The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science Part 13

6. All the divisions of the family of Noah had from the first the domesticated animals and the princ.i.p.al arts of life, and enjoyed these in a national capacity so soon as sufficiently numerous. The more scattered tribes, wandering into fresh regions, and adopting the life of hunters, lost the characteristics of civilization, and diverged widely from the primitive languages. We should thus have, according to the Hebrew ethnology, a central area presenting the princ.i.p.al stems of all the three races in a permanently civilized state. All around this area should lie aberrant and often barbarous tribes, differing most widely from the original type in the more distant regions, and in those least favorable to human health and subsistence. In these outlying regions, secondary centres of civilization might grow up, differing from that of the primitive centre, except in so far as the common principles of human nature and intercommunication might prevent this. All these conclusions, fairly deducible at once from the Mosaic ethnology and the theory of dispersion from a centre, are perfectly in accordance with observed facts, though in absolute contradiction to prevalent ethnological conclusions, based on these facts in connection with theories of development.

A mult.i.tude of Bible notices might easily be quoted ill.u.s.trative of these points, and also of the consistency of the Mosaic narrative with itself. One of them may suffice here. Abraham, who is said by the Jews to have been contemporary with Shem, as Menes by the Egyptians with Ham, at least lived sufficiently near to the time of the rise of the earliest nations to be taken as an ill.u.s.tration of this primitive condition of society. He was not a patriarch of the first or second rank, like Ham or Mizraim or Canaan, but a subordinate family leader several removes from the survivors of the deluge. Yet his tribe increases in comparatively few years to a considerable number. He is treated as an equal by the monarchs of Egypt and Philistia. He defeats, with a band of three or four hundred retainers, a confederacy of four Euphratean kings representing the embryo state of the Persian and a.s.syrian empires, and already relatively so strong that they have overrun much of Western Asia. All this bespeaks in a most consistent manner the rapid rise of many small nationalities, scattered over the better parts of wide regions, and still in a feeble condition, though inheriting from their ancestors an old civilization, and laying the foundations of powerful states. If we attach any historical value whatever to the narrative, it obviously implies that at a date of about two thousand years before Christ the regions afterward occupied by the oldest historic empires were still thinly peopled, and their dominant races little more than feeble tribes. This farther corresponds with the authentic history of all the ancient nations, however these may have been extended by previous mythical periods.

About or shortly before the time of Abraham, Menes was draining for the first time the swamps of Egypt, Ninus or Nimrod was founding the a.s.syrian empire, the Phoenicians were founding Sidon, agriculture was being introduced into China, the Vedas were being written in India, the Persian monarchy was being founded; and, in short, all the historical nations of the East were originating, and this apparently by springing into being with an already formed civilization.

Such being the Hebrew account of the date and early history of man, it may be proper here to compare it with such deductions from archaeological and geological investigation as may seem to conflict with it, and at the same time to make some comparisons with the Turanian and Aryan traditions and speculations as to human origins.

The special lines of investigation important here are: 1. Early historical records other than the Bible; 2. The diversity of human languages; 3. The geological evidence afforded by remains of prehistoric men found in caverns and other repositories. The last of these is at present that which has attained the greatest development.

1. _Early Human History._--Had the human race everywhere preserved historical records, we should have had some certain evidence as to the places and times of origination of its tribes and peoples.

Unfortunately this has not been the case. All savage and barbarous races, and many of those now civilized, have lost all records of their early history. Most of the so-called ancient nations are comparatively modern, and their history after a very short course loses itself in uncertain tradition and mythical fancies. The only really ancient nations that have given us in detail their own written history are the Hebrews, the a.s.syrians, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, and the Chinese.

The last people, though professedly very ancient, trace their history from a period of barbarism--a view confirmed by their physical characters and the nature of their civilization; and on this account, if no other, their history can not be considered as of much archaeological value. According to their own records, their earliest authentic history goes back to about 2800 B.C., and was preceded by a prehistoric period of uncertain duration. The astronomical deductions of Schlegel, which would extend their history to 17,000 years, are evidently altogether unreliable.[112] The early Hindoo history is palpably fabulous or distorted, and has been variously modified and changed in comparatively modern times. There is one great and very ancient people--the Egyptian--evidently civilized from the beginning of all history, that have succeeded in transmitting to us, though only in fragments, their primeval history; and of late years constant additions have been made from inscribed tablets and monuments to our knowledge of the ancient history of the a.s.syrians and Chaldeans.

