Part 9 (1/2)

Such 'rest.i.tutions 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 sc.r.a.p 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 archaeologists 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 doc.u.ment 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) doc.u.ment. It is clear, therefore, that the writer intends us to understand that the determining elements of his cla.s.sification are neither physical characters nor accidents of geographical distribution, but descent and original language--two primary and scientific grounds of cla.s.sification, and which common sense requires us to adhere to in interpreting the doc.u.ment, 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 cla.s.sification.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP SHOWING LINES OF POSTDILUVIAN MIGRATIONS FROM s.h.i.+NAR, AS IN GENESIS X.]

Among modern archaeologists it has been a fruitful source of controversy whether we should cla.s.sify men according to their skulls or to their tongues; in other words, whether physical characters or linguistic should be dominant in our cla.s.sifications. 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 a.s.sures 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-b.e.s.t.i.a.l brutality, have nothing in common with our narrator, and cannot possibly understand his statements.

2. The doc.u.ment 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 s.h.i.+nar, 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) doc.u.ment, 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 j.a.phetic forms of speech must, in the view of our ancient authority, date from the sequelae 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 princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.sifications, 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 Cus.h.i.+te 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 pa.s.ses south-westward through Southern Arabia and across the Red Sea into interior Africa. To the sons of j.a.phet 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 Cus.h.i.+tes and Semitic Elamites contended for the fertile plains and the mountains east of the Tigris, and were finally subjugated by j.a.phetic Medes and Persians. Thus this region first formed a part of the Cus.h.i.+te 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 j.a.phet 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 a.s.syrian 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 Cus.h.i.+tes. 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 Cus.h.i.+tes 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?

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEAD ILl.u.s.tRATING THE MOST ANCIENT TYPE OF CUs.h.i.+TE TURANIAN, FROM TEL-LOH (after de Sarzec). The cap is perhaps an imitation of the antediluvian sh.e.l.l-caps, like that of the 'man of Mentorie.']