The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science

by Sir John William Dawson

The truth may be somewhere near the mean of the shorter chronologies given in the list. [113] That of Bunsen is liable to very grave objections; more especially as he adds to it other views, altogether unsupported by historical evidence, which would carry back the deluge to 10,000 years B.C. It rests wholly on the chronology of Manetho, who lived 300 years B.C.; and who, even if the Egyptians then possessed authentic documents extending 3700 years before his time, may have erred in his rendering of them; and is farther liable to grave suspicions of having merely grouped the names on the monuments of his country arbitrarily in Sothic cycles. Farther, they rest on an interpretation of Manetho, which supposes his early dynasties to have been successive, while good reasons have been found to prove that many of them consist of contemporaneous petty sovereigns of parts of Egypt. The early parts of Manetho's lists are purely mythical, and it is impossible to fix the point where his authentic history commences. He copied from monuments which have no consecutive dates, the precise age of which could only be vaguely known even in his time, and which are different in their statements in different localities. It is only by making due allowance for these uncertainties that any historical value can be attached to these earlier dynasties of Manetho. Yet Bunsen has built on an uncertain interpretation of this writer, as handed down in a very fragmentary and evidently garbled condition, and on the equally or more uncertain chronology of Eratosthenes, a system differing from all previous belief on the subject, from the Hebrew history, and from all former interpretations of the monuments and Manetho. [114] Discarding, therefore, in the mean time, this date, and the still older one claimed by Mariette, [115] we may roughly estimate the date of Menes as 2000 to 2500 years B.C., [116] and proceed to state some of the facts developed by Egyptologists.

One of the most striking of these is the proof that Egypt was a new country in the days of Menes and several generations of his successors. The monuments of this period show little of the complicated idolatry, ritual, and caste system of later times, and are deficient in evidence of the refinement and variety of art afterward attained. They also show that these early monarchs were principally engaged in dyking, and otherwise reclaiming the alluvial flats; an evidence precisely of the same character with that which every traveller sees in the more recently settled districts of Canada, where the forest is giving way to the exertions of the farmer. Farther, in this primitive period, known as the "old monarchy," few domestic animals appear, and experiments seem to have been in progress to tame others, natives of the country, as the hyena, the antelope, the stork. Even the dog in the older dynasties is represented by one or at most two varieties, and the prevalent one is a wolfish-looking animal akin to the present wild or half-tamed dogs of the East. [117] The Egyptians, too, of the earlier dynasties, are more homogeneous in their appearance than those of the later, after conquest and migration had introduced new races; and the earliest monumental notice referring to Negro tribes does not appear until the 12th dynasty, about half-way between the epoch of Menes and the Christian era, nor does any representation of the Negro features occur until, at the earliest, the 17th dynasty. This allows ample time—one thousand years at the least—for the development, under abnormal circumstances and isolation, of all the most strongly marked varieties of man. Still Egypt, even under the old monarchy, presents evidence of the continuation of antediluvian culture. [118]

It is obvious, in short, that the whole aspect of early Egyptian history presents to us a people already civilized taking possession of that country at a period corresponding with that of the subsidence of the Noachian deluge, and not finding there any remains of older populations. Nor have any remains of such populations been found by modern investigation. [119]

In Assyria the results of the recent discoveries, so well known through many learned and popular works, strikingly confirm the Hebrew chronology. They indicate no slow emergence from barbarism, but show that in Assyria as in Egypt implements of stone and metal were used together by a primitive people, already far advanced in civilization; and the oldest historical names only carry us back to cities and sovereigns of the Abrahamic age, while the story of the primitive empire of Nimrod and the traditions of the deluge seem to have survived in more or less mythical legends. The earliest Assyrian monuments would seem to belong to a Turanian race, of which comparatively little is known, but which may correspond with the primitive Cushites of Biblical story. To these, it is true, Berosus attaches a fabulous antiquity; but this is not confirmed by the monuments. These, according to the latest facts disclosed by Smith, Rawlinson, and others, appear to fix a date of about 1800 B.C. for the foundation of the Assyrian monarchy proper, and the oldest previous date given by Assurbampal, who reigned about B.C. 668 to 626, gives 1635 years before his time, or say 2280 B.C., as the date of an Elamite king Kudarnankundi, who seems to be the leader of a primitive tribe, one of the oldest in the region, and who has been conjectured to have been the Chedorlaomer of Genesis, but was probably one of his predecessors.

