Human Origins

by S. Laing

If then all memory of a period so comparatively recent as that of the neolithic stone age and of the latest extinct animals was completely lost when the first dawn of history commences, it follows as a matter of course that nothing like an historical tradition survives anywhere of the immensely longer palæolithic period and of the origin of man. Man in all ages has asked himself how he came here, and has indulged in speculations as to his origin. These speculations have taken a form corresponding very much to the stage of culture and civilization to which he had attained. They are of almost infinite variety, but may be classed generally under three heads. Those nations which had attained a sufficient degree of culture to personify first causes and the phenomena of Nature as gods, attribute the creation of the world and of man to some one or more of these gods; and as they advance further in philosophical reasonings, embellish the myth with allegories embodying the problems of human existence. Thus if Bel makes man out of clay, and moulds him with his own blood; or Jehovah fashions him from dust, and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life; in each case it is an obvious allegory to explain the fact that man has a dual nature, animal and spiritual.

So the myth of the Garden of Eden, the Temptation by the Serpent, the Trees of Knowledge and of Life, and the Fall of Adam, which we see represented on a Babylonian cylinder as well as in the second chapter of Genesis, is obviously an allegorical attempt to explain what remains to this day the perplexing problem of the origin of evil. These philosophical myths are, however, very various among different nations. Thus the orthodox belief of 200,000,000 of Hindoos is that mankind were created in castes, the Brahmins by an emanation from Brahma's head, the warriors from his chest, the traders and artisans from his legs, and the sudras or lowest caste from his feet; obviously an ex post facto myth to account for the institution of castes, and to stamp it with divine authority.

But before reflection had risen to this level, and among the savage and semi-barbarous people of the present day, we find much more crude speculations, which, in the main, correspond with the kindred creeds of Animism and Totemism. When life and magical powers were attributed to inanimate objects, nothing was more natural than to suppose that stones and trees might be converted into men and women, and conversely men and women into trees and stones. Thus we find the stone theory very widely diffused. Even with a people so far advanced as the early Greeks, it meets us in the celebrated fable of Deucalion and Pyrrha peopling the earth by throwing stones behind them, which turned into men and women; and the same myth, of stones turning into the first men, meets us at the present day in almost every reliable myth of creation, brought home by missionaries and anthropologists from Africa, America, and Polynesia. In some cases trees take the place of stones, and transformations of men into both are among the commonest occurrences. From Daphne into a laurel, and Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, down to the Cornish maidens transformed into a circle of stones for dancing on Sunday, we find everywhere that wherever natural objects present any resemblance to the human figure, such myths sprung up spontaneously in all ages and countries.

Another great school of creation-myths originates in the widespread institution of the totem. It is a step in advance of the pure fetich-worship of stocks and stones, to conceive of animals as having thought and language, and being in fact men under a different form. From this it is a short step to endowing them with magical attributes and supernatural powers, adopting them as patrons of tribes and families, and finally considering them as ancestors. Myths of this kind are common among the lower races, especially in America, where many of the tribes considered themselves as descendants of some great bear or elk, or of some extremely wise fox or beaver, and held this belief so firmly, that intermarriage among members of the same totem was considered to be incestuous. The same system prevails among most races at an equally low or lower stage of civilization, as in Australia; and there are traces of its having existed among old civilized nations at remote periods. Thus the animal-worship of Egypt was probably a survival of the old faith in totems, differing among different clans, which was so firmly rooted in the popular traditions, that the priests had to accommodate their religious conceptions to it, as the Christian fathers did with so many pagan superstitions. The division of the twelve tribes of Israel seems also to have been originally totemic, judging from the old saga in which Jacob gives them his blessing, identifying Judah with a lion, Dan with an adder, and so on. And even at the present day, the crest of the Duke of Sutherland carries us back to the time when the wild-cat was the badge, and very probably some great and fierce wild-cat the ancestor, in popular belief, of the fighting clan Chattan.

But in all these various and discordant myths of the creation of man, it is evident there is nothing which comes within a hundred miles of being a possible historical reminiscence of anything that actually occurred; and they must be relegated to the same place as the corresponding myths of the creation of the animal world and of the universe. They are neither more or less credible than the theories that the earth is a great tortoise floating on the water, or the sky a crystal dome with windows in it to let down the rain, and stars hung from it like lamps to illuminate a tea-garden.

Even when we come to comparatively recent periods, and have to deal with traditions, not of how races originated, but how they came into the abodes where we find them, it is astonishing how little we can depend on anything prior to written records. Most ancient nations fancied themselves autochthonous, and took a pride in believing that they sprang from the soil on which they lived. And this is also the case with ruder races, unless where the migrations and conquests recorded are of very recent date. Thus Ancient Egypt believed itself to be autochthonous, and traced the origin of arts and sciences to native gods. Chaldæa, according to Berosus, was inhabited from time immemorial by a mixed multitude, and though Oannes brought letters and arts from the shores of the Persian Gulf, he taught them to a previously existing population. This is the more remarkable as the name of Accad and the form of the oldest Accadian hieroglyphics make it almost certain that they had migrated into Mesopotamia from the highlands of Kurdistan or of Central Asia. The Athenians also and other Greek tribes all claimed to be autochthonous, and their legends of men springing from the stones of Deucalion, and from the dragon's teeth of Cadmus, all point in the same direction. The great Aryan races also have no trustworthy traditions of any ancient migrations from Asia into Europe, or vice versâ, and their languages seem to denote a common residence during the formation of the different dialects in those regions of Northern Europe and Southern Russia in which we find them living when we first catch sight of them. The only exception to this is in the record in the Zendavesta of successive migrations from the Pamer or Altai, down the Oxus and Jaxartes into Bactria, and from thence into Persia. But this is not found in the original portion of the Zendavesta, and only in later commentaries on it, and is very probably a legend introduced to exemplify the constant warfare between Ormuzd and Ahriman. The Hindoo Vedas contain no history, and the inference that the Aryans lived in the Punjaub when the Rig-Veda was composed, and conquered Hindostan later, is derived from the references contained in the oldest hymns which point to that conclusion, rather than from any definite historical record. Rome again had no tradition of Umbrian pile-dwellers descending from neolithic Switzerland, expelling Iberians, and being themselves expelled by Etruscans.

It is singular, considering the almost total absence of genuine historical traditions, how certain myths and usages have been universally diffused, and come down to the present day from a very remote antiquity. The identity of the days of the week, based on a highly artificial and complicated calculation of Chaldæan astrology, has been already referred to as a striking instance of the wide diffusion of astronomical myths in very early times. Many of the most popular nursery tales also, such as Jack the Giant-killer, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella, are found almost in the same form in the most remote regions and among the most various races, both civilized and uncivilized, and many of them are obviously derived from the oldest and simplest forms of solar myths.

I come now to the tradition of a Deluge, which is most important both on account of its prevalence among a number of different races and nations, often remote from one another, and because it affords the most immediate and crucial test of the claim of the Bible to be taken as a literally true and inspired account, not only of matters of moral and religious import, but of all the historical and scientific facts recorded in its pages. The Confession of Faith of an able and excellent man, the late Mr. Spurgeon, and adopted by fifteen or twenty other Nonconformist ministers, says—

"We avow our firmest belief in the verbal inspiration of all Holy Scripture as originally given. To us the Bible does not merely contain the Word of God, but is the Word of God."

Following this example, thirty-eight clergymen of the Church of England have put forward a similar Declaration. They say—