There are three guides which we can summon to our aid when we set out in quest of the cradle of the tribes, races, and nations that people the globe.
The first is Philology, or language: the second is Mythology, or worship: and the third is Tradition, or folk-lore.
These are three guides that will not lie, and that cannot mislead us.
As regards the first, no great power of reflection is needed to convince us that in the first age men conversed with one another in a common language; in other words, that man started with one speech.
May be that one speech lingers somewhere on the earth, slightly changed and modified, it may be, by time and other influences, still containing the roots and elemental characteristics of those numerous tongues, which are diffused over the earth, and of which it is the parent?
This is not a supposition, but a fact.
Philology holds in its hand the clue by which it can track all the tongues of the world through the perplexed labyrinth of diverse grammars, idioms, and dialects, to the one primeval tongue of the race.
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And when we permit philology to perform its office, it conducts us to the great central plain of Asia, called Iran.
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The researches of Max Muller, Sir William Jones, and others, appear to have established the fact, that we find the ancestors of all numerous tongues of the nations,
NOT in the classic languages of Greece and Rome, nor in the more ancient Semitic, but
In the speech of the Indo-European races or Aryans.
The Sanskrit possesses the root-affinities, and stands in a common relation to all the languages of the East on the one hand, and the West on the other.
It presents its proud claim to be the parent of human tongues, and it identifies Iran (Aryan) as the spot whence the human family was spread abroad.
"After thousands of years," says Mr. Dasent, "the language and traditions of those who went East, and of those who went West, bear such an affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent from a common stock".
Let us next attend to the evidence, on the point before us, of the second witness, Mythology, or worship.
The first form of worship—keeping out of view the one divinely appointed form — was Nature worship. By 'nature worship' we mean the adoration of the Deity through an earthly symbol.
The first symbol of the Creator was the sun, and consequently the earliest form of nature worship was sun-worship. Where, and in what region of the earth was the first act of sun-worship performed?
All are agreed that this form of worship took its rise in the same region to which philology has already conducted us and identified as the father-land of mankind.
On the plains of Shinar rose the great tower or temple of Bel, or the Sun.
There was the first outbreak of a worship which quickly spread over the earth, continually multiplying its rites and varying its outward forms, becoming ever the more 'gorgeous', yet ever the more 'gross',
But exhibiting in every land, and among all peoples, the same seminal characteristics and root-affinities which were embodied in the first act of sun-adoration on the Chaldean plain.
Thus a second time we arrive on those great plains on which 'Ararat' looks down.
There is a 'third witness', and the testimony of this witness is to the same effect with that of the former two. There exists a unique body of literature which is found floating in the languages of both the East and the West.
It is mainly popular, consisting of traditions, fables and tales, and is commonly styled 'folk-lore'.
These Tales bear the stamp of being the creation of a young race:
They are bright with the colours of romance, and they 'embody', in the guise of allegory and fable, the 'maxims of an ancient wisdom'.
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Whether it is the Celtic or the Teutonic, the classic or the vernacular tongue, in which we hear these tales and 'folk-lore' rehearsed, they are found to be the same.
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They have the same groundwork or plot - though diffused over the globe.
This points to a common origin, and in tracing them up to that origin we pass the tongues of modern Europe, we pass the Latin and Greek tongues, we come to the language spoken by the Aryan (Iranian) races of Asia, and there we find the fountain-head of these unique and world-wide tales.
This is another link between the East and West, between the peoples that held the "grey dawn" and those on whom the world’s "eve" is destined to descend.
Such is the witness of these three — Philology, Religion, Tradition.
They are the footprints which the human family have left on the road by which they have travelled;
And, following these traces we are led to Iran, where lived the men who were the first to "till and ear" the soil.
Thirty years ago (i.e. in the 1850s) it would have required some little courage to mention, unless to repudiate, the authority which we are about to cite.
At that time it was fashionable to stand in doubt of the early traditions of all nations.
The first chroniclers were believed to display a vein (characteristic) for legend acumen of the wise moderns, they were supposed to delight in garnishing their pages with prodigies and marvels, rather than storing them with ascertained facts.
But this spirit of historic skepticism has since been markedly rebuked.
The graven tablets dug up from the ruins of Nineveh, the treasures exhumed from the mounds of Babylon, and the secrets of a bygone time with which the explorations on the plain of Troy,
Have made us acquainted, have signally attested the veracity of the 'early writers', and shown us, that instead of indulging a love of fable, they exercised a scrupulous regard to fact, and an 'abstention from poetic adornment' for which the world, in these latter days (end of 19th Century), had not given them credit.
The consequence is that the early historians now speak with a justly enhanced authority. This remark is specially true of the sacred writers, and also, to a large extent, of the secular historians.
We in Great Britain likewise possess the records of an ancient time.
