1. The early traditions of every nation that has undertaken to relate the story of its origin, have given us a confused account of supernatural persons and events which the judgment1 of more enlightened times has almost uniformly considered fabulous2 and impossible. It has always been an interesting inquiry3 how much of fact was veiled under this mythical4 dress, and a great variety of ingenious and contradictory5 explanations have been produced by the learned in all ages. In most cases, as in Greece, the national religion has been based on these legends which form its authority and explanation, and they passed with the people of all early times as facts which it was impious to question. So the wise and good Socrates was supposed to have denied the existence of the national gods, and was condemned6 to death. This sacred guard placed over early traditions, increased at once the interest and the difficulty involved in their examination.
2. During the present century the improved methods, larger range and more exact style of inquiry, and the assistance and hints which one branch of study has given to others,[30] have produced the most surprising and satisfactory results. These inquiries7 are not yet complete; they seem, on the contrary, to have only commenced, and promise, ultimately, to satisfy all the useful purposes and legitimate8 curiosity of mankind; still, their conclusions, so far as they go, are unimpeachable9. They prove themselves.
The study of Ethnology, which gives an account of the races of mankind; a critical comparison of all languages, ancient and modern; the patient study and ingenious deciphering of architecture and inscriptions10 found in ancient ruins, and various relics11 of human activity imbedded in the soil of different countries, have thrown down the barriers which the glowing imaginations of the poets and the want of authentic12 documents in early times had raised, and have given us a clue to many of the secrets of history, and a safe guide through some of the dark passages of man’s primitive13 life.
To show how this is done would require a treatise14 on Ethnology, another on Comparative Philology15, a third on Antiquarian Research, and a fourth on the Geological Antiquities16 of Man. Each of these brings a large and valuable contribution to early history. We give only a brief summary of their conclusions.
3. The human race appears to have had its birth on the high table lands of central Asia, south and east of the Caspian Sea. The structure and growth of language, and the remains17 of early art, indicate an extremely infantile mental condition and successive emigrations from the primitive home of the race. Families and tribes which had remained together long enough to build up a common language and strong general features of character and habit, at length separated and formed a number of families of allied19 races.
4. The first emigrations were made by the Turanian nations, which scattered20 very widely. Turanian means “outside,” or “barbarian,” and was given by the later and better known races who found them, commonly in a very wild, undeveloped state, wherever they themselves wandered in[31] after times. There are reasons for believing that the first Turanian migration18 was to China; that they were never afterward21 much interfered22 with, and that they early reached a high stage of civilization. It has certainly many very crude and primitive features. Having worked out all the progressive impulses dwelling23 in the primitive stock of their family almost before other races were heard of, and being undisturbed, their institutions stiffened24 and crystalized and made few improvements for thousands of years. Chinese history presents a curious problem not yet fully25 investigated.
Another stream of Turanian emigration is believed to have settled the more north-easterly portions of Asia. Some time after the tide set down through Farther India, and to the islands of Malaysia. In still later periods Hindoostan was peopled by Turanian races; the ancestors of the Mongols and Turks were spread over the vast plains of northern and central Asia; and somewhat later still an irruption into Europe furnished its primeval people. The Finns and Lapps in the north, and the Basques of Spain, are the living representatives of the ancient Turanian stock, while the Magyars, or Hungarians, are a modern branch of the same race, which made an irruption into Europe from Asia in the ninth century of the Christian26 era. The first appearance of this race in written history was in the establishment of a powerful empire at Babylon, which must have been cotemporary with the earliest Egyptian monarchy27, and seems, from the inscriptions on the most ancient ruins, to have been conquered by, and mingled28 with, an Egyptian or Hamite family. It came to an end before the Assyrian Empire appeared, but seems to have reached a very considerable degree of development.
5. The other two great families of related languages, and therefore of common stock or race, are the Semitic and the Aryan. But previous to the appearance of either of these on this buried stage of history is a family, apparently29 related, distantly, to the Semites, but who might have separated from the common stock of both before them, called Hamites, who[32] founded the very ancient and mysterious Egyptian monarchy. A section of this race conquered the Turanians of Babylon, and established the largest dominion30 then known to men. The Chedor-Laomer of Abraham’s day was one of its mightiest31 sovereigns, and ruled over a thickly-settled region a thousand miles in length by five hundred in breadth. Faint traces of it are found in profane32 history, and the Bible narrative33 is sustained and largely amplified34 by inscriptions on ancient ruins. A second Hamite empire in Babylon is believed to have followed this, continuing four hundred years, carrying agriculture and the peaceful arts to a high state of development.
6. Egypt was peopled by the Hamitic race, who founded two kingdoms, afterwards united. Here, social, political, and industrial institutions developed very early in great strength. Their language, the pictorial35 representation of their social, political, and religious affairs, and the grand and gloomy majesty36 of their works of art, imply a long period of growth before they reached the maturity37 in which we find them when written history commences. Their institutions, even in the earliest historic times, showed signs of the decrepitude38 and decay of age. The vastness and the grim maturity of their monuments and language seem to lend much support to their claim of an immense antiquity39. The future study of their remains of art and literature will settle some important problems in the chronology of the human race. The children of Ham were clearly the first to lead off in the march of civilization.
The Semitic family, deriving40 its name from Shem, or Sem, the eldest41 son of Noah, is not as large nor as widely spread as the Turanian and Aryan, but has exerted an even greater influence on human destiny. It never strayed much from Asia, except to people small portions of Africa. They early appear in Western Asia as the successors of the second Hamitic empire in Babylon and Assyria. Settled in Phenicia, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean42 sea, they became the first[33] maritime43 and commercial people, and, with their colony established in Carthage, in the north of Africa, exerted a powerful influence in promoting the civilization of the ancient world. The Semites early peopled the Arabian peninsula, and established a state in Ethiopia, as some believe, before Egypt had attained44 its full development. The Ethiopians established a flourishing commerce on the Red Sea, with the eastern coasts of Africa, and with India, and contributed greatly to the resources of ancient Egypt.
