Chapter 7

[75]Exodus iii. 16et seqq.This passage has been often misunderstood, but it certainly shows that the name Jehovah had become nearly obsolete among the Hebrews in Egypt, and that the name usually given to God was Adon or Aten.

A second point of contact of Egypt and Palestine is in the painting and sculptures of hostile and conquered nations in Egyptian temples and tombs. These were evidently intended to be portraits, and an admirable series of them has been published by Mr. Petrie under a commission from the British Association for the Advancement of Science. By means of these excellent photographs, now before me, we can see for ourselves the physiognomy and form of head of the Amorite, Philistine, Hittite, and many other peoples previously known to us only by name and a few historical facts; and thus with their correspondence, as preserved in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, and their pictures as given by Petrie, wehave them before us much as we have the speeches and portraits of our contemporaries in the illustrated newspapers, and can venture to express some opinion as to their ethnic affinities and appearance, and can judge more accurately as to the familiar statements of the Bible respecting them.[76]Lastly, Maspero and Tomkins have, with the aid of the names fixed by the survey of Western Palestine, revised the lists given by Thothmes III., in the temple of Karnak, of the places which this Egyptian Alexander had conquered; and they have thus verified the Hebrew geography of the Books of Joshua and Judges.

[76]Sayce,Races of the Old Testament, Religious Tract Society.

Another unexpected acquisition is the solution of the mystery which has enshrouded that mysterious people known as Hyksos or shepherd kings, who invaded Egypt about the time of the Hebrew patriarchs, and, after keeping the Egyptians in subjection for centuries, were finally expelled by the predecessors of the Amunoph already referred to. They constitute a great feature in early Egyptian history, but disappear mysteriously, leaving no trace but a few sculptured heads, Turanian in aspect and markedly contrasting with those of the native Egyptians. It now appears that a people of Northern Syria and Mesopotamia, known to the Egyptians at a later time as Mitanni, and who were neighbours of and associated with the Northern Hittites, have the features of the Hyksos. It also seems from a letter in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets that they spokea non-Semitic or Turanian language akin to that of the Hittites. Thus we have traced the shepherd kings to their origin, and, curiously enough, Cushanrish-athaim, who oppressed the Israelites in the days of Othniel, seems to represent a later inroad of the same people.

Such 'restitutions of decayed intelligence' now meet us on every hand as the results of modern exploration, and are enabling us to bridge over the gaps which have separated the geological ages from the prehistoric and historic human periods in those ancient countries where civilisation seems to have originated.

CHAPTER XII

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 'generationsof 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 thefamiliesof 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 ororiginallanguage, and in default of these may be obliged to resort to other grounds of classification.

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 withoriginallanguage.

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-bestialbrutality, 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,[771]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 ofSusiana, 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'sRecords 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 peoplewhich 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?

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 southernconfrères, and who, according to the Egyptian annals, were closely allied with theAmorites, 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, andthe 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 ofthis 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 remarkablenotes 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 manynations 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 ofthe 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 amplyproved 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, inChapter 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 Phœniciancolonisation.[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; alsoModern 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 wanderingover 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 antediluvianperiod 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 documentscontained 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 theTransactions of the Royal Society of Canada.[881]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 theeyes 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, numerousenough 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?

CHAPTER XIII

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

It may be well, in conclusion, to sum up the general truths we have arrived at in relation to the place of man in the great and long-continued drama of the earth's geological history.

1. We have found no link of derivation connecting man with the lower animals which preceded him. He appears before us as a new departure in creation, without any direct relation to the instinctive life of the lower animals. The earliest men are no less men than their descendants, and up to the extent of their means, inventors, innovators, and introducers of new modes of life, just as much as they. We have not even been able as yet to trace man back to the harmless golden age. As we find him in the caves and gravels he is already a fallen man, out of harmony with his environment and the foe of his fellow creatures, contriving against them instruments of destruction more fatal than those furnished by nature to the carnivorous wild beasts. Yet we would fain believe in an Edenic age of innocence; and physiological probability, as well as the old story in Genesis, demands that we should suppose a primitive condition in which man, careless and happy, should subsist on the spontaneous bounty of nature in some favoured 'garden of the Lord.'

Scheme of possible Correlation of the Geological and Historical Records as to Early Man, as the Facts appear in the present Stage of Investigation, May 1894.

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