These writings have been preserved, not in the dust of the earth, like the written cylinders and graven slabs of the Tigris and the Euphrates valley, but in the sacred repositories of the aboriginal race whose origin they profess to record.
We refer to the "Welsh Triads."
These documents are the traditions received from the first settlers, handed down from father to son, and at last committed to writing by the Druids, the priests of the aborigines.
They are arranged in groups, and each group consists of three analogous events; the design of this arrangement obviously being to simplify the narrative and aid the memory.
We do not claim for them the authority of history; we use them solely as throwing a side light on the darkness of that remote age, and as confirmatory, or at illustrative,
As far as it is not possible to understand them, of the sketch we have ventured to trace of the peopling of Europe, and the first settling of Britain, from the etymological (language origins) and historic proofs that remain to us.
The fourth Triad says: "There are three pillars of the nation of Britain.
The first was 'Hu' the Mighty (HU-man?), who brought the nation of Kymry** first to the isle of Britain;
**[Cymry or Kymry = Refers to the Brythonic Celts - Celtic Briton of Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany (NW France).
'Brythonic' = Celtic language of Indo-European roots].
And they came from the 'summer' country, which is on the shores of the Bosphorus (a narrow strait separating European and Asian Turkey), and they came over the Hazy Sea to
The Isle of Britain, and to 'Armorica'
(Armorica = Gaul - i.e. NW France - esp. Brittany - the latter not to be confused with Britain) where they settled).
The other two pillars of the nation of the Kymri were Prydain (Prydain is the medieval Welsh term for the island of Britain) and Moelmud (?), who gave them laws, and established sovereignty among them."
The fifth Traid says: "There were three social tribes of the Isle of Britain.
The First was the tribe of the 'Kymry' who came to the Isle of Britain with 'Hu' the Mighty, because he would not possess a country and land by 'fighting and pursuit', but
By 'justice and tranquillity'.
The Second was the tribe of 'Lloegrians' (from the 'Loire' - longest river of France) who came from Gascony (SW France); and they were descended from the primitive tribe of the Kymry.
The Third were the 'Brython', who came from Armorica (NW France), and who were descended from the primitive tribe of the Kymry, and they had all three the same language and speech."
This Triad offers a rough sketch of two migrations which are seen moving towards our island, each by a different route.
The one comes over the Hazy sea (most probably the German Ocean, and the other from Gaul across the channel. But both are sprung of the same stock, the Kymri, the descendants of 'Gomer' (Gomer was the eldest son of Japheth, son of Noah) that first peopled Europe.
The Triads go on to speak of two subsequent arrivals of settlers by whom the first great immigration into Britain was followed and supplemented.
The two later immigrations were doubtless passed on to the remoter, and perhaps as yet, uninhabited districts of our country.
The first arrivals, it is natural to suppose, would plant themselves in the fertile and grassy plains of England, and would refuse, not without reason, to surrender to new-comers lands in which they had already established, by cultivation, the right of ownership.
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These last explorers would have to move onward and seek a settlement in the less hospitable and more mountainous regions of Scotland.
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Those whom we now see arriving in our island, and retiring to the straths and slopes of the Grampians (in Scotland), are probably the ancestors of the men who came afterwards, to bear the name of 'Caledonians'.
At what period the sons of Gomer — for their migration only does it concern us to trace — took their departure from their original seats in the East, no history informs us.
It is natural to suppose that before his death Noah gave to his sons no uncertain intimation of how he meant the earth to be parted amongst them, and the quarter of the globe in which they were to seek their several dwellings.
As the great Patriarch of mankind he possessed the princedom of the world. This vast sovereignty he could not transmit entire.
Like some great monarchs who have lived since this day, he must have needed to distribute his power among his successors;
And in this he acted, we cannot doubt, in conformity with the intimations which had been made to him of the will of a yet greater monarch than himself.
For we are told that "the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance."
But rivalships and conflicts would likely, spring up in connection with the distribution of so splendid a possession.
Some might be unwilling to go forth into the unknown regions allotted to them, and instead of a long and doubtful journey, would prefer remaining near their original seat.
The fruitful hills and well-watered vales of Armenia, and the broad plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, would not be easily forsaken for a climate less hospitable and an earth less bounteous.
Noah would judge it expedient, doubtless, that while he was yet alive, the three Septs (divisions of a clan) into which his descendants were parted, should begin their journey each in the direction of its allotted possession.
Ham must direct his steps toward his sandy continent on the West.
Japheth must cross the mountains on the North, and seek a home for his posterity under skies less genial than those of Assyria.
Shem must turn his face towards the burning plains of India.
To leave their sheltered and now well-cultivated valley for unknown lands whose rugged soils they must begin by subduing, was a prospect far from inviting. The command to 'go forth' seemed a hard one.