The Egyptian history has been gathered first from sketches by Greek travellers, and from fragments of the chronicles of Manetho, one of the later Egyptian priests; and, secondly, from the inscriptions deciphered on Egyptian monuments and papyri. It is still in a very fragmentary and uncertain state, but has been used with considerable effect to prove both the diversity of races of men and the pre-Noachic antiquity of the species. The Egyptian, in features and physical conformation, tended to the European form, just as the modern Fellahs and Berbers do; but he had a dark complexion, a somewhat elongated head and flattened lips, and certain negroid peculiarities in his limbs. His language combined many of the peculiarities of the Semitic, Aryan, and African tongues, indicating thereby great antiquity or else great intermixture, but not, as some ethnographers demand, both; most probably the former--the Egyptians being really the oldest civilized people that we certainly know, and therefore, if languages have one origin, likely to be near its root-stock.

The actual history of Egypt begins from Menes, the first human king, a monarch, or rather tribal chief, who took up his abode in the flats and fens of Lower Egypt, certainly not very long after the deluge. His name has been translated "one who walks with Khem," or Ham; one, therefore, who was contemporary with this great patriarch and G.o.d of the Egyptians, which will place his time within a few centuries of the Biblical flood. The date of Menes has been variously placed. In correction of the ordinary Hebrew chronology, we have the following attempts:

Josephus places his reign 2350 B.C.

Dr. Hales' calculation 2412 Manetho and the Monuments, as corrected by Syncellus {2712 and calculated by various archaeologists {to {2782 Herodotus, astronomical reduction by Rennell 2890 Estimate by Gliddon in "Ancient Egypt" 2750 Bunsen, "Egypt's Place," etc. 4000

The truth may be somewhere near the mean of the shorter chronologies given in the list.[113] That of Bunsen is liable to very grave objections; more especially as he adds to it other views, altogether unsupported by historical evidence, which would carry back the deluge to 10,000 years B.C. It rests wholly on the chronology of Manetho, who lived 300 years B.C.; and who, even if the Egyptians then possessed authentic doc.u.ments extending 3700 years before his time, may have erred in his rendering of them; and is farther liable to grave suspicions of having merely grouped the names on the monuments of his country arbitrarily in Sothic cycles. Farther, they rest on an interpretation of Manetho, which supposes his early dynasties to have been successive, while good reasons have been found to prove that many of them consist of contemporaneous petty sovereigns of parts of Egypt.

The early parts of Manetho's lists are purely mythical, and it is impossible to fix the point where his authentic history commences. He copied from monuments which have no consecutive dates, the precise age of which could only be vaguely known even in his time, and which are different in their statements in different localities. It is only by making due allowance for these uncertainties that any historical value can be attached to these earlier dynasties of Manetho. Yet Bunsen has built on an uncertain interpretation of this writer, as handed down in a very fragmentary and evidently garbled condition, and on the equally or more uncertain chronology of Eratosthenes, a system differing from all previous belief on the subject, from the Hebrew history, and from all former interpretations of the monuments and Manetho.[114]

Discarding, therefore, in the mean time, this date, and the still older one claimed by Mariette,[115] we may roughly estimate the date of Menes as 2000 to 2500 years B.C.,[116] and proceed to state some of the facts developed by Egyptologists.

One of the most striking of these is the proof that Egypt was a new country in the days of Menes and several generations of his successors. The monuments of this period show little of the complicated idolatry, ritual, and caste system of later times, and are deficient in evidence of the refinement and variety of art afterward attained. They also show that these early monarchs were princ.i.p.ally engaged in dyking, and otherwise reclaiming the alluvial flats; an evidence precisely of the same character with that which every traveller sees in the more recently settled districts of Canada, where the forest is giving way to the exertions of the farmer. Farther, in this primitive period, known as the "old monarchy," few domestic animals appear, and experiments seem to have been in progress to tame others, natives of the country, as the hyena, the antelope, the stork.

