Man, Past and Present

by A. H. Keane

THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES (continued)

The Semites—Cradle, Origins, and Migrations—Divisions: Semitic Migrations—Babylonia, People and Civilisation—Assyria, People and Civilisation—Syria and Palestine—Canaanites: Amorites: Phoenicians—The Jews—Origins—Early and Later Dispersions—Diverse Physical Types—Present Range and Population—The Hittites—Conflicting Theories—The Arabs—Spread of the Arab Race and Language—Semitic Monotheism—Its Evolution.

The Semites—Cradle, Origins, and Migrations.

The Himyaritic immigrants, who still hold sway in a foreign land, have long ceased to exist as a distinct nationality in their own country, where they had nevertheless ages ago founded flourishing empires, centres of one of the very oldest civilisations of which there is any record. Should future research confirm the now generally received view that Hamites and Semites are fundamentally of one stock, a view based both on physical and linguistic data[1150], the cradle of the Semitic branch will also probably be traced to South Arabia, and more particularly to that south-western region known to the ancients as Arabia Felix, i.e. the Yemen of the Arabs. While Asia and Africa were still partly separated in the north by a broad marine inlet before the formation of the Nile delta, easy communication was afforded between the two continents farther south at the head of the Gulf of Aden, where they are still almost contiguous. By this route the primitive Hamito-Semitic populations may have moved either westwards into Africa, or, as has also been suggested, eastwards into Asia, where in the course of ages the Semitic type became specialised.

Divisions.

On this assumption South Arabia would necessarily be the first home of the Semites, who in later times spread thence north and east. They appear as Babylonians and Assyrians in Mesopotamia; as Phoenicians on the Syrian coast; as Arabs on the Nejd steppe; as Canaanites, Moabites and others in and about Palestine; as Amorites (Aramaeans, Syrians) in Syria and Asia Minor.

This is the common view of Semitic origins and early migrations, but as practically no systematic excavations have been possible in Arabia, owing to political conditions and the attitude of the inhabitants, definite archaeological or anthropological proofs are still lacking. The hypothesis would, however, seem to harmonise well with all the known conditions. In the first place is to be considered the very narrow area occupied by the Semites, both absolutely and relatively to the domains of the other fundamental ethnical groups. While the Mongols are found in possession of the greater part of Asia, and the Hamites with the Mediterraneans are diffused over the whole of North Africa, South and West Europe since the Stone Ages, the Semites, excluding later expansions—Himyarites to Abyssinia, Phoenicians to the shores of the Mediterranean, Moslem Arabs to Africa, Irania, and Transoxiana—have always been confined to the south-west corner of Asia, comprising very little more than the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, Syria, and (doubtfully) parts of Asia Minor. Moreover the whole mental outlook of the Semites, their mode of thought, their religion and organisation, indicate their derivation from a desert people; while in Arabia are found at the present time the purest examples not only of Semitic type, but also of Semitic speech[1151]. Their early history, however, as pointed out above, still awaits the spade of the archaeologist, and the earliest migrations that can be definitely traced are in the form of invasions of already established states[1152].

Semitic Migrations.

The first great wave of Semitic migration from Arabia is placed in the fourth millennium B.C., 3500 to 2500 or earlier; it affected Babylonia and probably Syria and Palestine, judging from the Palestinian place-names belonging to this "Babylonian-Semitic" period, and the close connection between Palestine and Babylonia in culture and in religious ideas, indicating prehistoric relationship[1153]. A second wave, Winckler's Canaanitic or Amoritic migration, followed in the third millennium, covering Babylonia, laying the foundations of the Assyrian Empire, invading Syria and Palestine (Phoenicians, Amorites) and possibly later Egypt (Hyksos). A third wave, the Aramaean, which spread over Babylonia, Mesopotamia and Syria in the second millennium, was preceded by the swarming into Syria from the desert of the Khabiri (Habiru) or Hebrews (Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites and Israelites among others). From the same area the Suti pressed into Babylonia about 1100, followed by another branch, the Chaldeans from Eastern Arabia.

These are but a few of the earlier waves of migration from the south of which traces can be detected in Western Asia. Of all invasions from the north, that of the Hittites is the most important and the most confusing. The Hittites appear to have moved south from Cappadocia about 2000 B.C., and they are found warring against Babylonia in the eighteenth century. A Hittite dynasty flourished at Mittanni 1420-1411 and in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries they conquered and largely occupied Syria[1154]. Invasions of Phrygians and Philistines from the west followed the breaking up of the Hittite Empire. The last great Semitic migration was the most widespread of all. "It issued, like its predecessors, along the whole margin of the desert, and in the course of a century had flooded not only Syria and Egypt, but all North Africa and Spain; it had occupied Sicily, raided Constance, and in France was only checked at Poitiers in 732. Eastward it flooded Persia, founded an empire in India, and carried war and commerce by sea past Singapore[1155]."