The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

by Sir John William Dawson

7. In early historic times Semitic peoples, Hebrews and others from the east, and Mongoloid peoples from the north, migrated into Palestine and dominated and mixed with the primitive tribes, finally penetrating into Egypt and establishing there the dominion known as that of the Hyksos. The historical Moabites, Ammonites, Ishmaelites, and Hittites were peoples of this character, having a substratum of Hamite blood with aristocracies of Semitic or Tartar origin.

It will be observed that while archæological evidence tends to illustrate and corroborate that wonderful collection of early historical documents contained in the Book of Genesis, and to prove their great antiquity, on the other hand these documents prove to be the most precious sources of information as to the antediluvian age, the great Flood, the earliest dispersion of men, the old Nimrodic empire, the connections of Asiatic and African civilisation, and other matters connected with the origins of the oldest nations, respecting which we have little other written history.

We thus learn that, relatively to Bible history, there is no prehistoric age, since it carries us back beyond the Deluge to the origin of man, so that we might properly restrict this term in its narrower signification to those parts of the world not covered by this primitive history. It is true that a tide of criticism hostile to the integrity of Genesis has been rising for some years; but it seems to beat vainly against a solid rock, and the ebb has now evidently set in. The battle of historical and linguistic criticism may indeed rage for a time over the history and date of the Mosaic law, but in so far as Genesis is concerned it has been practically decided by scientific exploration.

Since writing the preceding pages I have met with a remarkable paper by Mr. Horatio Hale in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. [881] It is one which should commend itself to the study of every Biblical scholar and archæologist; but is contained in a periodical which perhaps meets the eyes of few of them. In this paper he maintains the importance of language as a ground of anthropological classification, and then uses his wide knowledge of the languages of American aborigines, and other rude races, to show that the grammatical complexity and logical perfection of these languages implies a high intellectual capacity in their original framers, and that where such complex and perfect languages are spoken by very rude tribes like the Australian aborigines, they originated with cultivated and intellectual peoples—in the case of the Australian, with the civilised primitive Dravidians of India. He thus shows that languages, like alphabets, have undergone a process of degradation, so that those of modern times are less perfect exponents of thought than those which preceded them, and that primitive man in his earliest state must have been endowed with as high intellectual powers as any of his descendants.

[88] Vol. IX. Sec. II. 1891.

On similar grounds he shows that it is not in the outlying barbarous races that we are to look for truly primitive man, since here we have merely degraded types, and that the primitive centres of man and language must have been in the old historic lands of Western Asia and Northern Africa. On this view the time necessary for the development of the arts of civilisation and of extensive colonisation would not be great. 'In five centuries a single human pair planted in a fertile oasis might have given origin to a people of five hundred thousand souls, numerous enough to have sent out emigrations to the nearest inviting lands.' The same lapse of time would have sufficed to develop agriculture, to domesticate animals, and to make some progress in architectural and other arts of life. He quotes the remarkable passage of Reclus [89] as to the agency of woman in the inventions of early art, and shows that this accords with more modern experience among the less civilised nations. It is obvious that all this tends to bring scientific anthropology into the closest relation with the old Biblical history, though Hale, in deference, perhaps, to modern prejudices, does not refer to this.

[89] Primitive Folk (Contemporary Science Series), p. 58.

In the passage quoted by Hale, Reclus says: 'It is to woman that mankind owes all that has made us men.' Following this hint of the ingenious French writer, we may imagine the first man and woman inhabiting some fertile region, rich in fruits and other natural products, and subsisting at first on the uncultivated bounty of nature. With the birth of their first child, perhaps before, would come the need of shelter either in some dry cavern or booth of poles and leaves or bark, carpeted perhaps with moss or boughs of pine. This would be the first 'home,' with the woman for its housekeeper. We may imagine the man bringing to it the lamb or kid whose dam he had killed, and the woman, with motherly instinct, pitying the little orphan and training it to be a domestic pet, the first of tamed animals. She, too, would store grain, seeds and berries for domestic use, and some of these germinating would produce patches of grain, or shrubs, or fruit trees around the hut. Noticing these and protecting them, she would be the first gardener and orchardist. The woman and her children might add to the cultivated plants or domesticated quadrupeds and birds; and the man would be induced, in the intervals of hunting and fishing, to guard, protect, and fence them.

When the boys grew up, to one of them might be assigned the care of the sheep and goats, to the other the culture of the little farm, while they might aid their father in erecting a better and more artistic habitation, the first attempt at architecture, and in introducing artificial irrigation to render their field more fertile. Is not this little romance of M. Elie Reclus perfectly in harmony with the old familiar story in Genesis, and also with the most recent results of modern science?