282 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



is the belief of von Ihring 1 , Hommel 2 and others that from 



Babylonia was first diffused a knowledge of letters, 



Cultured astronomy, agriculture, navigation, architecture, and 



other arts, to the Nile valley, and mainly through 



Egypt to the Western World, and through Irania to China and 



India. In this generalisation there is probably a large measure 



of truth, although it will be seen farther on that the Asiatic origin 



of Egyptian culture is still far from being proved. 



One element the two peoples certainly had in common a 

 highly developed agricultural system, which formed the foundation 

 of their greatness, and was maintained in a rainless climate by a 

 stupendous system of irrigation works. Such works were carried 

 out on a prodigious scale by the ancient Babylonians six or eight 

 thousand years ago. The plains of the Lower Euphrates and 

 Tigris, since rendered desolate under Turkish misrule, are inter- 

 sected by the remains of an intricate network of canalisation 

 covering all the space between the two rivers, and are strewn 

 with the ruins of many great cities, whose inhabitants, numbering 

 scores of thousands, were supported by the produce of a highly 

 cultivated region, which is now an arid waste varied only by 

 crumbling mounds, stagnant waters, and the camping-grounds of 

 a few Arab tent-dwellers. 



Those who attach weight to distinctive racial qualities have 

 always found a difficulty in attributing this won- 

 derful civilisation to the same Mongolic people, 

 who in their own homes have scarcely anywhere 

 advanced beyond the hunting, fishing, or pastoral states. But it 

 has always to be remembered that man, like all other zoological 

 forms, necessarily reflects the character of his environment. 

 The Akkads, if Mongols, naturally became husbandmen in the 

 alluvial Mesopotamian lands, while the kindred people who give 

 their name to the whole ethnical division and present its physical 

 characters in an exaggerated form, still remain tented nomads on 

 the dry Central Asiatic steppe, which yields little but herbage, 

 and is suitable for tillage only in a few more favoured districts. 



1 Vorgeschichte &c., Book II. passim. 

 - Geschichte Babyloniens u. Assyriens. 



