relating to these
sons, he is careful to say that he has given them 'in their lands, each
according to his language, after their families, in their nations,' or
the formula is slightly varied into 'after their families, after their
tongues, in their lands, in their nations.' Lastly, in the conclusion of
the whole table he reiterates, 'These are the _families_ of the sons of
Noah, according to their generations, after their nations.' All these
statements, let it be observed, are acknowledged to be parts of one
(Elohistic) document. It is clear, therefore, that the writer intends us
to understand that the determining elements of his classification are
neither physical characters nor accidents of geographical distribution,
but descent and original language--two primary and scientific grounds of
classification, and which common sense requires us to adhere to in
interpreting the document, whose value will depend on the certainty with
which the writer could ascertain facts as to these criteria: criteria
which are, of course, less open to the observation of later inquirers,
who may find difficulty in ascertaining either descent or _original_
language, and in default of these may be obliged to resort to other
grounds of classification.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING LINES OF POSTDILUVIAN MIGRATIONS FROM SHINAR,
AS IN GENESIS X.]
Among modern archæologists it has been a fruitful source of controversy
whether we should classify men according to their skulls or to their
tongues; in other words, whether physical characters or linguistic
should be dominant in our classifications. Neither ground is absolutely
certain. We may find long and short skulls in the same grave-mound, and
there are intermediate forms which defy certain arrangement. In like
manner history assures us that people of one race have often adopted the
language of another. True science warns us that we may err unless we
give a fair valuation to every available character. The ethnologist of
Genesis considers both physical and linguistic characters, but bases his
arrangement mainly on the sure ground of descent along with _original_
language.
It may be said, however, that if taken in the sense obviously intended
by the writer, the list will not correspond with the facts. A few data
have, however, to be taken into the account in order to give this early
writer fair play.
1. The record has nothing to do with antediluvian peoples or with
survivors of the Deluge other than the sons of Noah, if there were any
such. Therefore, those ethnologists who are sceptical as to the
historical Deluge, and who postulate an uninterrupted advance of man
through long ages of semi-bestial brutality, have nothing in common
with our narrator, and cannot possibly understand his statements.
2. The document does not profess to be a series of ethnological
inferences from the present or ancient characters of different nations,
but an actual historical statement of the known migrations of men from a
common centre in Shinar, the Sumir of the Chaldeans.
3. It relates only to the primary distribution of men from their alleged
centre over certain districts of Western Asia, Eastern Europe, and
Northern Africa, and does not profess to know anything of their
subsequent migrations or history.
4. It is thus not responsible for those later, even if very ancient,
changes which displaced one race by another, or obliged one race to move
on by the pressure of another, nor for any changes of language or
mixtures of races which may have occurred in these movements.
5. It affirms nothing as to the physical characters of the races
referred to, except as they may be inferred from heredity, but it
implies some resemblance in language between the derivatives of the same
stock, and this, be it observed, notwithstanding the added narrative of
the confusion of tongues at Babel,[77] which the narrator does not
regard as interfering with the fact of languages originally forming a
few branches proceeding from a common stock.
[77] Held by some to belong to another (Jahvistic) document, but
certainly incorporated by the early editor.
6. If we ask what our narrator supposed to be the original or Noachic
tongue, we might infer from his three lines of descent, and from the
locality of the dispersion and the episode of Nimrod's prehistoric
kingdom, that the primitive language of Chaldea would be the original
stem; and this we now know from authentic written records to have been
an agglutinate language of the type usually known as Turanian, and more
closely allied to the Tartar and Chinese tongues than to other kinds of
speech. It would follow that what we now call Semitic and Aryan or
Japhetic forms of speech must, in the view of our ancient authority,
date from the sequelæ of the great 'confusion of tongues.'
These points being premised, we can clear away the fogs which have been
gathered around this little luminous spot in the early history of the
world, and can trace at least the principal ethnic lines of radiation
from it. Though the writer gives us three main branches of affiliation
of the children of Noah, he really refers to six principal lines of
migration, three of them belonging to that multifarious progeny of Ham,
in which he seems to include both the Turanian and Negroid types of our
ordinary classifications, as well as some of the brown and yellow races.
