3. After the deluge, the arts of the antediluvians and their citizen life were almost immediately revived in the plain of Shinar; but the plans of the Babel leaders, like those of many others who have attempted to force distinct tribes into one nationality, failed. The guilt attributed to them probably relates to the attempt to break up the patriarchal and tribal organization, which in these early times was the outward form of true religion, in favor of some sort of national organization, not compatible with the extension of man immediately over the world, and tending to consolidation into dense communities. It may be a question here whether the tribal communism which has prevailed among the American Indians and other rude races was the primitive form of society which the Babel-builders essayed to change, or whether the Semitic patriarchal system had at first prevailed, and the Babel difficulties were connected with a conflict between this and communism or despotism, both new Turanian or Aryan introductions. In any case, Babel, and Babylon its successor, remain in the subsequent Biblical literature as types of the God-defying and antichristian systems that have succeeded each other from the time of Nimrod to this day.
4. The human race was scattered over the earth in family groups or tribes, each headed by a leading patriarch, who gave it its name. First, the three sons of Noah formed three main stems, and from these diverged several family branches. The ethnological chart in the 10th chapter of Genesis gives the principal branches under patriarchal and ethnic names but these, of course, continued to subdivide beyond the space and time referred to by the sacred writer. It is simply absurd to object, as some writers have done, to the universality of the statements in Genesis, that they do not mention in detail the whole earth. They refer to a few generations only, and beyond this restrict themselves to the one branch of the human family to which the Bible principally relates. We should be thankful for so much of the leading lines of ethnological divergence, without complaining that it is not followed out into its minute ramifications and into all history.
5. The tripartite division in Genesis x. indicates a somewhat strict geographical separation of the three main trunks. The regions marked out for Japheth include Europe and Northwestern Asia. The name Japheth, as well as the statements in the table, indicate a versatile, nomadic, and colonizing disposition as characteristic of these tribes. [110] The Median population, the same with a portion of that now often called Aryan, [111] was the only branch remaining near the original seats of the species, and in a settled condition. The outlying portions of the posterity of Japheth, on account of their wide dispersion, must at a very early period have fallen into comparative barbarism, such as we find in historic periods all over Western and Northern Europe and Northern Asia. Owing to their habitat, the Japhetites of the Bible include none of the black races, unless certain Indian and Australian nations are outlying portions of this family. The Shemite nations showed little tendency to migrate, being grouped about the Euphrates and Tigris valleys and neighboring regions. For this reason, with the exception of certain Arab tribes, they present no instances of barbarism, and generally retained a high cerebral organization, and respectable though stationary civilization, and they possess the oldest alphabet and literature. The posterity of Ham differs remarkably from the others. It spread itself over Southern, Central, and Eastern Asia, Southern Europe, and Northern Africa, and constitutes the stock alike of the Turanian and African races, as well as probably of the American tribes. It has all along displayed a great capacity for certain forms of art and semi-civilization, but has rarely risen to the level of the Shemite and Japhetite races. It established the earliest military and monarchical institutions, and presents at the dawn of history—in Assyria, in Egypt, and India—settled and arbitrary forms in politics and religion, of a character so much resembling that of an old and corrupt civilization that we can scarcely avoid supposing that Ham and his family had preserved more than any of the other Noachian races the arts and institutions of the old world before the flood. It certainly presents itself in early postdiluvian times as the first representative and teacher of art and material civilization. The Hamite race is remarkable for the early development of pantheism and hero-worship, and for the artificial character of its culture. It presents us with the darkest colors, and in the vast solitudes of Africa and Central Asia its outlying tribes must have fallen into comparative barbarism a few centuries after the deluge. It is farther to be observed that, according to the Bible, the Canaanites and other Hamite nations spoke languages not essentially different from those of the Shemites, while the Japhetite nations were to them barbarians—"a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand." There was, too, at the date of the dispersion of Babel, already a distinction of tongues within each of the great races of men.
6. All the divisions of the family of Noah had from the first the domesticated animals and the principal arts of life, and enjoyed these in a national capacity so soon as sufficiently numerous. The more scattered tribes, wandering into fresh regions, and adopting the life of hunters, lost the characteristics of civilization, and diverged widely from the primitive languages. We should thus have, according to the Hebrew ethnology, a central area presenting the principal stems of all the three races in a permanently civilized state. All around this area should lie aberrant and often barbarous tribes, differing most widely from the original type in the more distant regions, and in those least favorable to human health and subsistence. In these outlying regions, secondary centres of civilization might grow up, differing from that of the primitive centre, except in so far as the common principles of human nature and intercommunication might prevent this. All these conclusions, fairly deducible at once from the Mosaic ethnology and the theory of dispersion from a centre, are perfectly in accordance with observed facts, though in absolute contradiction to prevalent ethnological conclusions, based on these facts in connection with theories of development.