We gather from the Assyrian annals that the early Turanian kings, while mound-builders like their kindred elsewhere, and acquainted with metals and with the cuneiform writing, yet constituted comparatively small nations, and were much occupied with hunting and other rude sports, and with predatory expeditions, so as to answer very nearly to the Biblical conception of the early Cushite kingdom of the valley of the Euphrates, which was probably in the same stage of culture with the nations that in a later period inhabited the valley of the Mississippi, and are known as the Alleghans.

In connection with the early history of man, much importance has been attached to the division of the early historic and prehistoric ages into the periods of Stone, Bronze, and Iron, and of the former into a Palæolithic or ancient stone age, and a more modern or Neolithic stone age. It is plain, however, that too great importance has been attached to these distinctions, and that they express rather differences of circumstances and of culture than of age, so that they have really no bearing on the Biblical chronology.

If palæolithic or rudely chipped implements are the oldest known, as they not improbably were the first tools used by man, yet their use has extended in the case of rude nations all the way up to the present time; and in America and Northern Asia we know that their antiquity is but of yesterday, and that they were used with highly finished implements of bone, and of those softer stones that admit of being polished. No certain line can therefore be drawn even locally between a Neolithic and a Palæolithic period, especially since in localities where flint implements were extensively quarried and made, as on the banks of rivers in Northern France and Southern England, and in such places as "Grimes' Graves" and Cissbury in the latter country, where mines were sunk in the chalk for the extraction of flints, it necessarily happened that vast multitudes of unfinished or spoiled implements and weapons were left on the ground, while the better-formed specimens were for the most part taken away. This conclusion is amply supported by similar localities in America, where people well acquainted with many of the arts of life have left quantities of strictly palæolithic material. Wilson, Southall, and other writers have accumulated so many examples of this that I think the distinction of Palæolithic and Neolithic ages must now be given up by all investigators who possess ordinary judgment. A remarkable instauce is the celebrated "Flint ridge" of Ohio, which was a great quarry of flint for implements used by the ancient mound-builders, a highly civilized race, as well as by the modern Indians. Here are found countless multitudes of palæolithic flint implements of all the ordinary types, but which are merely the unfinished material of workers capable of producing the most exquisite implements. There can be scarcely a doubt that the palæolithic implements of the European gravels, in so far as they are the workmanship of man, are in like manner merely the relics of old flint quarries. [120]