One of the lines of affiliation of Ham leads eastward and is not traced;
but if the Cushite people, who are said to have gone to the land which
in earlier antediluvian times was that of 'gold and bedolach and shoham
stone,' that is, along the fertile valley of Susiana, were those
primitive people, preceding the Elamites of history, who are said to
have spoken an agglutinate language,[78] then we have at least one
stage of this migration. A second line leads west to the eastern coast
of the Mediterranean, to Egypt and to North Africa. A third passes
south-westward through Southern Arabia and across the Red Sea into
interior Africa. To the sons of Japhet are ascribed two lines of
migration, one through Asia Minor and the northern coasts of the
Mediterranean; another north-west, around the Black Sea. The Semites
would seem to have been a less wandering people at the first, but
subsequently to have encroached on and mingled with the Hamites,
and especially on that western line of migration leading to the
Mediterranean. All this can be gathered from undisputed national names
in the several lines of migration above sketched, without touching on
the more obscure and doubtful names or referring to tribes which
remained near the original centre. We must, however, inquire a little
more particularly into the movements bearing on Palestine and Egypt.
[78] Sayce (_Hibbert Lectures_) and Bagster's _Records of the Past_.
Inscriptions of Cyrus published in the last volume of the latter appear
to set at rest the vexed questions relating to early Elam. It would seem
that in the earliest times Cushites and Semitic Elamites contended for
the fertile plains and the mountains east of the Tigris, and were
finally subjugated by Japhetic Medes and Persians. Thus this region
first formed a part of the Cushite Nimrodic empire (Genesis ii. 11, x.
8); it then became the seat of a conquering Elamite power (Genesis xiv.
1 to 4); and was finally a central part of the Medo-Persian empire. All
this agrees with the Bible and the inscriptions, as well as in the main
with Herodotus.
So far as the writer in Genesis is informed, he does not seem to be
aware of any sons of Japhet having colonised Palestine or Egypt. It was
only in the later reflux of population that the sons of Javan gained a
foothold in these regions. They were both colonised primarily by Hamites
and subsequently intruded on by Semites.
Here a little prehistoric interlude noted by the writer, or by an author
whom he quotes, gives a valuable clue not often attended to. The oldest
son of Ham, Cush, begat Nimrod, the mighty hunter and prehistoric
conqueror, who organised the first empire in that Euphratean plain which
subsequently became the nucleus of the Babylonian and Assyrian power.
The site of his kingdom cannot be doubted, for cities well known in
historic times, Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, were included in it, as
well as probably Nineveh. The first point which I wish to make in this
connection is that we cannot suppose this to have been a Semitic empire.
Its nucleus must have been composed of Nimrod's tribal connections, who
were Hamites and presumably Cushites. He is, indeed, said to have gone
into or invaded the land of Ashur, and if by this is meant the Semitic
Ashur, he must have been hostile to these people, as indeed the
Chaldeans were in later times. The next point to be noted is that the
Nimrodic empire must have originated at a time when the Cushites were
still strong on the Lower Euphrates, and before that great movement of
these people which carried them across Arabia to the Upper Nile, and
ultimately caused the name Cush or Kesh to be almost exclusively applied
to the Ethiopians of Africa. Now is this history, or mere legend?
[Illustration: HEAD ILLUSTRATING THE MOST ANCIENT TYPE OF CUSHITE
TURANIAN, FROM TEL-LOH (after de Sarzec). The cap is perhaps an
imitation of the antediluvian shell-caps, like that of the 'man of
Mentorie.']
The answer of archæology is not doubtful. We have in the earliest
monuments of Chaldea evidence that there was a pre-Semitic population,
to whom, indeed, it is believed that the Semites who invaded the country
owed much of their civilisation. A recent writer has said that 'outside
of the Bible we know nothing of Nimrod,' but others see a trace of him
in the legendary hero of Chaldean tradition, Gisdubar or Gingamos, while
others think that, as Na-marod, he may be the original of Merodach, the
tutelary god of Babylon. Independently of this, there was certainly an
early Chaldean and 'Turanian' empire, which must have had some founder,
whatever his name, and which was not Semitic or Aryan, and therefore
what an early writer would call Hamitic. Further, our author traces from
this region the great Cushite line of migration, which includes such
well-known names as Seba, Sabta, Sheba and Dedan, into Arabia on the way
to Africa. Here the Egyptian monuments take up the tale, and inform us
of a South Arabian and East African people, the people of Pun or Punt,
represented as like to themselves and to the Kesh or Ethiopians, and who
thus correspond to the Arabian Cushites of Genesis. In accordance with
this the Abyssinian of to-day is scarcely distinguishable from the old
Punites as represented on the Egyptian monuments.[79]
[79] The recent discoveries of Glaser with reference to the early
civilisation of Southern Arabia also bear on this point.