They would lose the strength which union gives, and be 'scattered' defenseless over the face of the earth.
And if we read aright the brief record of Genesis, the mandate of Heaven, delivered to mankind through their common Father, that they should 'disperse and settle the world', met with an open and organised resistance.
They broke out into revolt, and in token thereof built their tower on the plain of Shinar.
There is one name that stands out, bold and distinct, in the darkness, that hides all his contemporaries; that even of the leader in this rebellion.
'Nimrod' saw in this, strong aversion, of the human kind to 'break up into tribes', and 'disperse abroad', a sentiment on which he might rest his project of a 'universal monarch'.
His plan was to keep the human family in 'one place', and accordingly he encouraged the rearing of this 'enormous structure', and he consecrated it to the worship of the Sun, or Bel (Baal, in the city of Babel, later named Babylon).
This 'tower' on the plain of Shinar was meant to be the great temple of the world, the shrine at which the unbroken family of man should meet and perform their worship, and so realise their unity.
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The tower was the symbol of a double tyranny, that of political despotism and that of religious superstition.
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The policy of Nimrod was the same with that of many an autocrat since who has found 'priestcraft the best ally of ambition', and concluded that the surest way to keep a people under his own yoke was first to bend their necks to that of a 'false god'.
It was the policy adopted by Jeroboam in an age long posterior, when he set up his golden calves at Dan and Bethel, that the 'ten tribes' might have no occasion to resort to Jerusalem to worship, and so be seduced back into their allegiance to the 'House of David' (Druid).
This bold and impious attempt met with speedy and awful discomfiture.
"The Lord came down," says the inspired historian, using a form of speech which is commonly employed to indicate, not indeed a bodily or personal appearance on the scene, but an occurrence so altogether out of the ordinary course;
A 'catastrophe' so unlooked for, and so tremendous, that it is 'felt to be' the work of Deity.
We can imagine the 'lightnings and mighty tempests' which accompanied the overthrow of this earliest of idolatrous temples, and centre of what was meant to be a 'world-wide despotism'.
There was after this no need to repeat the patriarchal command to go forth. Pursued by strange terrors, men were in haste to flee from a region where the Almighty’s authority had been signally defied, and was now as signally vindicated.
If Noah outlived this 'catastrophe', as he had survived an earlier and more awful one, he now beheld the insurrection against his patriarchal government quelled, and
His posterity forced to go forth in 'three great bodies' or colonies to seek in the primeval forests and wildernesses of the world, each its allotted home.
We cannot be very wide of the mark if we fix the epoch of this great exodus at about the three hundredth year after the Flood.
The length of time occupies by the bands of Gomer in their journey from their starting-point to the shores of Britain would depend not so much on the space to be traversed, as on the incidents which might arise to facilitate or retard their journey.
They had no pioneers to smooth their way, and they could have no chart to guide them over regions which they themselves were the first to explore.
The speed of the single traveller, and even the caravan, is swift and uninterrupted; the movements of a million or two of emigrants were unwieldly and laborous.
Their flocks and herds accompany them on their march. They had to cross innumerable rivers, passable only by extemporised bridges, or in canoes scooped hastily out of great oaks felled in the neighbouring forest.
They had to traverse swampy plains, hew their was through tangled woods, and struggle through narrow mountain defiles. A march of this sort must necessarily be slow. They made long halts, doubtless, in the more fertile regions that lay on their route.
In these spots they would practice a little husbandry, and exchange their nomadic habits for the pursuits of a more settled mode of life;
And only, when the place became too narrow for their increasing numbers, would they send forth a new swarm, to spy out the wilderness beyond, and find new habitations which would become in turn, radiating points whence fresh streams might go forth to people the lands and mountains lying around their track.
Their progress would exhibit the reverse picture of that presented by the army whose terrible march an inspired writer had so graphically described.
The locust host of the prophet pursued its way, with the invading, but peaceful, millions, whose march we are contemplating.
Wherever their footsteps passed the barren earth was turned into a garden.
It was beauty, not blackness and burning, which lay behind them,
They advanced to make war upon the desert only.
The swampy pool and the black wood disappeared as they went on, and behind them on their track lay smiling fields and the habitations of men.
Forty years sufficed to carry the Goths from the banks of the Danube to the shores of the Atlantic. But their steps were quickened by their love of war and their thirst for plunder.
No such incentives animated the emigrant horde whose march we are tracing, or urged on their advance.
Their movement would bear a resemblance to what we see in America and Australia at this day, where there is a gradual by continuous outflow from the centres of population into the wilderness beyond, and the zone of the desolation and silence is constantly receding before the face of man.
Hundreds of years — we know not how many — would these early intruders into the silent wastes of the northern hemisphere occupy, as they journeyed slowly onward and gave the first touch of cultivation to what is now, and has long been, the scene of fair kingdoms and flourishing cities.
