transmute one type of man into another. If, as for centuries it
was supposed, the races became actually transformed when tongues
were confounded at Babel, I presume this was effected by an instantaneous
fiat of the Almighty; and when done it was “ ipso facto”
irrevocable. Ho terrestrial causes, consequently, could reverse His
decree; nor, afterwards, metamorphose a white man into a Hegro, or
vice versa, any more than they could change a horse into an ass.
However important anatomical characteristics may be, I doubt
whether the physiognomy of races is not equally so. There exist
minor differences of features, various’minute combinations of details,
certain palpable expressions of face and aspect, which language cannot
describe: and yet, how indelible is the image of a type once impressed
on the mind’s eye! When, for example, tile’ word “ Jew” is
pronounced, a type is instantly brought up by memory, which could
not be so described to another person as to present to his mind a
faithful portrait. The image must be seen to be known and remembered
; and so on with the faces of all men, past, present, or to come.
Although the Jews are genealogically, perhaps, the purest race living,
they are, notwithstanding (as we have shown), an extremely adulterated
people; but yet there is a certain face among them that we
recognize as typical of the race, and which we never meet among
any other than Chaldaic nations.
H we now possessed correct portraits, even of those people who
were contemporary with the founders of the Egyptian empire, how
many of our interminable disputes would be avoided! Fortunately,
the early monuments of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, &e., and even
of America, afford much information of this monographic kind, which
decides the early diversity of types: but still, science is ill-supplied
with these desiderata to afford a full understanding of the subject.
Our first glimpse of human races, though dating far back in time,
does not (we have every reason to believe with Bunsen,) reach
beyond the ff middle ages” of mankind’s duration.
The very-earliest monumental record, or written history, exhibits
man, not in nomadic tribes, but in full-grown nations borne on the
floocktide of civilization. Even the writers of the Book of Genesis
could not divest their imaginations of the idea of some civilization
coeval with the creation of their first parents; because the man,
A-DaM, gave names, in Paradise, “ to all the cattle,” 456 BeHaiMall;
which implies either that, in the cosmogenical conception of those
writers, some animals (oxen, horses, camels, and so forth,) had been
already domesticated; or, writing thousands of years subsequently
to animal domesticity, they heedlessly attributed, to ante-historic
times past, conditions existing in their own days present. They
could not conceive such a thing as a time when cattle were untamed;
any more than archaeology can admit that anybody could describe
events prior to their occurrence.
[Thisds no delusion. Open Lepsius’s Denkmaler, and upon the copies of monuments of
the IVth Memphite dynasty, dating more than 2000 years before Moses, (to whom the Pentateuch
is ascribed,) you will behold cattle of many genera—bulls, cows, calves, oxen, oryxes,
donkeys (no horses or cawefo) 4^:4ogether with dogs, sheep, goats, gazelles; besides birds,
such as geese, cranes, ducks (no common fowls), ibises, &c.; the whole of them in a state
of entire subjection to man in Egypt; and none represented but those animals indigenous
to the Nilotic zoological centre of creation.
Wherever we may turn, in ancient annals, the domestication of every domesticable animal
has preceded the epoch of the chronicle through which the fact is made known to u s ; and,
still more extraordinary, there are not a dozen quadrupeds and birds that man has tamed,
or subdued from a wild fo a prolifically-domestic condition, but were already in the latter
state at the age when the document acquainting us with the existence, anywhere, of a given
domestic animal, was registered. In these new questions of monumental zoology,' Greece,
Etruria, Rome, Judsea, Hindostan, and Europe, are too modern to require notice; because
none of their earliest historians antedate, while some, fall centuries below, Solomon’s era,
b . c. 1000. Verify,' in any lexicons, upon all cases but Jewish fabled-antiquity, and no exception
to this rule will be found sustainable against historical criticism. The monuments of
Assyria, whose utmost antiquity may be fixed457 about 1300 b . c., only prove that every
tameable animal represented by Chaldseans (single and double humped camels, elephants,
&c., inclusive) was already tamed at the epoch of the sculpture. Egyptian zoology has been
cited. Chinese,458 (in this respect the only detailed),proves that, in the times of the ancient
writer, the domestication of six animals; v iz .: the horse, ox, fowl, hog, dog, and sheep —
was ascribed to F otj-h i’s semi-historical era, about 3400 years before Christ.
When Columbus reached this country, a . d . 1492, he found no animals alien to our American
continent, and none undomesticated that man could tame; and, when P i z a r r o overturned
the Inca-kingdom, the llama had been, for countless ages, a tamed quadruped in Peru.
Geoffroi S t. Hila ire is one of those authorities seldom controverted by naturalists.
These, in substance, are his words: —
There are forty species of animals reduced, at this day, to a state of domestication. Of
these, thirty-five are now cosmopolitan, as the horse, dog, ox, pig} sheep and goat. The
other five have remained in the region of their origin, like the llama and the alpaca on the
plateaux of Bolivia and Peru; or have been transplanted only to those countries which
most approximate to their original habitats in climatic conditions; as the Tongousian reindeer
at St. Petersburg. Out of the thirty-five domesticated species possessed by Europe,
thirty-one originate in Central Asia, Europe, and North Africa. Only four species have
been contributed by the two Americas, Central and Southern Africa, Australia and Polynesia
; although these portions of the globe contain the major number of our zoological
types. In consequence, the great bulk of tamed animals in Europe are of exotic origin.
Hardly any are derived from countries colder than France: on the contrary, almost the
whole were primitively inhabitants of warmer climates.459
We thus arrive at the great fact, that the domestication by man of all domestic animals
antecedes every history extant; and, measured chronologically by Egypt’s pyramids, most
of these animals were, already domesticated thirty-five centuries b . c., or over 5300 years
ago.' Indeed, the first step of primordial man towards civilization must have been the subjection
of animals susceptible of domesticity; and, it seems probable, that the dog became
the first instrument for the subjugation of other genera. And, while these preliminary
advances of incipient man demand epochas so far remote as to be inappreciable by ciphers,
on the other hand it is equally astounding, that modern civilization has scarcely reclaimed
from the savage state even half-a-dozen more animals than were already domesticated ai
every point of our globe when history dawns. r #