Thus the primitive Cushite kingdom and one of the great lines of Cushite
migration are established by ancient monuments. Let it be further
observed that, as represented in Egypt, these primitive Ethiopians were
not black, but of a reddish or brownish colour, like the Egyptians
themselves, and that their migration explains the resemblance of the
customs and religion of early Egypt to those of Babylonia, and the
ascription by the Egyptians of the origin of their gods to the land of
Pun.
The remaining sons of Ham, Mizraim, Put and Canaan, are not mentioned in
connection with the old Nimrodic kingdom, and seem to have moved
westward at a very early period. They were already 'in the land,' and
apparently constituted a considerable citizen population before the
migration of Abraham.
Mizraim represents the twin populations of the delta and Lower Egypt,
and the Tel-el-Amarna tablets inform us that long before the time of
Moses Mitzor was the ordinary name of Egypt, while we know that its
early population was closely allied in features and language to the
Cushites.
Canaan[80] heads a central line of migration, and Sidon and Cheth are
said to have been his leading sons. The first represents the Phœnician
maritime power of Northern Syria, the second that great nation known to
the Egyptians as Kheta and to the Assyrians as Khatti, whose territory
extended from Carchemish on the Euphrates through the plain of
Coele-Syria to Hebron in Southern Palestine, and not improbably into the
delta. They were a people whose language was allied to that of Cushite
Chaldea,[81] whose features were of a coarser type than those of their
more southern _confrères_, and who, according to the Egyptian annals,
were closely allied with the Amorites, Jebusites, and other people
identified with Canaan in the Old Testament. The Cheta, at one time
known only as the sons of Heth in the Old Testament, may be said in our
time to have experienced a sudden resurrection, and now bulk so largely
in the minds of archæologists that their importance is in danger of
being exaggerated.
[80] Canaan with our old historian is the name of a man, but it came to
designate first the 'low country' or coast region of Western Palestine,
and then the whole of Palestine.
[81] Conder and others call it Turanian.
A significant note is added: 'Afterwards were the families of the
Canaanites scattered abroad.' How could this be? Their line of migration
and settlement led directly to the great sea, and was hemmed in by that
of the Japhetites on the north and of the Cushites on the south; but
they made the sea their highway, and soon there was no coast from end to
end of the Mediterranean, and far along the European and African shores
of the Atlantic, that was not familiar with the Phœnician Canaanite. But
it may be said these Phœnicians were a Semitic people. They certainly
spoke a Semitic language allied to the Hebrew, but what right have we to
attribute Semitic languages solely to the descendants of the Biblical
Shem? Even if these languages originated with them they may have spread
to other peoples, as we know they replaced the old Turanian speech of
Babylonia, just as the Arabic has extinguished other languages in Egypt
itself. In whatever way the Phœnicians acquired a Semitic tongue, in
physical character they were not Semitic, but closely allied to the
Hittites, the Philistines, and the people of Mitzor, or Egypt. The
Egyptian sculptures prove this, and the celebrated Capuan bust of
Hannibal reminds us of the features of the old Hyksos kings of Egypt,
who were no doubt of Hamite or Turanian stock.
Finally, what relation does the record in Genesis x. bear to the
prehistoric peoples of the neanthropic age? These must have been in the
main the advanced colonists and straggling adventurers of the leading
lines of migration. We find such people recorded in the Pentateuch, and
also in the caverns and shelters of Phœnicia, as preceding the
Canaanites in Syria; and such nomads and hunters must have streamed out
into Europe and Africa in advance of the more settled and slowly
advancing agricultural peoples. At first they must have been few, rude,
and users of stone implements only, living chiefly by hunting and
fishing; but some of them may have taken with them domestic animals and
seeds of grains, and so have established here and there civilised
communities. In later times, new colonists and commerce introduced among
them bronze and iron and more advanced arts. Thus these early
neanthropic peoples belonged to one or other of the great lines of
migration indicated in our old record; though by virtue of physical
changes and dialectic differences induced by isolation and new
conditions of life, and which in such circumstances would arise with a
rapidity unexampled in later times, as well as the want of historical
annals, it has in many cases become difficult or impossible precisely to
trace their affinities. Even in Palestine, at the time of the Exodus,
peoples of this kind (Horites, Avvites, &c.)[82] were known, whose
affinities had been lost; and it is not necessary to suppose that these
were remnants of antediluvians, since what we know in modern times of
the wanderers on the outskirts of great migrations sufficiently accounts
for their existence.