Even the dog in the older dynasties is represented by one or at most two varieties, and the prevalent one is a wolfish-looking animal akin to the present wild or half-tamed dogs of the East.[117] The Egyptians, too, of the earlier dynasties, are more h.o.m.ogeneous in their appearance than those of the later, after conquest and migration had introduced new races; and the earliest monumental notice referring to Negro tribes does not appear until the 12th dynasty, about half-way between the epoch of Menes and the Christian era, nor does any representation of the Negro features occur until, at the earliest, the 17th dynasty. This allows ample time--one thousand years at the least--for the development, under abnormal circ.u.mstances and isolation, of all the most strongly marked varieties of man. Still Egypt, even under the old monarchy, presents evidence of the continuation of antediluvian culture.[118]

It is obvious, in short, that the whole aspect of early Egyptian history presents to us a people already civilized taking possession of that country at a period corresponding with that of the subsidence of the Noachian deluge, and not finding there any remains of older populations. Nor have any remains of such populations been found by modern investigation.[119]

In a.s.syria the results of the recent discoveries, so well known through many learned and popular works, strikingly confirm the Hebrew chronology. They indicate no slow emergence from barbarism, but show that in a.s.syria as in Egypt implements of stone and metal were used together by a primitive people, already far advanced in civilization; and the oldest historical names only carry us back to cities and sovereigns of the Abrahamic age, while the story of the primitive empire of Nimrod and the traditions of the deluge seem to have survived in more or less mythical legends. The earliest a.s.syrian monuments would seem to belong to a Turanian race, of which comparatively little is known, but which may correspond with the primitive Cus.h.i.+tes of Biblical story. To these, it is true, Berosus attaches a fabulous antiquity; but this is not confirmed by the monuments. These, according to the latest facts disclosed by Smith, Rawlinson, and others, appear to fix a date of about 1800 B.C. for the foundation of the a.s.syrian monarchy proper, and the oldest previous date given by a.s.surbampal, who reigned about B.C. 668 to 626, gives 1635 years before his time, or say 2280 B.C., as the date of an Elamite king Kudarnankundi, who seems to be the leader of a primitive tribe, one of the oldest in the region, and who has been conjectured to have been the Chedorlaomer of Genesis, but was probably one of his predecessors.

We gather from the a.s.syrian annals that the early Turanian kings, while mound-builders like their kindred elsewhere, and acquainted with metals and with the cuneiform writing, yet const.i.tuted comparatively small nations, and were much occupied with hunting and other rude sports, and with predatory expeditions, so as to answer very nearly to the Biblical conception of the early Cus.h.i.+te kingdom of the valley of the Euphrates, which was probably in the same stage of culture with the nations that in a later period inhabited the valley of the Mississippi, and are known as the Alleghans.

In connection with the early history of man, much importance has been attached to the division of the early historic and prehistoric ages into the periods of Stone, Bronze, and Iron, and of the former into a Palaeolithic or ancient stone age, and a more modern or Neolithic stone age. It is plain, however, that too great importance has been attached to these distinctions, and that they express rather differences of circ.u.mstances and of culture than of age, so that they have really no bearing on the Biblical chronology.

If palaeolithic or rudely chipped implements are the oldest known, as they not improbably were the first tools used by man, yet their use has extended in the case of rude nations all the way up to the present time; and in America and Northern Asia we know that their antiquity is but of yesterday, and that they were used with highly finished implements of bone, and of those softer stones that admit of being polished. No certain line can therefore be drawn even locally between a Neolithic and a Palaeolithic period, especially since in localities where flint implements were extensively quarried and made, as on the banks of rivers in Northern France and Southern England, and in such places as "Grimes' Graves" and Cissbury in the latter country, where mines were sunk in the chalk for the extraction of flints, it necessarily happened that vast mult.i.tudes of unfinished or spoiled implements and weapons were left on the ground, while the better-formed specimens were for the most part taken away. This conclusion is amply supported by similar localities in America, where people well acquainted with many of the arts of life have left quant.i.ties of strictly palaeolithic material. Wilson, Southall, and other writers have acc.u.mulated so many examples of this that I think the distinction of Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages must now be given up by all investigators who possess ordinary judgment. A remarkable instauce is the celebrated "Flint ridge" of Ohio, which was a great quarry of flint for implements used by the ancient mound-builders, a highly civilized race, as well as by the modern Indians. Here are found countless mult.i.tudes of palaeolithic flint implements of all the ordinary types, but which are merely the unfinished material of workers capable of producing the most exquisite implements. There can be scarcely a doubt that the palaeolithic implements of the European gravels, in so far as they are the workmans.h.i.+p of man, are in like manner merely the relics of old flint quarries.[120]

Possibly a more accurate measurement of time for particular regions of the world might be deduced from the introduction of bronze and iron.

