Human Origins

by S. Laing

But if authentic historical records carry us back not for 3000 or 4000, but for 6000 or 7000 years, and then show no trace of a beginning, the case is altered, and we may assume an almost unlimited duration of time, through historical, prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic ages, during which evolution may have operated. It is of the first importance therefore to inquire what these records really teach in the light of modern research, and what is the evidence for the longer dates which are now generally accepted.

Furnished with such a measuring-rod it becomes easier to attempt to bring into some sort of co-ordination the vast mass of facts which have been accumulated in recent years as to prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic man; and the glimpses of light respecting the origin, antiquity, and early history of the human race, which have come in from other sciences such as astronomy, geology, zoology, and philology.

To do this exhaustively would be an encyclopædic task which I do not pretend to accomplish, but I am not without hope that the following chapters, connected as they are by the one leading idea of tracing human origins backward to their source, may assist inquiry, and create an interest in this most interesting of all questions, especially among the young who are striving after knowledge, and the millions who, not having the time and opportunity for reading technical works, feel a desire to keep themselves abreast of modern thought and of the advanced culture of the close of the nineteenth century.

Before examining these records in detail it is well to begin with the general laws upon which historical evidence is based. History begins with writings. All experience shows that what may be transmitted by memory and word of mouth, consists mainly of hymns and portions of ritual, such as the Vedas of the Hindoos; and to a certain extent of heroic poems and ballads in which the historical element is so overlaid by mythology and poetry, that it is impossible to discriminate between fact and fancy. Thus the legend of Hercules is evidently in the main a solar myth, and his twelve labours are related to the signs of the zodiac, but it is possible that there may have been a real Hercules, the actual or eponymic ancestor of the tribe of Heraclides. So, at a later period, the descent of the Romans from the pious Æneas, and of the Britons from another Trojan hero Brute, are obviously fabulous; and at a still more recent date, our own Arthurian legends are evidently a mediæval romance, though it is possible that there may have been a chief of that name of the Christianized Romano-Britons, who opposed a gallant resistance to the flood of Saxon invasion.

But to make real history we require something very different; concurrent and uninterrupted testimony of known historians; absence of impossible and obviously fabulous dates and events; and, above all, contemporary records, written or engraved on tombs, temples, and monuments, or preserved in papyri or clay cylinders.

Another remark is, that these authentic records of early history only begin to appear when civilization is so far advanced as to have established powerful dynasties and priestly organizations. The history of a nation is at first the history of its kings, and its records are enumerations of their genealogies, successive reigns, foundation or repair of temples, great industrial works, and warlike exploits. These are made and preserved by special castes of priestly colleges and learned scribes, and they are to a great extent precise in date and accurate in fact. Before the establishment of such historical dynasties we have nothing but legends and traditions, which are vague and mythical, the mythological element rapidly predominating as we go backwards in time, until we soon arrive at reigns of gods, and lives of thousands of years. But as we approach the period of historical dynasties the mythological element diminishes, and we pass from gods reigning 10,000 years, and patriarchs living to 900, to later patriarchs living 150 or 200 years, and finally to mortal men, living, and kings reigning, to natural ages.

In fact, with the first appearance of authentic records the supernatural disappears, and the average duration of lives, reigns, and dynasties, and the general course of events, are much the same as at present, and fully confirm, the statement of the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, that during the long succession of ages of the 345 high priests of Heliopolis, whose statues they showed him in the great temple of the sun, there had been no change in the length of human life or in the course of nature, and each one of the 345 had been a piromis, or mortal man, the son of a piromis. The first question is how far back these authentic historical records can be traced, and Egypt affords the first answer.

The first step in the inquiry as to Egyptian antiquity is afforded by the history of Manetho. Ptolemy Philadelphus, whose reign began 284 b.c., was an enlightened king. He founded the great Alexandrian library, and was specially curious in collecting everything which bore on the early history of his own and other countries. With this view he had the Greek translation, known as the Septuagint, made of the sacred books of the Hebrews, and he commissioned Manetho to compile a history of Egypt from the earliest times, from the most authentic temple records and other sources of information. Manetho was eminently qualified for such a task, being a learned and judicious man, and a priest of Sebennytus, one of the oldest and most famous temples.

The history of Manetho is unfortunately lost, being probably the greatest loss the world has sustained by the burning of the Alexandrian library, but fragments of it have been preserved in the works of Josephus, Eusebius, Julius Africanus and Syncellus, of whom Eusebius and Africanus profess to give Manetho's lists and dates of dynasties and kings from the first King Menes down to the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 b.c. With the curious want of critical faculty of almost all the Christian fathers, these extracts, though professing to be quotations from the same book, contain many inconsistencies, and in several instances they have obviously been tampered with, especially by Eusebius, in order to bring their chronology more in accordance with that of the Old Testament. But enough remains to show that Manetho's lists comprised thirty-one dynasties, and about 370 kings, whose successive reigns extended over a period of about 5500 years, from the accession of Menes to the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 b.c., making the date of the first historical king who united Upper and Lower Egypt, about 5800 b.c. There may be some doubt as to the precise dates, for the lists, of Manetho have obviously been tampered with to some extent by the Christian fathers who quoted them, but there can be no doubt that his original work assigned an antiquity to Menes of over 5500 b.c.

The only other historical information as to the history of Ancient Egypt was gleaned from references to it in the extant works of Josephus and of Greek authors, especially Homer, Herodotus, and Diodorus Siculus. Josephus, in his Antiquity of the Jews, quotes passages from Manetho, but they only extend to the period of the Hyksos invasion, the Captivity of the Jews, and the Exodus, which are all comparatively recent events in Manetho's annals. Homer's account of hundred-gated Thebes does not carry us back beyond the echo which had reached Ionian Greece of the splendours of the nineteenth dynasty. Herodotus visited Egypt about 450 b.c., and wrote a description of it from what he saw and heard on the spot. It contains a good deal of valuable information, for he was a shrewd observer. But he was credulous, and not very critical in distinguishing between fact and fable, and it is evident that his sources of information were often not much better than vague popular traditions, or the tales told by guides, and even the more authentic information is so disconnected and mixed with fable, that it can hardly be accepted as material for history. As far as it goes, however, it tends to confirm Manetho, as, for instance, in giving the names correctly of the kings who built the three great pyramids, and in saying that he saw the statues of 342 successive high priests of the great Temple of Heliopolis, which correspond very well with Manetho's lists of 370 kings.