This is, I think, a fair summary of the testimony of the writer of
Genesis x., as compared with the general evidence of history and
archæology. But we have something further to learn from what may be
called the fossil remains of prehistoric peoples as embodied in the
Egyptian monuments, which are conversant with all the nations around the
eastern end of the Mediterranean.
The Egyptians divided the nations known to them into four groups, of
which they have given us several representations in tombs and public
buildings. One of these consisted of their own race. The other three
were as follows: (1) Southern peoples mostly of dark complexions,
ranging from light brown to black. These included the Cushites, Punites,
and negroes. (2) Western peoples mostly of fair complexions inhabiting
the islands and northern coasts of the Mediterranean, the 'Hanebu' or
chiefs of the north or of the isles, with some populations of North
Africa, the so-called white Lybians and Maxyans. (3) Northern or
north-eastern peoples, or those of Syria and the neighbouring parts of
Western Asia, Amorites, Hittites, Edomites, Arabs, &c., usually
represented as of yellowish complexion.
[82] Deuteronomy ii.
The first of these divisions evidently corresponds with the line of
Cushite migration of Genesis, extending from Shinar through Southern
Arabia, Nubia, and Ethiopia, and of which the negroes are apparently
degraded members pushed in advance of the others, while the populations
of Pun and Kesh, the southern Arabians and their relatives in Africa,
closely resemble, as figured in the monuments, the Egyptians themselves.
The second group of the Egyptian classification represents those
so-called Aryan peoples of Europe and its islands, and parts of Northern
Africa, of whom the Greeks are a typical race, and who in Genesis are
said to have possessed the 'Isles of the Gentiles'; though in the wave
of migration from the east they were in many places preceded by
non-Aryan races, Pelasgians, Iberians, &c., possibly wandering Hamitic
tribes, while they were also invaded by that scattering abroad of the
Phœnician Canaanites referred to in Genesis. They are represented in the
monuments as people with European features, fair complexions, and
sometimes fair hair and blue eyes.
The third group is the most varied of the whole, because its seat in
Syria was a meeting-place of many tribes. Its most ancient members, the
Phœnicians and allied nations, were, according to the monuments, men
resembling the Egyptian and Cushite type, and these, no doubt, were
those pre-Semitic and prehistoric nations of Canaan referred to in the
remarkable notes regarding the Emim, Zuzim, &c., in the second chapter
of Deuteronomy, which may be regarded as a foot-note to the Toledoth of
Genesis x. These aborigines were invaded by men of different types.
First, we find in the monuments that the Amorites of the Palestine hills
were a fair people with somewhat European features, like some of the
present populations of the Lebanon. When returning over the Lebanon in
1884 we met a large company of men with camels and donkeys carrying
merchandise. They were fair-complexioned and with brown hair, and from
their features I might have supposed they were Scottish Highlanders. I
was told they were Druses, and they were evidently much like, as are
indeed many of the modern fellaheen of the Palestine hills, the Amar as
they are pictured in Egypt. These white peoples, though reckoned in the
Bible as Hamites, may have had a mixture of Aryan blood. It is to be
noted here that the Amorite chiefs, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre, named as
confederate with Abraham, have non-Semitic names.
A later inroad was that of the Hittites, evidently a people having
affinity with the Philistines and Egyptians, but whose chiefs and nobles
seem to have been of Tartar blood, like the modern Turks. The names of
their kings seem also to have been non-Semitic. Later, the great
westward migration of Semitic peoples, to which that of Abraham himself
belongs, not only introduced the Israelites but many nations of Semitic
or mixed blood, the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Ishmaelites, &c.,
whom we find figuring in the Egyptian monuments as yellow or brownish
people with a Jewish style of features, and all of whom, as mentioned
above, would be known to the Egyptians and Canaanites as 'Hebrews.'[83]
[83] This is independent of the question whether we regard the name Eber
as that of an ancestor, or merely of men from beyond the Euphrates.