If the former was, as many antiquarians suppose, a local discovery in Europe, and not introduced from abroad, it can give no measurement of time whatever. In America, as the facts detailed by Dr. Wilson show, while a bronze age existed in Peru, it was the copper age in the Mississippi Valley, and the stone age elsewhere; and these conditions might have co-existed for any length of time, and could give no indication of relative dates. On the other hand, the iron introduced by European commerce spread at once over the continent, and came into use in the most remote tribes, and its introduction into America clearly marks an historical epoch. With regard to bronze in Europe, we must bear in mind that tin was to be procured only in England and Spain, and in the latter in very small quant.i.ty; the mines of Saxony do not seem to have been known till the Middle Ages. We must further consider that tin ore is a substance not metallic in appearance, and little likely to attract the attention of savages; and that, as we gather from a hint of Pliny, it was probably first observed, in the West at least, as stream tin, in the Spanish gold was.h.i.+ngs. Lastly, when we place in connection with these considerations the fact that in the earliest times of which we have certain knowledge, the tin trade of Spain and England was monopolized by the Phoenicians, there seems to be a strong probability that the extension of the trade of this nation to the western Mediterranean really inaugurated the bronze period. The only valid argument against this is the fact that moulds and other indications of native bronze casting have been found in Switzerland, Denmark, and elsewhere; but these show nothing more than that the natives could recast bronze articles, just as the American Indians can forge fish-hooks and knives out of nails and iron hoops.

Other considerations might be adduced in proof of this view, but our limits will not permit us to refer to them. The important questions still remain: When was this trade commenced, and how rapidly did it extend itself from the sea-coast across Europe? The British tin trade must have been in existence in the time of Herodotus, though his notion of the locality was not more definite than that it was in the extremity of the earth. The Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean must have existed as early as the time of Solomon, when "s.h.i.+ps of Tars.h.i.+sh" was the general designation of seagoing s.h.i.+ps for long voyages. How long previously these colonies existed we do not know; but considering the great scarcity and value of tin in those very ancient times, we may infer that perhaps only the Spanish, and not the British deposits were known thus early; or that the Phoenicians had only indirect access to the latter. Perhaps we may fix the time when these traders were able to supply the nations of Europe with abundance of bronze in exchange for their products, at, say 1000 to 1200 B.C., as the earliest probable period; and possibly from one to two centuries would be a sufficient allowance for the complete penetration of the trade throughout Europe. But of course wars or migrations might r.e.t.a.r.d or accelerate the process; and there may have been isolated spots in which a partial stone period extended up to those comparatively recent times in which first the Greek trade, and afterward the entire overthrow of the Carthaginian power by the Romans, terminated forever the age of bronze and subst.i.tuted the age of iron. This would leave, according to our ordinary chronologies, at least ten or fifteen centuries for the postdiluvian stone period in Europe and Western Asia, a time quite sufficient in our view for all that part of it represented by such monuments as the Danish sh.e.l.l-heaps or the platform habitations of the Swiss lakes; leaving the remains of the prehistoric caverns and river gravels for the antediluvian period. A few facts in ill.u.s.tration of these points, and also of the Biblical history, may be mentioned here.

We know perfectly that the early Chaldeans of the Euphratean valley were acquainted with the use of metals--bronze certainly, and at a very early date iron; yet flint knives and other implements of stone are found under circ.u.mstances which show that they were used in the palmy days of the a.s.syrian empire. The inhabitants of Egypt were acquainted with bronze and iron long before the date of the Exodus, yet the Egyptians used stone knives for some purposes up to a comparatively modern time. Joshua used stone knives for the purpose of circ.u.mcision; and according to Herodotus there were Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes who used stone-tipped arrows. If any antiquarian were to stumble on the "hill of the foreskins"--a mound under which were buried in all probability the mult.i.tudinous flint flakes used in the circ.u.mcision of the thousands of Israel--or the grave in which some of the Ethiopian auxiliaries of Xerxes were buried with their flint arrow-heads and javelins of antelopes' horn, how absurd would be the inference that these repositories were of the palaeolithic age. Nay, so late as 1870 a traveller was informed that the Bagos, a people of Abyssinia, still made and used stone hatchets and flint knives.[121]