Possibly a more accurate measurement of time for particular regions of the world might be deduced from the introduction of bronze and iron. If the former was, as many antiquarians suppose, a local discovery in Europe, and not introduced from abroad, it can give no measurement of time whatever. In America, as the facts detailed by Dr. Wilson show, while a bronze age existed in Peru, it was the copper age in the Mississippi Valley, and the stone age elsewhere; and these conditions might have co-existed for any length of time, and could give no indication of relative dates. On the other hand, the iron introduced by European commerce spread at once over the continent, and came into use in the most remote tribes, and its introduction into America clearly marks an historical epoch. With regard to bronze in Europe, we must bear in mind that tin was to be procured only in England and Spain, and in the latter in very small quantity; the mines of Saxony do not seem to have been known till the Middle Ages. We must further consider that tin ore is a substance not metallic in appearance, and little likely to attract the attention of savages; and that, as we gather from a hint of Pliny, it was probably first observed, in the West at least, as stream tin, in the Spanish gold washings. Lastly, when we place in connection with these considerations the fact that in the earliest times of which we have certain knowledge, the tin trade of Spain and England was monopolized by the Phoenicians, there seems to be a strong probability that the extension of the trade of this nation to the western Mediterranean really inaugurated the bronze period. The only valid argument against this is the fact that moulds and other indications of native bronze casting have been found in Switzerland, Denmark, and elsewhere; but these show nothing more than that the natives could recast bronze articles, just as the American Indians can forge fish-hooks and knives out of nails and iron hoops. Other considerations might be adduced in proof of this view, but our limits will not permit us to refer to them. The important questions still remain: When was this trade commenced, and how rapidly did it extend itself from the sea-coast across Europe? The British tin trade must have been in existence in the time of Herodotus, though his notion of the locality was not more definite than that it was in the extremity of the earth. The Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean must have existed as early as the time of Solomon, when "ships of Tarshish" was the general designation of seagoing ships for long voyages. How long previously these colonies existed we do not know; but considering the great scarcity and value of tin in those very ancient times, we may infer that perhaps only the Spanish, and not the British deposits were known thus early; or that the Phoenicians had only indirect access to the latter. Perhaps we may fix the time when these traders were able to supply the nations of Europe with abundance of bronze in exchange for their products, at, say 1000 to 1200 B.C., as the earliest probable period; and possibly from one to two centuries would be a sufficient allowance for the complete penetration of the trade throughout Europe. But of course wars or migrations might retard or accelerate the process; and there may have been isolated spots in which a partial stone period extended up to those comparatively recent times in which first the Greek trade, and afterward the entire overthrow of the Carthaginian power by the Romans, terminated forever the age of bronze and substituted the age of iron. This would leave, according to our ordinary chronologies, at least ten or fifteen centuries for the postdiluvian stone period in Europe and Western Asia, a time quite sufficient in our view for all that part of it represented by such monuments as the Danish shell-heaps or the platform habitations of the Swiss lakes; leaving the remains of the prehistoric caverns and river gravels for the antediluvian period. A few facts in illustration of these points, and also of the Biblical history, may be mentioned here.

We know perfectly that the early Chaldeans of the Euphratean valley were acquainted with the use of metals—bronze certainly, and at a very early date iron; yet flint knives and other implements of stone are found under circumstances which show that they were used in the palmy days of the Assyrian empire. The inhabitants of Egypt were acquainted with bronze and iron long before the date of the Exodus, yet the Egyptians used stone knives for some purposes up to a comparatively modern time. Joshua used stone knives for the purpose of circumcision; and according to Herodotus there were Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes who used stone-tipped arrows. If any antiquarian were to stumble on the "hill of the foreskins"—a mound under which were buried in all probability the multitudinous flint flakes used in the circumcision of the thousands of Israel—or the grave in which some of the Ethiopian auxiliaries of Xerxes were buried with their flint arrow-heads and javelins of antelopes' horn, how absurd would be the inference that these repositories were of the palæolithic age. Nay, so late as 1870 a traveller was informed that the Bagos, a people of Abyssinia, still made and used stone hatchets and flint knives. [121]

In Europe we find reason to believe that the Ligurians of Northwestern Italy were flint-folk of very rude type until they were conquered by the Gauls about 400 B.C. [122] Though the Gauls, Britons, and Germans of the age of Julius Cæsar had iron weapons, yet it is evident that the metal was very scarce, and that bronze was more common; and in confirmation of this it is found that in the trenches before Alize, the Alesia of Cæsar, where the final struggle of the Roman general with Vercingetorix took place, weapons of stone, bronze, and iron are intermixed. All over the more northern parts of Europe there is the best reason to believe that the use of stone and bronze continued to a much later period, and locally until long after the Christian era. It is clear that such facts as these must greatly modify our ideas of the probable age of the Swiss lake villages, and should induce the greatest caution in claiming any special antiquity for particular classes of implements.