Thus the monuments confirm the Jewish record, and the confusion which
some ethnologists have introduced into the matter arises from their
applying in an arbitrary manner the special tests of physical and
philological characteristics, and neglecting to distinguish the primary
migrations of men from subsequent intrusions.
Another singular point of agreement is that, just as in Egypt we find
men civilised from the first, so we find elsewhere. In Egypt writing and
literature date from before the time of Abraham. In like manner we have
no monumental evidence of any time when the Accadian people of Babylonia
were destitute of writing and science, and we now find that there were
learned scribes in all the cities of Canaan, and that the Phœnicians and
Southern Arabians knew their alphabet ages before Moses, while even the
Greeks seem to have known alphabetic writing long before the Mosaic
age.[84] These men, in short, were descendants of the survivors of the
Noachian Deluge, and therefore civilised from the first; and though we
have no certain evidence of letters before the Flood, except the
statement of the author of the Babylonian deluge tablets, that Noah hid
written archives at Sippara before going into the ark, yet it is quite
certain that men who could build Noah's ship are not unworthy ancestors
of the Phœnician seamen, who probably launched their barks on the
Mediterranean before the death of Noah himself. Thus, whatever value we
may attach to the record in Genesis, we cannot refuse to admit that it
is thoroughly consistent with itself and with the testimony of the
oldest monuments of Asia and Africa, as it is also with the evidence of
the geological changes of the pleistocene and early modern epoch.
[84] Petrie, _Illahun, Kahun and Garob_, 1891.
In like manner the Egyptian inscriptions of the conquests of Thothmes
III. give us a pre-Mosaic record of Palestinian geography corresponding
with that of the Hebrew conquest, and the pictures of sieges coincide
with the excavations of Petrie at Lachish in restoring those Canaanite
towns, 'walled up to heaven,' which excited the fear of the Israelites.
Neither can we scoff at the illiteracy of men who were carrying on
diplomatic correspondence in written despatches before Genesis itself
was compiled. Nor can we doubt the military prowess of these people,
their chariot forces, their sculptured idols and images, their wealth of
gold and silver, their agricultural and artistic skill. All these are
amply proved by the monuments of the Egyptians and the Hittites.[85]
[85] Bliss, in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund
for April 1892, figures many interesting objects, found in the lower or
Amorite stratum of the mound of Tell-el-Hesy (Lachish). We have here a
bronze battle-axe and heads of javelins that may have been used against
the soldiers of Joshua, and axes and pottery of equally early date,
along with multitudes of flint flakes, arrow heads, &c., used at this
early time. It is to be hoped that the further exploration of this site
may yield yet more interesting results.
Palestine thus presents a prehistoric past parallel with the earlier
years of Egypt. It has, however, a still earlier period, for in
Palestine, as stated in a previous chapter, we have evidence of the
existence of man long before the dispersion of the sons of Noah. To
appreciate this evidence, we must go back, as in the case of Egypt, to
the pre-human period. All along the coast of Palestine, from Jaffa to
the northern limit of old Phœnicia, the geological traveller sees
evidence of a recent submergence, in the occurrence of sandstone,
gravel, and limestone with shells and other marine remains of species
still living in the Mediterranean. These are the relics of that
pleistocene submergence already referred to, in which the Nile valley
was an arm of the sea and Africa was an island. No evidence has been
found of the residence of man in Palestine in this period, when, as the
sea washed the very bases of the hills, and the plains were under water,
it was certainly not very well suited to his abode. The climate was also
probably more severe than at present, and the glaciers of Lebanon must
have extended nearly to the sea. This was the time of the so-called
glacial period in Western Europe.
This, however, was succeeded by that post-glacial period in which, as
already explained, the area of the Mediterranean was much smaller than
at present, and the land encroached far upon the bed of the sea. This,
the second continental period, is that in which man makes his first
undoubted appearance in Europe, and we have evidence of the same kind in
Syria, to which I have already directed attention in the description of
the caverns of the Lebanon, in Chapter IV.