A multitude of Bible notices might easily be quoted illustrative of these points, and also of the consistency of the Mosaic narrative with itself. One of them may suffice here. Abraham, who is said by the Jews to have been contemporary with Shem, as Menes by the Egyptians with Ham, at least lived sufficiently near to the time of the rise of the earliest nations to be taken as an illustration of this primitive condition of society. He was not a patriarch of the first or second rank, like Ham or Mizraim or Canaan, but a subordinate family leader several removes from the survivors of the deluge. Yet his tribe increases in comparatively few years to a considerable number. He is treated as an equal by the monarchs of Egypt and Philistia. He defeats, with a band of three or four hundred retainers, a confederacy of four Euphratean kings representing the embryo state of the Persian and Assyrian empires, and already relatively so strong that they have overrun much of Western Asia. All this bespeaks in a most consistent manner the rapid rise of many small nationalities, scattered over the better parts of wide regions, and still in a feeble condition, though inheriting from their ancestors an old civilization, and laying the foundations of powerful states. If we attach any historical value whatever to the narrative, it obviously implies that at a date of about two thousand years before Christ the regions afterward occupied by the oldest historic empires were still thinly peopled, and their dominant races little more than feeble tribes. This farther corresponds with the authentic history of all the ancient nations, however these may have been extended by previous mythical periods. About or shortly before the time of Abraham, Menes was draining for the first time the swamps of Egypt, Ninus or Nimrod was founding the Assyrian empire, the Phoenicians were founding Sidon, agriculture was being introduced into China, the Vedas were being written in India, the Persian monarchy was being founded; and, in short, all the historical nations of the East were originating, and this apparently by springing into being with an already formed civilization.
Such being the Hebrew account of the date and early history of man, it may be proper here to compare it with such deductions from archæological and geological investigation as may seem to conflict with it, and at the same time to make some comparisons with the Turanian and Aryan traditions and speculations as to human origins. The special lines of investigation important here are: 1. Early historical records other than the Bible; 2. The diversity of human languages; 3. The geological evidence afforded by remains of prehistoric men found in caverns and other repositories. The last of these is at present that which has attained the greatest development.
1. Early Human History.—Had the human race everywhere preserved historical records, we should have had some certain evidence as to the places and times of origination of its tribes and peoples. Unfortunately this has not been the case. All savage and barbarous races, and many of those now civilized, have lost all records of their early history. Most of the so-called ancient nations are comparatively modern, and their history after a very short course loses itself in uncertain tradition and mythical fancies. The only really ancient nations that have given us in detail their own written history are the Hebrews, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, and the Chinese. The last people, though professedly very ancient, trace their history from a period of barbarism—a view confirmed by their physical characters and the nature of their civilization; and on this account, if no other, their history can not be considered as of much archæological value. According to their own records, their earliest authentic history goes back to about 2800 B.C., and was preceded by a prehistoric period of uncertain duration. The astronomical deductions of Schlegel, which would extend their history to 17,000 years, are evidently altogether unreliable. [112] The early Hindoo history is palpably fabulous or distorted, and has been variously modified and changed in comparatively modern times. There is one great and very ancient people—the Egyptian—evidently civilized from the beginning of all history, that have succeeded in transmitting to us, though only in fragments, their primeval history; and of late years constant additions have been made from inscribed tablets and monuments to our knowledge of the ancient history of the Assyrians and Chaldeans.
The Egyptian history has been gathered first from sketches by Greek travellers, and from fragments of the chronicles of Manetho, one of the later Egyptian priests; and, secondly, from the inscriptions deciphered on Egyptian monuments and papyri. It is still in a very fragmentary and uncertain state, but has been used with considerable effect to prove both the diversity of races of men and the pre-Noachic antiquity of the species. The Egyptian, in features and physical conformation, tended to the European form, just as the modern Fellahs and Berbers do; but he had a dark complexion, a somewhat elongated head and flattened lips, and certain negroid peculiarities in his limbs. His language combined many of the peculiarities of the Semitic, Aryan, and African tongues, indicating thereby great antiquity or else great intermixture, but not, as some ethnographers demand, both; most probably the former—the Egyptians being really the oldest civilized people that we certainly know, and therefore, if languages have one origin, likely to be near its root-stock.
The actual history of Egypt begins from Menes, the first human king, a monarch, or rather tribal chief, who took up his abode in the flats and fens of Lower Egypt, certainly not very long after the deluge. His name has been translated "one who walks with Khem," or Ham; one, therefore, who was contemporary with this great patriarch and god of the Egyptians, which will place his time within a few centuries of the Biblical flood. The date of Menes has been variously placed. In correction of the ordinary Hebrew chronology, we have the following attempts:
| Josephus places his reign | 2350 B.C. |
| Dr. Hales' calculation | 2412 |
| Manetho and the Monuments, as corrected by Syncellus and calculated by various archæologists | 2712 to 2782 |
| Herodotus, astronomical reduction by Rennell | 2890 |
| Estimate by Gliddon in "Ancient Egypt" | 2750 |
| Bunsen, "Egypt's Place," etc. | 4000 |