The men whom we now see stepping upon our shores are shepherds and hunters. They had learned something in their long journey, but they had 'forgotten more'.
That journey had not been conducive to their advance in knowledge, nor to their refinement in manners.
The epithet "barbarian" was doubtless more applicable to them on their arrival at their new homes than when they took their departure from their original abodes.
Whatever skill in husbandry and the arts they possessed in their native seats, would be diminished, if not well nigh lost in its transmission through successive generations in the course of their wandering and unsettled life.
Their daily combats with the ruggedness of the earth, with the storms of the sky, or with the beast of prey, would brace their bodies and discipline their courage, but
It would at the same time tend to roughen their manners, and impart a tinge of ferocity to their tempers and dispositions.
Counteractive influences, such as the modern emigrant from the old centres of civilization carries with him into the wilds of the southern or western world, they had none.
We are accustomed to invest the shepherd’s life with the hues of poetry, and we people Arcadia, with the virtues of simplicity and innocence, but when from this imaginary world we turn to the contemplation of real life we are rudely awakened from our dream.
We are shocked to find brutality and cruelty where we had pictured to ourselves 'gentleness and love'. It is the pasture grounds of Europe that have sent forth its 'fiercest warriors'.
Its nomadic tribes have been its most ruthless desolators.
In proof of our assertion we might appeal to the portrait which Herodotus draws of the Scythians of his day; or to the ravaging hordes which issued from the banks of the Borysthenes,
Or of the 'Volga'; or to the sanguinary halberdiers (Swiss guards),
[a 'halberd', or halbert or Swiss 'voulge', is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominence during the 14th and 15th centuries],
Which in later times so often descended from the mountains of the Swiss to spread battle and carnage over the Austrian and Italian plains.
The influences which moulded these dwellers amid sheep-cots into warriors and plunderers would operate, though with greatly modified force,
On the army of nomads which we see pursuing their way, century after century, down the great slope which conducts from the highlands of Armenia, and the ranges of the Caucasus, to the shores of the North Sea.
They could hardly avoid catching the colour of the savage scenes amid which their track lay. There are souls to which the gloom of the far-extending forest, the grandeur of the soaring peak, and the darkness of the tempest
Impart a sentiment of elevation and refinement; but as regards the generality of mankind, they are but little moved by the grandest of nature’s scenes, and are apt to become stern and hard as the rocks amid which they dwell.
The tendency of these injurious influences on the host whose movement we are tracing would be aggravated by other circumstances inseparable from their condition.
They could carry with them no magazine of corn. Their daily food would be the flesh of their slaughtered herds, or of the animals caught in the chase.
This is a species of diet, as physicians (in the late 1890s) tell us, which is by no means fitted to 'cool the blood' or 'allay the passions', but rather - 'to inflame' the 'irritability of both'.
Besides, this host was subjected to a natural process of weeding, in virtue of which only the hardiest and the most daring were sent onward.
The less adventurous would remain behind at each halt to be transformed into tillers of the soil, or dressers of the vineyard, and this process of selection, repeated time after time, would result at last in
The creation of a race singularly robust in body and equally indomitable in spirit.
And such, doubtless, were the physical and mental characteristics of that band of immigrants that ultimately stepped upon our shore.
They were not like the Scythians of Herodotus, or the Goths of the Roman invasion, or the treacherous and cruel Arab of our own day.
They were men occupied in the 'first great humanizing mission' of subduing and cultivating the earth.
Battle they had not seen all the way, if we except the contests they had to wage with the forces of nature. Blood they had not shed, save that of bullock or of beast of prey.
But if their long journey had schooled them in the peaceable virtues of patience and endurance, it had engendered not less a keen relish for their wild freedom,
And stalwart in frame and strong of heart, they were able and ready to defend the independence which had been theirs ever since the day that they rallied beneath the standard of their great progenitor,
And contemning (despising) the double yoke of despotism and sun-worship, which Nimrod had attempted to impose upon them, turned their faces toward the free lands of the North (Scotland). . . . .
PRE-HISTORIC, DRUIDIC (DAVIDIC), AND EARLY CHRISTIAN SCOTLAND.
Note to the Reader
This work was published in 1886.
It disappeared from off the face of the earth around the turn of the century. Even the copy in the Library of Congress was stolen.
We are confident that if the book had remained in circulation there would be no divided Ireland today!!
A true knowledge of history is vital....Rome has poisoned the wells of history, and multitudes have drunk of that contaminated water.
When you are sick physically, the first question the doctor asks is about your 'medical history', in order to affect a cure.
The same is true in a spiritual sense . . . woe unto the people whose historians are their enemies!!