In Europe we find reason to believe that the Ligurians of Northwestern Italy were flint-folk of very rude type until they were conquered by the Gauls about 400 B.C.[122] Though the Gauls, Britons, and Germans of the age of Julius Caesar had iron weapons, yet it is evident that the metal was very scarce, and that bronze was more common; and in confirmation of this it is found that in the trenches before Alize, the Alesia of Caesar, where the final struggle of the Roman general with Vercingetorix took place, weapons of stone, bronze, and iron are intermixed. All over the more northern parts of Europe there is the best reason to believe that the use of stone and bronze continued to a much later period, and locally until long after the Christian era. It is clear that such facts as these must greatly modify our ideas of the probable age of the Swiss lake villages, and should induce the greatest caution in claiming any special antiquity for particular cla.s.ses of implements.

One of the most remarkable discoveries of modern times is that of the site of ancient Troy by Dr. Schliemann, and it affords clear and decisive evidence as to the historic value of the ages to which we have referred.

Troy was destroyed by the Greeks perhaps about 1300 B.C., and we know from Homer that this was in what for the Greeks and Trojans may properly be termed the copper age, weapons and armor of that metal being in common use, and also the mode of burial by cremation. We may well suppose that at that early date the stone age was still in full force in Northern Europe and Asia, and in the mountains of Switzerland; and as the tin mines of England had not yet been reached, bronze was scarce and dear even in Eastern Europe and Asia. Now Schliemann has disinterred the undoubted Trojan Ilium on the hill of Hissarlik; but he finds it to be only one of several buried cities, and the succession of strata will be most clearly seen in the section on the following page, compiled from his clear and circ.u.mstantial descriptions. It is needless to say that this presents a succession of the stone age to one of comparatively high civilization. It also forms an epitome of that of the whole East, and of primitive man in general, in some very important respects. We have first, at a date probably coeval with that of the earliest monarchies of a.s.syria and Egypt, a primitive people whose arts and mode of life remind us strongly of the American Toltecans and Peruvians.[123] Schliemann supposes them to have been Aryan, but they were more probably of Turanian race. They must have occupied the site for a very long time. They were succeeded by a more cultivated people of fine physical organization, yet possibly still Turanians or primitive Aryans, who by trade or plunder had acc.u.mulated large stores of metallic wealth, and had made advances in the arts of life placing them on a level with the early Phoenicians and Egyptians, with whom they probably had intercourse. These

===================================================================== Surface. Fifth stratum to 6-1/2 feet. The Greek Ilium, with buildings and objects of art characteristic of the h.e.l.lenic civilization of historic periods.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Fourth stratum to 13 feet. A second barbarous people, but probably allied to the first.

Very coa.r.s.e pottery. Implements and weapons of copper or bronze-- stone knives and saws.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Third stratum to 23 feet. Barbarous people occupying the site of Troy. Rude stone implements and rude pottery.

Buildings of small stones and clay.

Some objects of pottery found here would on American sites be regarded as probably tobacco-pipes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Second stratum to 33 feet. Homeric Troy. Implements and weapons of copper, bronze, and stone. Pottery, some of it of Peruvian and ancient Cypriot types.

Fine gold jewelry, and gold and silver vessels. Armor similar to that described by Homer. Stone buildings and walls. This city had been sacked and burned.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- First stratum to 46 or 53 feet. Primitive or prehistoric Troy.

Stone implements, polished and chipped. Millstones, copper nails, pottery--some with patterns curiously resembling those of America--bone implements, Rock. terra-cotta disks. Stone buildings.

were the Trojans of the Homeric poems, and the destruction of their city was probably in the first instance celebrated in their own native songs, which Homer at a date but little later[124] wove into his magnificent poem, and idealized and exaggerated. The Trojans wors.h.i.+pped an owl-headed G.o.ddess--the Athena of the Homeric poems; and from symbols found are believed also to have had the wors.h.i.+p of a sacred tree, and of fire or of the Sun. All of these are widespread superst.i.tions over both the Old and New World. But while Troy flourished there were barbarous nations not far off still in the stone age; and when the city had fallen, these, possibly in successive hordes, took possession of the fertile plain and used the old city as their stronghold, perhaps till the foundation of the Greek city about 650 B.C. I have sketched in some detail these interesting discoveries, as they so clearly ill.u.s.trate an actual succession of ages, and so conclusively show the uncertainty of the cla.s.sification into ages of stone and metal, except when taken in connection with the precise circ.u.mstances of each locality.