That the occupancy of these caves is very ancient is proved by the fact
that the old Egyptian conquerors, who cut a road for themselves over
these precipices before the Exodus, seem to have found them in the same
state as at present, while farther south ancient Syrian tombs are
excavated in similar bone breccias. But there is better evidence than
this. The bones and teeth in these caves belong not to the animals which
have inhabited the Lebanon in historic times, but to creatures like the
hairy rhinoceros and the bison, now extinct, which could not have lived
in this region since the comparatively modern period in which the
Mediterranean resumed its dominion over that great plain between
Phœnicia and Cyprus. This we know had been submerged long before the
first migrations of the Hamites into Phœnicia, even before the entrance
of those comparatively rude tribes which seem to have inhabited the
country before the Phœnician colonisation.[86] Unfortunately no burials
of these early men have yet been found, and perhaps the Lebanon caves
were only their summer sojourns on hunting expeditions. They were,
however, probably of the same stock with the races (the Cro-magnon and
Canstadt) of the so-called mammoth age in Western Europe, who have left
similar remains. Thus we can carry man in the Lebanon back to that
absolutely prehistoric age which preceded the Noachian Deluge and the
dispersion of the Noachidæ.[87]
[86] Some of these tribes also lived in caves, as that of Ant Elias, but
the animals they consumed are those now living in the Lebanon.
[87] Dawson, _Trans. Vict. Institute_, May 1884; also _Modern Science in
Bible Lands_.
If in imagination we suppose ourselves to visit the caves of the
Nahr-el-Kelb pass, when they were inhabited by these early men, we
should find them to be tall muscular people, clothed in skins, armed
with flint-tipped javelins and flint hatchets, and cooking the animals
caught in the chase in the mouths of their caves. They were probably
examples of the ruder and less civilised members of that powerful and
energetic antediluvian population which had apparently perfected so many
arts, and the remains of whose more advanced communities are now buried
in the silt of the sea bottom. If we looked out westward on what is now
the Mediterranean, we should see a wide wooded or grassy plain as far as
eye could reach, and perhaps might discern vast herds of elephant,
rhinoceros, and bison wandering over these plains in their annual
migrations. Possibly on the far margin of the land we might see the
smoke of antediluvian towns long ago deeply submerged in the sea.
The great diluvial catastrophe which closed this period, and finally
introduced the present geographical conditions, we have seen good reason
to identify with the historical Deluge, and the old peoples of the age
of the mammoth and rhinoceros were antediluvians, and must have perished
from the earth before the earliest migration of the Beni Noah.
Putting together the results referred to in the preceding pages, we may
restore the prehistoric ages of the Eastern Mediterranean under the
following statements:
1. In the period immediately preceding human occupancy, the land of
Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia participated in the great pleistocene
depression, accompanied by a rigorous climate.
2. The next stage was one of continental elevation, in which the borders
of the Mediterranean were dry land, and vast plains in this basin, and
even in the Western Atlantic, were open to human migration. In this age
palæocosmic men took up their abode all over Western Asia, Europe, and
Northern Africa, and probably occupied broad lands since submerged. At
this period the region was inhabited by the mammoth, rhinoceros, bison,
and other large animals now altogether or locally extinct.
3. The earlier part of this post-glacial or antediluvian period was one
of mild climatal conditions, followed by a slight return of the
conditions of the previous glacial age.
4. The period was terminated by a great submergence, accompanied with
vast destruction of animal and human life; and of comparatively short
duration, corresponding to the historical Deluge.
5. From this depression the more limited continents of the modern period
were elevated, and man again overspread them from his primitive seats in
the Euphratean region, as recorded in the tenth chapter of Genesis.
6. In this early migration the Biblical Hamites, forming one of the
groups of men vaguely known as Turanian, first spread themselves over
Palestine and Egypt, and founded the early Phœnician, Canaanite,
Mizraimite, and Cushite tribes and nations.
7. In early historic times Semitic peoples, Hebrews and others from the
east, and Mongoloid peoples from the north, migrated into Palestine and
dominated and mixed with the primitive tribes, finally penetrating into
Egypt and establishing there the dominion known as that of the Hyksos.
The historical Moabites, Ammonites, Ishmaelites, and Hittites were
peoples of this character, having a substratum of Hamite blood with
aristocracies of Semitic or Tartar origin.