In the Book of Revelation, chapter 12, the woman clothed with the sun - a picture of the true Church - has to flee into the wilderness to escape the wrath of the Great Red Dragon.
Hibernia (i.e. 'Ireland' before 4th Century) and Caledonia (name of 'Scotland' in AD 1) was the wilderness at that time, lying beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire.
Ireland was always the true home of the Scots.
The name of the country was changed around the time of the Reformation.
St. Patrick in his Confession mentions the sons of the 'Scotti' and the daughters of the chieftains, especially one blessed Scottish princess that he baptized (una benedicta Scota).
All writers up the time of the Reformation refer to the inhabitants of 'Hibernia' (now 'Ireland') as the 'Scottish Tribes'.
Brian Born (930-1014) High King of Hibernia (Ireland) and victor over the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf, has his name inscribed in the Book of Armagh as Imperatoris Scotorum, that is:
Emperor of the Scots.
In the year 1150, a famous book was written by Christian Malone, Abbot of Clonmacnoise, entitled Chronicum Scotorum.
It is a chronology of Hibernia from the Flood to the 12th century.
St. Patrick is the Apostle of the Scots!
On both sides of the Irish Channel.
Both people fought the same enemies for centuries:
Vikings, Danes, Anglo-Normans, etc., etc.
Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against the true Church and we find remnants of the Gaelic Church surviving right down to the blessed Reformation.
FIRST POPULATION OF BRITAIN
FIRST PEOPLING OF BRITAIN.
While Alexander was overrunning the world by his arms, and Greece was enlightening it with her arts, Scotland lay hidden beneath the cloud of barbarism, and had neither name nor place among the nations of the earth.
Its isolation, however, was not complete and absolute.
Centuries before the great Macedonian had commenced his victorious career, the adventurous navigators of the Phoenician seaboard had explored the darkness of the hyperborean** ocean.
[**One of a people (regions) known to the ancient Greeks from the earliest times, living in a perpetually warm and sunny land north of the source of the north wind - in the Arctic circle.]
The first to steer by the polestar, they boldly adventured where less skillful mariners would have feared to penetrate.
Within the hazy confine of the North Sea they described an 'island', swathed in a mild if humid air, and disclosing to the eye, behind its frontier screen of 'chalk cliffs', the pleasing prospect of wooded hills, and far expanding meadows, roamed over by numerous herds, and inhabitants.
The Phoenicians oft revisited this remote, and to all but themselves unknown shore, but the enriching trade which they carried on with it they retained for centuries in their own hands.
Their ships might be seen passing out at the “Pillars of Hercules” on voyages of unknown destination, and, after the lapse of months, they would return laden with the products of regions, which had found as yet no name on the chart of geographer.
But the source of this trade they kept a secret from the rest of the nations.
By and by, however, it began to be rumoured that the fleets seen going and returning on these mysterious voyages traded with an island that lay far to the north, and which was rich in a metal so white and lustrous that it had begun to be used as a substitute for silver.
In this capacity it was employed now to lend a meretricious glitter to the robe of the courtesan, and now to impart a more legitimate splendour to the mantle of the magistrate.
In process of time other seafaring peoples, taught by the example of the Phoenicians to 'sail by the stars', and to brave the terrors of unknown seas in pursuit of wealth, followed in the track which these early merchants had been the first to open.
The tin of Cornwall and of the Scilly Islands, the “Cassiterides” of the ancients, began to circulate among the nations of Asia Minor, and was not unknown even to the tribes of the Arabian desert.
It is interesting to think that Britain had already begun to benefit nations which knew not as yet to pronounce her name.
But it was on the Syrian shore, and among the maritime tribes that nestled in the bays of Lebanon, that the main stream of this traffic continued to diffuse its various riches.
The wealth and power of the Phoenician state were largely owing to its trade with Britain. Its capital Sidon, was nursed by the produce of our mines into early greatness.
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The site of Rome was still a morass; the cities of Greece were only mean hamlets; the palaces of Babylon were 'brick-built' structures; and Jerusalem was but a hill fort; while Sidon had risen in a splendour and grown to a size that made men speak of her, even in the age of Joshua, as the “Great Sidon.”
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Nor was Sidon the only city on that shore that owed its greatness to the remote and barbarous Britain.
Tyre, the daughter of Sidon, feeding her power at the same distant springs, came ultimately to surpass in wealth, and eclipse in beauty, the mother city.
No sublimer ode has come down to us than that which has as its burden the greatness and the fall of Tyre —
The number of her ships, the multitude of her merchants, the splendour of her palaces, the exceeding loftiness of her pomp and pride, and the dark night in which her day of glory was to close.
The bronze gates set up by Shalmanezer (king of Assyria 859 BC – 824 BC), to commemorate his triumphs, exhumed but the other day from the ruined mounds of Assyria, present to modern eyes a vivid picture of the greatness of the Phoenician cities.