They have always been a religious race, and gave the three great religions, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, to the world, as well as some of the most debasing superstitions45 and forms of idolatry ever known. The larger part of the population of Asia is still Turanian, and the Semites now occupy about the same area as in prehistoric46 times; but the Hamites have been overpowered and have lost their clearly distinctive47 character as a family, unless represented by the negro tribes.
7. The third great family, the Aryan, called also the Japhetic, from Japhet, the third son of Noah, and from the regions they peopled and made illustrious by their genius and activity, the Indo-European, was the last to leave the birthplace of mankind. The other races were incapable48 of carrying the fortunes of humanity beyond a certain point, of themselves alone, as the history of Turanian China, Hamitic Egypt and the Semitic Mohammedans and Jews clearly proves. The history of the Aryans shows them to possess inexhaustible mental power and physical stamina49, with a vigorous ambition, always dissatisfied with the present, and constantly seeking something better in the future and the distant, that have produced the happiest effect on the destinies of the human race.
8. It would seem that while the Turanians, Hamites, and Semites were taking the lead of the world and building up the empires of prehistoric times, whose mighty50 ruins have been the wonder of later ages, the Aryans were all united in following peaceful pursuits, which the common features of their[34] languages indicate were chiefly the care of flocks and herds51. They were much farther removed from barbarism than any of the other races when they began their wanderings. Warlike, agricultural and nautical52 terms, and the names of wild animals are not often found in the common vocabulary; while family relations, domestic animals and their uses, the heavenly bodies in connection with worship and the priestly relation of the father of the family, and terms indicating a considerable cultivation53 of sensibility and thoughtfulness, imply a purer social and religious condition, and more elevated mental traits, than in the primitive forefathers54 of the other families. Their language was highly picturesque55, and its peculiar56 terms for natural phenomena57 are believed by some to have originated the mythological58 histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans and Teutonic nations. The ancient language used epithets59 and names, so glowing with personality, that the imaginative descendants of the primitive stock, when their early history was forgotten, believed them to contain an account of the origin of things, and the early deeds of gods and heroes; and the genius of the poets clothed the supposed marvels60 in the immortal61 dress of fiction which we find in Homer and Hesiod, in Virgil, the Indian Vedas, and the Sagas62 and Scalds of northern Europe. This, at least, is the conclusion reached by some of the most eminent63 scholars and philologists64, whose study of the formation and growth of languages has thrown so much light on the ante-historical periods. These myths, the germs of which were embodied65 in their language, embellished66 by the supposed inspired genius of the poets, formed the literature and theology of the early historic nations, and were received as undisputed truth.
9. The first migration of the Aryan family appears to have occurred through the passes of the Caucasus, northwest to the northern part of Asia Minor67 and Southern Europe. The Turanian nations, or “barbarians,” were everywhere found in advance of them, in a very degraded condition, and the native spirit and ambition of the Aryan people rendered them[35] the uniform conquerors68. Afterward, another migration southward peopled India, and, in the earliest historic times, the part of the family still remaining in the ancient home of the race established the brilliant empire of the Medes and Persians, who extended their sway over all the central and western parts of Asia, broke down the ancient monarchy of Egypt, and, in the height of their power and glory, swept like a tempest into Europe with the purpose of subjugating69 a few self-governing tribes of their own race dwelling on the shores and among the mountains of the small peninsula of Greece. The failure of the mighty empire in this effort, through the indomitable resolution of a handful of hardy70 republicans, forms one of the most glorious pages of history. It was a grand era in the development of civilization, and Grecian culture became the inheritance of the world.
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1
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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7
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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8
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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unimpeachable
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| adj.无可指责的；adv.无可怀疑地 | |
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inscriptions
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| （作者）题词( inscription的名词复数 )； 献词； 碑文； 证劵持有人的登记 | |
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relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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philology
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| n.语言学；语文学 | |
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antiquities
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| n.古老( antiquity的名词复数 )；古迹；古人们；古代的风俗习惯 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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migration
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| n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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23
dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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28
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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29
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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mightiest
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| adj.趾高气扬( mighty的最高级 )；巨大的；强有力的；浩瀚的 | |
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profane
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| adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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amplified
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| 放大，扩大( amplify的过去式和过去分词 )； 增强； 详述 | |
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pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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38
decrepitude
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| n.衰老；破旧 | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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40
deriving
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| v.得到( derive的现在分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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41
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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42
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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maritime
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| adj.海的，海事的，航海的，近海的，沿海的 | |
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44
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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45
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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46
prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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47
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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48
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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49
stamina
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| n.体力；精力；耐力 | |
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50
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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51
herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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52
nautical
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| adj.海上的，航海的，船员的 | |
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53
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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54
forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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55
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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56
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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57
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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58
mythological
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| adj.神话的 | |
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59
epithets
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| n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
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60
marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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61
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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62
sagas
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| n.萨迦（尤指古代挪威或冰岛讲述冒险经历和英雄业绩的长篇故事）( saga的名词复数 )；（讲述许多年间发生的事情的）长篇故事；一连串的事件（或经历）；一连串经历的讲述（或记述） | |
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63
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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philologists
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| n.语文学( philology的名词复数 ) | |
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65
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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66
embellished
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| v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 )；装饰；修饰；润色 | |
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67
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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69
subjugating
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| v.征服，降伏( subjugate的现在分词 ) | |
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hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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