I have referred above only to the question of historic or postdiluvian man. We have still to consider what remains exist of antediluvian man.

These may be studied in connection with our third head of geological evidences of man's antiquity; for if the Mosaic narrative be true, the diluvial catastrophe must have const.i.tuted a physical separation between historic man and prehistoric; since, in so far as antediluvian ages are concerned, all are prehistoric or mythical everywhere except in the sacred history itself. Antediluvian men may thus in geology be Pleistocene as distinguished from modern, or Palaeocosmic as distinguished from Neocosmic.[125]

2. _Language in Relation to the Antiquity of Man._--In many animals the voice has a distinctive character; but in man it has an importance altogether peculiar. The gift of speech is one of his sole prerogatives, and ident.i.ty in its mode of exercise is not only the strongest proof of similarity of psychical const.i.tution, but more than any other character marks ident.i.ty of origin. The tongues of men are many and various; and at first sight this diversity may, as indeed it often does, convey the impression of radical diversity of race. But modern philological investigations have shown many and unexpected links of connection in vocabulary or grammatical structure, or both, between languages apparently the most dissimilar. I do not here refer to the vague and fanciful parallels with which our ancestors were often amused, but to the results of sober and scientific inquiry.

"Nothing," says Professor Max Muller, "necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the material elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech; nay, it is possible even now to point out radicals which, under various changes and disguises, have been current in these three branches ever since their first separation." Of the truth of this I have convinced myself by some original investigation, and also of the farther truth that of this radical unity of all human tongues there is more full evidence than many philologists are disposed to admit, and that the results of future study must be to connect more and more with each other the several main stems of language. Whether this results merely from the psychical unity of the human race, or from the historical derivation of languages from one root, is not so material as the fact of unity; but that the latter is implied it would not be difficult to show.[126]

Let us examine for a little these results as they are presented to us by Latham, Muller, Bunsen, and other modern philologists.

A convenient starting-point is afforded by the great group of languages known as the Indo-European, j.a.phetic, or Aryan. From the Ganges to the west coast of Ireland, through Indian, Persian, Greek, Italian, German, Celt, runs one great language--the Sanscrit and the dark Hindoo at one extreme, the Erse and the xanthous Celt at the other. No one now doubts the affinity of this great belt of languages.

No one can pretend that any one of these nations learned its language from another. They are all decided branches of a common stock. Lying in and near this area are other nations--as the Arabs, the Syrians, the Jews--speaking languages differing in words and structure--the Semitic tongues. Do these mark a different origin? The philologists answer in the negative, pointing to the features of resemblance which still remain, and above all to certain intermediate tongues of so high antiquity that they are rather to be regarded as root-stocks from which other languages diverged than as mixtures. The princ.i.p.al of these is the ancient Egyptian, represented by the inscriptions on the monuments of that wonderful people, and by the more modern Coptic, which, according to Bunsen and Latham, presents decided affinities to both the great cla.s.ses previously mentioned, and may be regarded as strictly intermediate in its character. It has accordingly been designated by the term Sub-Semitic.[127] But it shares this character with all or nearly all the other African languages, which bear strong marks of affinity to the Egyptian and Semitic tongues. On this subject Dr. Latham says, "That the uniformity of languages throughout Africa is greater than it is either in Asia or in Europe, is a statement to which I have not the least hesitation in committing myself."[128] To the north the Indo-European area is bounded by a great group of semi-barbarous populations, mostly with Mongolian features, and speaking languages which have been grouped as Turanian.

These Turanian languages, on the one hand, graduate without any break into those of the Esquimaux and American Indians; on the other, according to Muller and Latham, they are united, though less distinctly, with the Semitic and j.a.phetic tongues. They not improbably represent in more or less altered forms the most primitive stock of language from which both the Semitic and j.a.phetic groups have branched. Another great area on the coasts and in the islands of the Pacific is overspread by the Malay, which, through the populations of Transgangetic India, connects itself with the great Indo-European line. Mr. Edkins, in his remarkable book on "China's Place in Philology," has collected a large amount of fact tending to show that the early Chinese in its monosyllabic radicals presents root-forms traceable into all the stocks of human speech in the Old World; and the American languages would have furnished him with similar lines of affinity. If we regard physical characters, manners, and customs, and mythologies, as well as mere language, it is much easier thus to link together nearly all the populations of the globe. In investigations of this kind, it is true, the links of connection are often delicate and evanescent; yet they have conveyed to the ablest investigators the strong impression that the phenomena are rather those of division of a radical language than of union of several radically distinct.