On these gates Tyre is seen seated on her island-rock, encompassed by strong walls, with serrated battlements and flanking towers.
A broad avenue leads from her gates to the sea. Down this path is being borne her rich and various merchandise, which we see ferried across to the mainland.
Ingots of gold and silver, rare woods, curious bowls, precious stones, spices, dyed cloths, embroidered garments, and similar products brought from far off lands, form the tribute which we here see laid at the feet of the conqueror Shalmanezer.
The monarch in his robes of state, a tiara on his head, stands a little in advance of a brilliant staff of officers and princes, while an attendant eunuch shades him with a richly embroidered umbrella from the hot Syrian sun, and a deputation of Tyrian merchants offer him the submission of the now tributary city.
This was in the year B.C. 859
But though the doom foretold by the prophet has long since fallen upon this ancient mistress of the seas, her ruin is not so utter but that we may trace at this day,
The dimensions of those harbours from which the fleets engaged in the traffic with Britain set sail, and were, on their return, they discharged their rich cargoes.
The harbours of Tyre, as their ruins, still visible below the waves, show, had an average area of twelve acres.
The ports of Sidon were of a somewhat larger capacity.
Their average area was twenty acres,— so do the scholars of the “Palestine Exploration” tell us.
We who are familiar with the “Leviathans” that plow the deep in modern times, cannot but feel surprise at the diminutive size of the craft employed in the Tyrian traffic, as judged of by the limited capacity of the basins in which they unloaded their wares.
A modern ironclad would hardly venture into a port of so diminutive a size.
But if the ships of Tyre were of small tonnage, so much greater the evidence of the skill and courage of the crews that manned them, and the enterprise of the merchants that sent them forth on such distant voyages.
And it is pleasant to reflect that even at that early age, the riches of our mines formed an important factor in the commercial activity, the artistic taste, and the varied grandeur, of which the narrow strip of territory that stretches along on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, beneath the cliffs of Lebanon, was then the seat.
The palmiest era of the Phoenician commerce was from the twelfth to the sixth century before Christ.
It follows, that Britain, with whom these early merchants traded, was then inhabited, and probably had been so for some considerable time previous.
At what time did the first immigrants arrive on its shore, and from what quarter did they come?
We cannot tell the year, nor even the century, when the first wanderer from across the sea sighted its cliffs, and moored his bark on its strand; nor can be solve the question touching the first peopling of our island, otherwise than by an approximating process.
In a brief discussion of this point, we shall avail ourselves of the guidance furnished by great ethnological principles and facts, as well as of the help given us by historic statements.
The earliest and most authentic of all histories — for the monumental and historic evidence of the Bible does not lessen but grow with the current of the centuries — tells us:
That the Ark rested, after the Flood, on one of the mountains of Ararat.
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Here, at the centre of the earth, is placed the second cradle of the human family, and to this point are we to trace up all the migrations of mankind.
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The Ark might have been set down by the retiring waters on the verge of Asia, or on the remotest boundary of America; or it might have been floated on currents, or driven by winds far into the polar regions.
Escaping all these mischances, here, in the central regions of the world, and probably within sight of those plains with which Noah had been familiar before the flood overspread the earth, did the Ark deposit its burden.
It was the first great providential act towards the human family in post-diluvian times.
Noah comes forth from the Ark with his sons Shem, Ham, and Japhet. The three 'fountainheads' of the world’s population..
When Noah comes forth from the Ark we see him accompanied by three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japhet. These are the three fountainheads of the world’s population.
“These are the three sons of Noah, and of them was the whole earth overspread.”
“Peleg,” who lived in the fifth generation from Noah, is set up as a great finger-post at the parting of the ways, “for in his days was the earth divided.”
And it is strikingly corroborative of the truth of this statement, that after four thousand years, during which climate, migration, and numerous other influences have been acting unceasingly on the species,
All tending to deepen the peculiarities of race, and to widen the distinctions between nations, the population of the world at this day, by whatever test we try it,
Whether that of physical characteristic, or by the surer proof of language, is still resolvable into three grand groups, corresponding to the three patriarchs of the race,
Shem, Ham and Japhet.
.
The descendants of Ham,
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Crossing the narrow bridge between Asia and Africa, the Isthmus of Suez 'to wit' (that is to say; namely), planted themselves along the banks of the Nile, finding in that rich valley a second plain of Shinar, and in the great river that waters it another Euphrates.
Egypt is known by its inhabitants as the land of Mizraim to this day.
From the black loamy Delta, which reposes so securely betwixt the two great deserts of the world, and which the annual overflow of the Nile clothes with an eternal luxuriance,
Ham spread his swarthy swarms over the African continent.
.
