glimpses of a large portion of humanity’s earliest migrations without
discussing, at the very threshold of inquiry, that antique document.
Apart from this fundamental classification of some human primordial
wanderings, bootless indeed would he attempts to follow the cobweb
threads of our own ancestral creepings, backward from America to
Europe, and thence to their primitive European or Asiatic starting-
points. Every aboriginal tradition we Anglo-Saxons cherish, is hut
a *ray of morning light, flitting though it be, projected from the Aurora
of our Eastern homes.
“ The Orient, with her immense recollections that touch the cradle of the world, as this
itself touches the cradle of the sun, with her seas of sand, beneath which nations lie forgotten,
endures still. She preserves, yet living in her bosom, the first enigma and the first
traditions of the human race. In history as in poetry, in religious manifestations as in
philosophical speculations, the East is ever the antecedent of the West. We must therefore
seek to know her, in order to become well acquainted with ourselves.” 572
But, before the historical character of this Ethnic map can he appreciated—
before our unhesitating acceptance of it as a witness demonstrably
credible — its antiquity, its nature, and its authorship, are
indispensable points of preliminary inquiry.
The authors of the present work, impressed with the necessity of
using the Xth chapter of Genesis as a “ ground-text ” for a large section
of their anthropological researches, coincided in the opinion that
an “ Archaeological Introduction to its study” ought to preface their
adoption of its data. In consequence, it was decided,' that the labor
involved in such undertaking should be allotted to that one of the
writers whose Oriental specialities naturally indicated him as performer
of the task. Too complex in nature, no less than too bulky
in size, to serve for a chapter in the text of “ Types of Mankind,”
this Archseological Introduction now becomes a Supplement to the
work itself; thereby preserving its own unity, at the same time that
to the reader it is equally accessible, being bound up in the same
volume.
The perusal, then, of the Supplement is recommended to the reader
previously to his further continuation of this work; because the paragraphs
upon Xth Genesis, hereto immediately following, are projected
under the impression that such will be the natural course.
Which taken for granted, we place before us Cahen’s Genisef3 for
the Hebrew text of Xth Genesis, and proceed to its critical dissection.
The method we shall adopt, if at first sight novel, will be found
strictly archseological. It would be unphilosophic to set forth with
any theory as to age,’authorship, or true place, of this document, in
the arrangement of the canonical books. These points can resile
solely through exegetical analysis of the document itself; which—
written in the square-letter Hebrew character (not. invented prior to
the .third century after c.) ; divided into words (a system of writing
not introduced in the earliest Hebrew MSS.—tenth century after c.);
punctuated by the “Masora” (commencing in the sixth, and closing
about the ninth century after c.) ; and subdivided into verses (not
begun before the thirteenth century after c.) —now presents itself to
our contemplation. •
Section A . — A n a l y s i s o e t h e H e b r e w N o m e n c l a t u r e .
Omitting, for the present, any comment upon verse 1: “ Behold
the generations of the children of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth;
they had children after the deluge ” — our point of departure is verse
2. “ The children of Japheth,” eldest of the three brethren ; whose
descendants, upon grounds to be justified hereinafter, we denominate
I a p e t id æ , or White Races.
r Before proceeding, let me mention that, after our Genealogical Table was in type, Prof.
Agassiz favored me with the loan of hy far the most important work I have ever met with
on Japethic questions: viz., Voyage autour du Caucase, chez les Tcherkesses et les Abkhases,
en Colchide, en Géorgie, en Arménie, et en Crimée,™ par F rederic Dubois de Montreredx.
Extreme was my satisfaction to perceive that our results not only had been anticipated, but
that they were so accurate as to demand no alterations of the Table. Following the profound
researches of Omalius de Halloy, ^ and of Count J ohn P otocki,™ the personal
explorations of M. Dubois supersede everything printed on “ Caucasian” subjects. I have
made the freest use of his ethnological inquiries, as will be perceived under each Japethic
name ; but it is not in my power to convey to the reader adequate knowledge of the maps
with which this magnificent folio Atlas is profusely adorned. On these, the successive displacements
occasioned by the migrations, &c., of ancient “ Caucasians” are so skilfully
shown, that one’s eye seizes instantaneously some 2500 years of history. To take GoMeR,
or Kimmerians, as an example. Beginning in the
6tii cent. b. 0. PI. Villa. gives “ Primitive Georgia 'before the invasion of the Scythians (Khazars).”
gtll « « ix . “ “ Scythia and Caucasus of Herodotus,”
3d « « x. “ “ Periplus of Scylax Caryandinian.”
« « xia. “ “ Tauride, Caucasus, and Armenia of Strabo.”
1st cent. A. o. “ X3X “ “ Tauride, Caucasus, and Armenia o f Pliny.’
2d << « xm . “ “ Arrian’s Periplus of the Black Sea.”
« tt XIV. “ “ Wars of the Romans and Persians.”
10th “ “ XVa. “ “ Massoudi’s description of Caucasus,” Ac.
Now, on such maps, the transplantations of these Kimmerians can be followed, almost station
by station : so minutely, that one might infer that GoMeR-ians became known to the
Hebrew geographer after they had abandoned the northern Tauride to the Scythians, B. c .
633, and had settled about Paphlagonia, on the south-eastern side of the Black Sea. And so
on with all the Iapetidæ of Xth Genesis. It need hardly be said that, in common with Bo-
chart and ourselves, Dubois perceives nations and countries, and not individuals, m the
Hebrew chart. — G. R. Gr.]
n b ’ »13—BNI-IPATi—“Affiliations of J a p h e t . ” — Gen. x. 2.
1 . " IQ 1— GMR — ‘ G o m e r . ’
Essentially Indo-Germanic, this name, as well as all those of Japethites, is irresolvable
into Semitish radicals ; and its Hebrew lexicographic affinities, such as to ‘ com