This impression is farther strengthened when we regard several results incidental to these researches. Latham has shown that the languages of men may be regarded as arranged in lines of divergence, the extreme points of which are Fuego, Tasmania, Easter Island; and that from all these points they converge to a common centre in Western Asia, where we find a cl.u.s.ter of the most ancient and perfect languages; and even Haeckel is obliged to adopt in his map of the affiliation of races of men a similar scheme, though he, without any good historical or scientific evidence, extends it back into the imaginary lost continent of Lemuria. Farther, the languages of the various populations differ in proceeding from these centres in a manner pointing to degeneracy such as is likely to occur in small and rude tribes separating from a parent stock. These lines of radiation follow the most easy and probable lines of migration of the human race spreading from one centre. It must also be observed that in the primary migration of men, there must of necessity have been at its extreme limits outlying and isolated tribes, placed in circ.u.mstances in which language would very rapidly change; especially as these tribes, migrating or driven forward, would be continually arriving at new regions presenting new circ.u.mstances and objects. When at length the utmost limit in any direction was reached, the inroads of new races of population would press into close contact these various tribes with their different dialects. Where the distance was greatest before reaching this limit, we might expect, as in America, to find the greatest mutual variety and amount of difference from the original stock. After the primary migration had terminated, the displacements arising from secondary migrations and conquests, would necessarily complicate the matter by breaking up the original gradations of difference, and thereby rendering lines of migration difficult to trace.

Taking all these points into the account, along with the known tendencies of languages in all circ.u.mstances to vary, it is really wonderful that philology is still able to give so decided indications of unity.

There is, in the usual manner of speaking of these subjects, a source of misapprehension, which deserves special mention in this place. The Hebrew Scriptures derive all the nations of the ancient world from three patriarchs, and the names of these have often been attached to particular races of men and their languages; but it should never be supposed that these cla.s.sifications are likely to agree with the Bible affiliation. They may to a certain extent do so, but not necessarily or even probably. In the nature of the case, those portions of these families which remained near the original centre, and in a civilized state, would retain the original language and features comparatively unchanged. Those which wandered far, fell into barbarism, or became subjected to extreme climatic influences, would vary more in all respects. Hence any general cla.s.sification, whether on physical or philological characters, will be likely to unite, as in the Caucasian group of Cuvier, men of all the three primitive families, while it will separate the outlying and aberrant portions from their main stems of affiliation. Want of attention to this point has led to much misconception; and perhaps it would be well to abandon altogether terms founded on the names of the sons of Noah, except where historical affiliation is the point in question. It would be well if it were understood that when the terms Semitic, j.a.phetic,[129] and Hametic are used, direct reference is made to the Hebrew ethnology; and that, where other arrangements are adopted, other terms should be used. It is obviously unfair to apply the terms of Moses in a different way from that in which he uses them. A very prevalent error of this kind has been to apply the term j.a.phetic to a number of nations not of such origin according to the Bible; and another of more modern date is to extend the term Semitic to all the races descended from Ham, because of resemblance of language. It should be borne in mind that, a.s.suming the truth of the Scriptural affiliation, there should be a "central" group of races and languages where the whole of the three families meet, and "sporadic"[130] groups representing the changes of the outlying and barbarous tribes.