Shem turned his face towards Arabia and India, and
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His advancing bands crossing the Indus and the Ganges, overflowed the vast and fertile plains which are bounded by the lofty Himalayas on the one side, and washed by the Indian Ocean on the other.
An illustrious member of the 'Semitic' family was recalled westward to occupy Palestine, where his posterity, as the divinely-appointed priesthood of the world, dwelt apart with a glory all their own.
.
Japhet,
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Crossing the mountainous wall which rose like a vast partition betwixt the north and the south, poured the tide of his numerous and hardy descendants,
Down the vast slope of the northern hemisphere over Europe, and
The trans-Caucasian regions of Asia, with, at times, a reflex wave that flowed back into the territories of Shem.
Thus was the splendid inheritance of a world divided amongst the three sons of Noah.
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Our main business is to track the migration of the sons of Japhet, and see by what route they travelled towards our island.
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From their starting point in the highlands of Armenia, or on the plain of the Euphrates, two great pathways offer themselves, by either of which, or by both,
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Their migrating hordes might reach the shores of the distant Britain.
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There is the great hollow which Nature has scooped out between the giant Atlas and the mountains of the Alps, and which forms the basin of the Mediterranean Sea.
Moving westward through this great natural cleft, and dropping colonies on the fair islands, and by the sheltered bays of its delicious shores, they would people in succession the soil of Greece and the countries of Italy and Spain.
Pushed on from behind by their ever increasing numbers, or drawn by the powerful attraction of new habitations, they maintain their slow but inevitable advance across the rugged Pyrenees and the broad and fertile plains of France.
The van of the advancing horde is now in sight of "Albion".
[Albion being the ancient name for the 'British Isles' whilst 'Albania' was the old latinized name for 'Scotland']
They can descry (perceive) the gleam of its white cliffs across the narrow channel that separates it from the continent; and passing over, they find a land, which, though owned as yet by only the beast of prey,
Offers enough in the various produce of its soil and the hidden treasures of its rocks to reward them for the toil of their long journey and to induce them to make it the final goal of their wanderings.
By this route, we know, did the clans and tribes springing from Javan (Javan is a son of Japheth) — the Ion of the Greeks — travel to the west.
We trace the footprints of his sons, Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim all along the northern shore of the Mediterranean, from the Lebanon to the Pyrenees, notably in Greece and Italy, less palpably in Cyprus and Spain, attesting to this day
The truth of the Bible’s statement, that by them were the “isles of the Gentiles,” that is,
The western seaboard of Asia Minor and the northern coast of the Mediterranean: . . . .
“peopled.”
Meanwhile, another branch of the great Japhethian family is on its way by slow marches to the northern and western world by another route.
This great emigrant host, proceeds along the great pathways which have been so distinctly traced out by the hand of Nature on the surface of the globe.
The Araxes and the Phasis (rivers) are the guide of their steps, and as
They descend the great slope of northern Asia, and winding round the shores of the Euxine,
They tread their way through a boundless maze of river and morass, of meadow and forest, and mountain-chain, and
Stand at length on the shores of that ocean that washes the flats of Holland and the headlands of Norway:
And thus of the human tide which we see advancing towards
our island, which is still lying as the waters of the Flood had left it,
The one division, flowing along through the basin of the Mediterranean, finds egress (its exit point) by the Pillars of Hercules, and
The other, rolling down the great northern slope of the Caucasian chain, issues forth at the frozen doors of the Baltic.
Gomer was the eldest son of Japheth, and father of Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah - mentioned in the Book of Genesis 10:3, and 1 Chronicles 1:6 of the Hebrew Bible.
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This parting of the emigrant host into two great lands, and the sending of them round to their future home by two different routes, had in it a great moral end.
There are worse schools for a nation destined for future service, than a long and arduous journey on which they have to suffer hunger and brave danger.
The horde of slaves that left Egypt of old, having finished their "forty years" in the "great and terrible wilderness," emerged on Canaan a disciplined and courageous nation.
The route by which these two Japhethian bands journeyed to their final possessions, left on each a marked and indelible stamp.
The resemblance between the two at the beginning of their journey, as regards the great features of the Japhethian image, which was common to both, was, we can well imagine, much altered and
Diversified by the time they had arrived at the end of it, and our country in consequence, came to be stocked with a race more varied in faculty, richer in genius, and sturdier in intellect than its occupants would probably have been,
But for the disciplinary influences to which they were subjected while yet on the road to it.
The aborigines of Albion (British Isles) combined the strength of the north with the passion of the south.
If the two great hosts that mingled on its soil, the one, passing under the freezing sky of the "Sarmatian" plains, and combatting with flood and storm on their way, arrived in their new abode earnest, patient, and courageous.
