Biiuton.] ob LA-pril 19, 



It would be rash to set a specific date, even in millenniums, for 

 tliis movement. But it is safe to say that S3'ria was reached 

 earlier by the north Mediterranean influx than by the Semites. 

 The dialects and languages of the latter stock are more compact, 

 and they contain more culture-words in common than those 

 of either the Caucasic or Aryan families * — facts which indicate 

 longer association in their early homes. It is not likely, how- 

 ever, that the two streams first came into contact at any later 

 date than 7000 B.C. 



The Semitic languages are also inflectional, but by a method 

 so unlike that of the Aryan tongues that we cannot imagine any 

 prolonged contact in the formative stages of their structure. 

 Instead of suffix-building, first by the attachment of independ- 

 ent words, and later by formative particles, the Semitic dia- 

 lects have triliteral radicals which they inflect by internal vowel 

 changes. 



The physical traits of the Semites are marked and durable. 

 The head-form is long (dolichocephalic) and the face orthog- 

 nathic. The complexion, hair and eyes are usually dark, but in 

 about ten per cent, of the stock, even where purest, as in Arabia, 

 the complexion is blonde or reddish, with hair and eyes to cor- 

 respond. The beard is abundant, and both it and the hair are 

 curlier than in the Aryan. The nose is large, fleshy, and so 

 paculiarly curved that it has been singled out as the most char- 

 acteristic feature of the race. It is shown on the oldest Egyp- 

 tian and Babylonian representations as clearly as it is seen 

 to-day. 



The northernmost extension of the Semites was defined, on 

 the west, by the range of the Amanus mountains, just south of 

 the Bay of Iskanderun (N. Lat., 3G° 30').f Between these and 

 the Euphrates it is not likely that they permanently extended 

 beyond 37? north latitude. East of that river, the range of the 

 Masius mountains, about latitude 36° north, was their northern 

 limit. In very early times they had probably gained control of 



*The oldest forms of Sainitic speech, remarks McCurdy, "can be proved by the voca- 

 l)les common to them all to have been the idiom of a people already well furnished with 

 the rudimentary appliances of civilization." Ilislory, etc., Vol. i, p. 13S. 



tThis is the opinion of Dr. W. Max Miiller, Adenund Europa, etc., p. 310, and is sup- 

 ported by a general agreement. But the date assigned by that writer for the entrance of 

 t lie Arameans into northern Syria — 1-iOO B.C. — seems quite too recent, in view of the other 

 elements in the case {As. u. Eur., p. '233, 234). 



