[9] In contradistinction to Aryanized Shemites or Chaldeans, known as Assyrians and Babylonians of the second epoch, and modern Kurdes.
Ethnology and comparative philology everywhere discover similar bifurcations almost at the sources of ethnic life. These bifurcations are explained by natural growth and by the fusion of various tribes and nations. Thus Baktrya, Persia and Media present us with Aryas and Indo-Scythes or Aryanized Tartars. So, too, all primitive races divide and subdivide in the same manner within themselves. The Shemites divided into Chaldeans and Canaanites, and then into Arabs, Hebrews, etc. The Aryas divided first into two groups—the eastern, from which, in turn, sprang the Zend and Sanscrit-speaking Aryas or Iranians and Hindus—and the western group, ancestors of the various European races. Of these latter, one branch immigrated into Greece and Italy, there giving rise again to Ionians and Dorians, Italiots and Latins, and the Greek and Latin languages; while another formed the Gaels or Gadheals and Kimri, the Gadhealic and the Brizonec being the principal dialects. Then we have their offshoots—as Belgæ, Kimbro-Belgæ, Finnic-Belgæ, etc. So also the Slavic stem, split into Serb, Wendish, etc.
ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
Rawlinson, Duncker, Oppert, M. von Niebuhr, etc.
The mighty empire of the Assyrians, which constitutes one of the first links in the chain of positive history, has hitherto been best known by the great catastrophes which finally closed its existence. The Hebrew Scriptures testify to the wealth, the luxury, and the military power of the Assyrians; but neither these nor the fragments in other ancient historical writers, dispel the obscurity enveloping the interior organism of that great antique people. Neither do the outlines of Babylonian history given by Herodotus afford much insight into the details of her social structure.
In that fore-world which history has not yet penetrated, the region between the Mediterranean sea and the head-waters and affluents of the Euphrates and the Tigris, formed the theatre of a tumultuous confusion of races, nations and civilizations, which has no parallel in the known history of mankind. Social and ethnic structures of the most heterogeneous kind covered those regions, with their various creeds, theocracies, municipalities monarchies and despotisms of every degree.