Brinton ] < " [April 19, 



Babylonians were distinctly Chinese.* His essays on this sub- 

 ject are striking examples of the misapplication of the principles 

 of linguistic compai'isons for ethnographic purposes. By the 

 methods he adopts anj^ two languages whatever can be shown to 

 be related. He claims his view to be original ; but eighteen 

 years before he published it, the Rev. Joseph Edkins had 

 printed a volume to prove that the Chinese language had its 

 origin in the Mesopotamian plain, because the Tower of Babel 

 stood there, near which the " confusion of tongues " took place ! f 



Prof. A. Boltz has lately pushed the Sinitic theory to its ex- 

 treme by discovering elements of Japanese in the tongues of 

 old Babylonia. 



These opinions scarcely merit serious refutation ; the more so 

 as the whole Turanian hypothesis has distinctly weakened of 

 late years, several of its warmest defenders having gone over 

 to the " Alai-odian " theory, which I shall consider presently. 



4. An Alleged " Ground Race " of Unknown Affinities. 



It will be sufficient to mention the notion advanced by Bertin, 

 that in prehistoric times westei'u Asia was peopled by what he 

 calls a " ground race," a variety of the human species of no par- 

 ticular language or physical type, which he imagines once spread 

 over the whole earth and disappeared with the advance of the 

 higher varieties. | No evidence is offered for the existence of 

 this fanciful creation of a scientific brain. 



The " Stone Age " in Western Asia, 



The absence of a prehistoric, aboriginal people, of a different 

 variety from the white race, resident in western Asia, appears 

 confirmed by archneological investigations. 



Up to the present time no sufficient proof of paliieolithic sites 

 within the area I am considering has been presented. § 



•Ball's articles on the subject are in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archxology^ 

 1889, and after. 

 ■f-Rev. Joseph Edkin, China's Place in Philology (London, 1871). 

 JG. Bertin, "The Races of the Babylonian Empire," in the Jbftr. of the Anthrop. Soc, 



18S8, p. 101, Sqq. 



gG. de Mortillet, in his Prehistorirjue Antiquitc cle C Homme, pp.178, 288,430, presents 

 statements to the contrary. But the day is past when we assign a rough stone implement 

 of "chelloen " form at once to palaolitliic times. The stratigraphy is the test, and this 

 has not been shown to justify such antiquity in Syrian caves. 



