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 judgment of more enlightened times has almost uniformly considered fabulous and impossible. it has always been an interesting inquiry how much of fact was veiled under this mythical dress, and a great variety of ingenious and contradictory 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 condemned 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 inquiries are not yet complete; they seem, on the contrary, to have only commenced, and promise, ultimately, to satisfy all the useful purposes and legitimate curiosity of mankind; still, their conclusions, so far as they go, are unimpeachable. 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 inscriptions found in ancient ruins, and various relics 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 authentic 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 primitive life.

to show how this is done would require a treatise on ethnology, another on comparative philology, a third on antiquarian research, and a fourth on the geological antiquities 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 remains 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 allied races.

4. the first emigrations were made by the turanian nations, which scattered 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 migration was to china; that they were never afterward much interfered 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 dwelling in the primitive stock of their family almost before other races were heard of, and being undisturbed, their institutions stiffened and crystalized and made few improvements for thousands of years. chinese history presents a curious problem not yet fully 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 christian 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 monarchy, and seems, from the inscriptions on the most ancient ruins, to have been conquered by, and mingled 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, apparently 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 dominion then known to men. the chedor-laomer of abraham’s day was one of its mightiest 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 profane history, and the bible narrative is sustained and largely amplified 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 pictorial representation of their social, political, and religious affairs, and the grand and gloomy majesty of their works of art, imply a long period of growth before they reached the maturity in which we find them when written history commences. their institutions, even in the earliest historic times, showed signs of the decrepitude 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 antiquity. 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, deriving its name from shem, or sem, the eldest 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 mediterranean sea, they became the first[33] maritime 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 attained 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 superstitions 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 prehistoric times; but the hamites have been overpowered and have lost their clearly distinctive 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 incapable 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 stamina, 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 mighty 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 herds. they were much farther removed from barbarism than any of the other races when they began their wanderings. warlike, agricultural and nautical 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 cultivation of sensibility and thoughtfulness, imply a purer social and religious condition, and more elevated mental traits, than in the primitive forefathers of the other families. their language was highly picturesque, and its peculiar terms for natural phenomena are believed by some to have originated the mythological histories of the ancient greeks and romans and teutonic nations. the ancient language used epithets 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 marvels in the immortal dress of fiction which we find in homer and hesiod, in virgil, the indian vedas, and the sagas and scalds of northern europe. this, at least, is the conclusion reached by some of the most eminent scholars and philologists, 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 embodied in their language, embellished 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 minor 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 conquerors. 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 subjugating 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 hardy 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.