ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 109 
About five thousand years before the Christian era, the Sanskrit branch of 
the Aryan race invaded and occupied Northern India, while the Arabian 
Cushites, dwelling in Arabia, held control of Southern Arabia. These South 
Arabians held innumerable colonies, and were unrivaled in power and com- 
mercial dominion. They early established great influence as a maritime peo- 
ple along the coast of South-western Asia, colonizing much of the Asiatic 
seaboard in the deepest antiquity,—not, however, including the present Chi- 
nese territory, but exercised a widespread influence from the extremes of India, 
even to Norway, acting an important part as pioneers in spreading and devel- 
oping early civilization. The nomadic tribes of Asia have been classed as of 
Semetic origin. 
China, although well known, and mentioned in the ancient Sanskrit writ- 
ings, under the name of Yama, was never included in statements of the 
migrations of races and peoples throughout Western Asia, Hindostan, and 
the islands of the Indian Sea. In remote antiquity, the Chinese nation ap- 
pears to have lived within itself, cut off from active communication with any 
neighboring people. 
According to Arabian traditions, Ad was the primeval father of the pure 
Arabians, and built a city in Arabia which became great and powerful. The 
Adites are referred to in the earliest dawn of Arabian history, as enterprising, 
rich and powerful, having great cities of wonderful magnificence. They were 
skillful builders, rich in gold, silver, and precious stones, showing them ac- 
quainted with metals. Numerous appliances of our civilization had their 
origin far back in the obscurity of ages now pre-historic, and Adam may be 
but the Hebrew tradition of the ancient Adites of Arabia, who must them- 
selves have had a long line of ancestry, to have developed and acquired such 
civilization, Adam was, perhaps, simply the ideal embodiment of a beginning 
of humanity, typified to the Hebrews by an Adite patriarch, beyond the expe- 
rience of their own history, into which he was adopted by Moses, as the 
ancestor of their race. It was an effort to extend their national lineage far 
back to an original First Cause. The distinctive Hebrew race descended 
from Abraham, that magnificent sheik, the mighty Mesopotanian prince, 
Israel’s ancestral hero and first distinctive Hebrew personality; great grand- 
sire of the princely Joseph, Lord Chancellor of Egypt, Prime Minister of 
the first Sesostris, and monotheistic chief of an illustrious line. Thus he 
stands, in bold relief, on the canvas of tradition, as a great leader of 
human kind in the period comprised in the first essays of Hebrew literature. 
Our opinion of the general inaccessibility of China from other parts of 
the continent of Asia, in early times, is confirmed by a passage in the history 
of Besorus, relating the conquests of the Arabian sovereign, Schamar 
Iarasch, Abou Karib, who reigned over Chaldea, and 245 years before the rise 
of the Assyrian empire carried his arms, B. C. 1,518, into Central Asia, occu- 
pied Sarmacand, and for a long time attempted, without success, the invasion 
of China. Humboldt describes an Himyatic inscription existing at Sarma- 
cand in the 14th century, in characters expressing, ‘‘/n the name of God, 
Schamar Iarasch has erected this edifice to the sun, his Lord.’’ All facts go to 
show that migrations over Central Asia, from Arabia across the continent, 
must have passed north of China, (which country seems to have maintained 