While, however, all the more eminent philologists adhere to the original unity of language, they are by no means agreed as to the antiquity of man; and some, as for instance Latham and Dr. Max Muller, are disposed to claim an antiquity for our species far beyond that usually admitted. In so far as this affects the Bible history, it is important, inasmuch as this would appear to limit the possible antiquity of all languages to the time of the deluge. The date of this event has been variously estimated, on Biblical grounds, at from 1650 B.C. (Usher) to 3155 B.C. (Josephus and Hales); but the longest of these dates does not appear to satisfy the demands of philology. The reason of this demand is the supposed length of time required to effect the necessary changes. The subject is one on which definite data can scarcely be obtained. Languages change now, even when reduced to a comparatively stable form by writing. They change more rapidly when men migrate into new climates, and are placed in contact with new objects. The English, the Dutch, and the German were perhaps all at the dawn of the mediaeval era Maeso-Gothic. At the same rate of change, allowing for greater barbarism and greater migrations, they may very well have been something not far from Egyptian or Sanscrit 2000 years before Christ. The truth is that present rates of variation afford no criterion for the changes that must occur in the languages of small and isolated tribes lapsing into or rising from barbarism, possessing few words, and constantly requiring to name new objects and until some ratio shall have been established between these conditions and those of modern languages, fixed by literature and by a comparatively stationary state of society, it is useless to make any demands for longer time on this ground.[131]

Even in the present day, Moffat informs us that in South Africa the separation of parts of a tribe, for even a few months, may produce a notable difference of dialect. If we take the existing languages of civilized men whose history is known, we shall find that it is impossible to trace many of them back as far as the Christian era, and when we have pa.s.sed over even half that interval, they become so different as to be unintelligible to those who now speak them. Where there are exceptions to this, they arise entirely from the effects of literature and artificial culture. While, therefore, there is good ground in philology for the belief in one primitive language, there seems no absolute necessity to have recourse even to the confusion of tongues at Babel to explain the diversities of language.[132] Farther, the Bible carries back the Semitic group of languages at least to the time of the Deluge, but it does not seem necessary on the mere ground of antediluvian names, to carry it any farther back, and the a.s.syrian inscriptions show the coexistence of Turanian and Semitic tongues at the dawn of history in the region of the Euphrates and Tigris. One or other of these--or a monosyllabic language underlying it--was probably an antediluvian tongue, and the other a very early derivative; and both history and philology would a.s.sign the precedence to the Turanian language, which was probably most akin to that which had descended from antediluvian times, and which at that early period of dispersion indicated in the Bible story of Babel, had begun to throw off its two great branches of the Aryan and Semitic languages. These, proceeding in two dissimilar lines of development, continue to exist to this day along with the surviving portions of the uncultivated Turanian speech.

To this point, however, we may return under another head.

CHAPTER XIV.

UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN--(_Continued._)

"By the word of G.o.d the heavens were from of old, and the earth, formed out of water, and by means of water, by which waters the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished."--2 Peter iii., 5, 6.

3. _Geological Evidence as to the Antiquity of Man._--No geological fact can now be more firmly established than the ascending progression of animal life, whereby from the early invertebrates of the Eozoic and Primordial series we pa.s.s upward through the dynasties of fishes and reptiles and brute mammals to the reign of man. In this great series man is obviously the last term; and when we inquire at what point he was introduced, the answer must be in the later part of the great Cainozoic or Tertiary period, which is the latest of the whole. Not only have we the negative fact of the absence of his remains from all the earlier Tertiary formations, but the positive fact that all the mammalia of these earlier ages are now extinct, and that man could not have survived the changes of condition which destroyed them and introduced the species now our contemporaries. This fact is altogether independent of any question as to the introduction of species by derivation or by creation. The oldest geological period in which any animals nearly related in structure to man occur is that named the Miocene, and no traces of man have as yet been found in any deposits of this age. All human remains known belong either to the Pleistocene or Modern. Now the Pleistocene was characterized by one of those periods of glacial cold which have swept over the earth--by one of those great winters which have so chilled the continents that few forms of life could survive them--and man comes in at the close of this cold period, in what is called the Post-glacial age. Some geologists, it is true, hold to an interglacial warm period, in which man is supposed to have existed, but the evidence of this is extremely slender and doubtful, and it carries back in any case human antiquity but a very little way. I have, in my "Story of the Earth and Man,"

shown reason for the belief, in which I find Professor Hughes, of Cambridge, coincides with me,[133] that the interglacial periods are merely an ingenious expedient to get rid of the difficulties attending the hypothesis of the universal glaciation of the northern hemisphere.

But, though man is thus geologically modern, it is held that historically his existence on earth may have been very ancient, extending perhaps ten or twenty, or even a hundred times longer than the period of six or seven thousand years supposed to be proved by sacred history. Let us first, as plainly and simply as possible, present the facts supposed thus to extend the antiquity of man, and then inquire as to their validity and force as arguments in this direction.