[The territory of "Sarmatia" (including an Iranian-speaking people) was an expansive stretch of land reaching from the Caspian Sea in the East to the Vistula River in the West, and as far south as the river Danube].
The other, coming round by the bright and genial shores of the Mediterranean, were lively and volatile and brimming with rich and lofty impulses.
Though sprung of the same stock, they came in this way to unite the qualities of different races and climes — the gravity of the Occident with the warm and thrilling enthusiasm of the Orient.
The stream that descended the slopes of the Caucasus, passing betwixt the Caspian and the Euxine (Black Sea), would arrive on our eastern sea-board, and ‘people’ that part of our island, which fronts the German Ocean.
The other current, which flowed along by the Mediterranean, and turned northward over France and Spain, would have its course directed towards our western coasts.
In the different temperaments that mark the population of the two sides of our island, we trace the vestiges of this long and devious peregrination.
The strong Teutonic fibre of our eastern sea-board, and the poetic fire that glows in the men of our western mountains, give evidence at this day of various original endowments in this one population.
These mixed qualities are seen working together in the daily life of the people, which exhibits a sustained and fruitful industry, fed and quickened by a latent enthusiasm.
The presence of the two qualities is traceable also in their higher and more artistic pursuits, as for instance, in their literary productions, which
Even when they kindle into the passionate glow of the East, are always seen to have as their substratum that ‘cool and sober reason’ which is the characteristic of the West.
Most of all is this fine union discernible, on those occasions when a great principle stirs the soul of the nations, and its feeling find vent in an overmastering and dazzling outburst of patriotism.
We do not know the number of links which connected the 'Patriarch of the Armenian mountains' with that generation of his descendants,
Who were the first to set foot on the Shores of Britain; but
We seem warranted in concluding that Gomer** and Ashkenaz were the two great fathers of the first British population.
**[identified with Germany, as meaning Jews who live among the Ashkenazi^^]
The nomadic hordes that we see descending the vast slope that leads down to the Scandinavian countries and the coast of the White Sea, are those of Gomer.
This much do their footsteps, still traceable, attest.
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They gave their names of the lands over which their track lay, and these memorials, more durable than written record or even pillar of stone, remain to this day, the ineffaceable mementoes of that primeval immigration by which Europe was peopled.
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Here is Gomer-land (Germany) lying on their direct route:
For this track was far too extensive and fertile not to commend itself to the permanent occupation of a people on the outlook for new habitations.
"The Celts, from the Euxine (Black Sea) to the Baltic," say Pinkerton, "were commonly called Cimmerii, a name noted in Grecian history and fable; and from their antiquity so obscure that a Cimmerian darkness dwells upon them.
From the ancients we learn to a certainty, that they were the same people with the Cimbri, and that they extended from the Bosphorus Cimmerius on the Euxine, to the Cimbric Chersonese of 'Denmark', and to the river Rhine."
The main body of these immigrants would squat down on the soil at each successive halt, and
Only the 'front rank' would be pushed forward into the un-peopled wilderness.
Their progress, often retarded by scarce penetrable forest and by swollen river, would be at length conclusively arrested on the shores of the North Sea; and yet not finding even there.
Passing over in such craft as their skill enabled them to construct—a fleet of canoes, hollowed out of the trunks of oaks, felled in the German forests—they would take possession of Britain, and
Begin to people a land, till then a region of silence or solitude, untrodden by human foot since the period of the Flood, if not since the era of the creation.
The new-comers brought with them the tradition of their descent.
They called themselves Cymry of Kymbry.
They are the Gimmirrai of the Assyrian monuments.
The Greeks, adopting their own designation, styled them Kimmerioi, and the Latins Cimbri.
Cymry is the name by which the aborigines of Britain have uniformly distinguished themselves from the remotest antiquity up to the present hour;
And their language, which they have retained through all revolutions, they have invariably called Cymraeg, which means the language of the aborigines, or "the language of the first race."
It is reasonable to conclude," says Pinkerton in his learned "Enquiry into the History of Scotland,"
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"That the north and east of Britain were peopled from Germany by the Cimbri of the opposite shores, who were the first inhabitants of Scotland,
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Who can be traced, from leaving Cumraig names to rivers and mountains, even in the furthest Hebudes." (i.e. the Hebrides off Britain, mentioned by Pliny, Solinus, and in he Cosmography ascribed to Aethicus.)
Continued . . . .
Bob
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^^ New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe
A new look at the DNA of the Ashkenazi Jewish population has thrown light on its still mysterious origins.
Until now, it had been widely assumed by geneticists that the Ashkenazi communities of Northern and Central Europe were founded by men who came from the Middle East, perhaps as traders, and by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism.
But the new study, published online this week in The American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that the men - and their wives - migrated to Europe together. (snipped . . . )
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/14/science/14gene.html?_r=1
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