It will be observed that while archæological evidence tends to
illustrate and corroborate that wonderful collection of early historical
documents contained in the Book of Genesis, and to prove their great
antiquity, on the other hand these documents prove to be the most
precious sources of information as to the antediluvian age, the great
Flood, the earliest dispersion of men, the old Nimrodic empire, the
connections of Asiatic and African civilisation, and other matters
connected with the origins of the oldest nations, respecting which we
have little other written history.
We thus learn that, relatively to Bible history, there is no prehistoric
age, since it carries us back beyond the Deluge to the origin of man, so
that we might properly restrict this term in its narrower signification
to those parts of the world not covered by this primitive history. It is
true that a tide of criticism hostile to the integrity of Genesis has
been rising for some years; but it seems to beat vainly against a solid
rock, and the ebb has now evidently set in. The battle of historical and
linguistic criticism may indeed rage for a time over the history and
date of the Mosaic law, but in so far as Genesis is concerned it has
been practically decided by scientific exploration.
Since writing the preceding pages I have met with a remarkable paper
by Mr. Horatio Hale in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of
Canada_.[88] It is one which should commend itself to the study of
every Biblical scholar and archæologist; but is contained in a
periodical which perhaps meets the eyes of few of them. In this paper
he maintains the importance of language as a ground of anthropological
classification, and then uses his wide knowledge of the languages of
American aborigines, and other rude races, to show that the grammatical
complexity and logical perfection of these languages implies a high
intellectual capacity in their original framers, and that where such
complex and perfect languages are spoken by very rude tribes like the
Australian aborigines, they originated with cultivated and intellectual
peoples--in the case of the Australian, with the civilised primitive
Dravidians of India. He thus shows that languages, like alphabets, have
undergone a process of degradation, so that those of modern times are
less perfect exponents of thought than those which preceded them, and
that primitive man in his earliest state must have been endowed with as
high intellectual powers as any of his descendants.
[88] Vol. IX. Sec. II. 1891.
On similar grounds he shows that it is not in the outlying barbarous
races that we are to look for truly primitive man, since here we have
merely degraded types, and that the primitive centres of man and
language must have been in the old historic lands of Western Asia and
Northern Africa. On this view the time necessary for the development of
the arts of civilisation and of extensive colonisation would not be
great. 'In five centuries a single human pair planted in a fertile oasis
might have given origin to a people of five hundred thousand souls,
numerous enough to have sent out emigrations to the nearest inviting
lands.' The same lapse of time would have sufficed to develop
agriculture, to domesticate animals, and to make some progress in
architectural and other arts of life. He quotes the remarkable passage
of Reclus[89] as to the agency of woman in the inventions of early art,
and shows that this accords with more modern experience among the less
civilised nations. It is obvious that all this tends to bring scientific
anthropology into the closest relation with the old Biblical history,
though Hale, in deference, perhaps, to modern prejudices, does not refer
to this.
[89] _Primitive Folk_ (Contemporary Science Series), p. 58.
In the passage quoted by Hale, Reclus says: 'It is to woman that mankind
owes all that has made us men.' Following this hint of the ingenious
French writer, we may imagine the first man and woman inhabiting some
fertile region, rich in fruits and other natural products, and
subsisting at first on the uncultivated bounty of nature. With the birth
of their first child, perhaps before, would come the need of shelter
either in some dry cavern or booth of poles and leaves or bark, carpeted
perhaps with moss or boughs of pine. This would be the first 'home,'
with the woman for its housekeeper. We may imagine the man bringing to
it the lamb or kid whose dam he had killed, and the woman, with motherly
instinct, pitying the little orphan and training it to be a domestic
pet, the first of tamed animals. She, too, would store grain, seeds and
berries for domestic use, and some of these germinating would produce
patches of grain, or shrubs, or fruit trees around the hut. Noticing
these and protecting them, she would be the first gardener and
orchardist. The woman and her children might add to the cultivated
plants or domesticated quadrupeds and birds; and the man would be
induced, in the intervals of hunting and fishing, to guard, protect, and
fence them.
When the boys grew up, to one of them might be assigned the care of the
sheep and goats, to the other the culture of the little farm, while they
might aid their father in erecting a better and more artistic
habitation, the first attempt at architecture, and in introducing
artificial irrigation to render their field more fertile. Is not this
little romance of M. Elie Reclus perfectly in harmony with the old
familiar story in Genesis, and also with the most recent results of
modern science?