August 28, 1879] 



NATURE 



4^5 



due. Naturalists not unreasonably claim to find the geographi- 

 cal centre of man in the tropical regfions of the Old World in- 

 habited by his nearest zoological allies, the anthropomorphous 

 apes, and there is at any rate force enough in such a view to 

 make careful quest of human remains worth while in those dis- 

 tricts, from Africa across to the Eastern Archipelago. Under 

 the care of Mr. John Evans a fund has been raised for excava- 

 tions in the caves of Borneo by Mr. Everett, and though the 

 search has as yet had no striking result, money is well spent in 

 carrying on such investigations in likely equatorial forest regions. 

 t.It would be a pity that for want of enterprise a chance, how- 

 ever slight, should be missed of settling a question so vital to 

 anthropology. 



While the problem of primitive man thus remains obscure, a 

 somewhat more distinct opinion may be formed on the problem 

 of primitive civilised man. When it is asked what races of 

 mankind first attained to civilisation, it may be answered that 

 the earliest nations kno%vn to have had the art of writing, the 

 great mark of civilisation as distinguished from barbarism, were 

 the Egyptians and Babylonians, who in the remotest ages of 

 history appear as nations advanced to the civilised stage in arts 

 and social organisation. The question is, under what races to 

 class them? What the ancient Egyptians were like is well known 

 from the monuments, which show how closely much of the pre- 

 sent fellah population, as little changed in features as in climate 

 and life, represent their ancestors of the times of the Pharaohs. 

 Their reddish-brown skin, and features tending toward the 

 negroid, have led Hartmann, the latest anthropologist who has 

 carefully studied them, to adopt the classification of them as be- 

 longing to the African rather than the Asiatic peoples, and 

 especially to insist on their connection with the Berber type, a 

 view which seems to have been held by Blumenbach. The con- 

 trast of the brown Egyptians with the dark-white Syro- Arabians 

 on their frontiers is strongly marked, and the portraits on the 

 monuments show how distinctly the Egyptian knew himself to 

 be of different race from the Semite. Yet there was mixture 

 between the two races, and what is most remarkable, there is a 

 deep-seated Semitic element in the Egyptian language, only to 

 be accounted for by some extremely ancient and intimate con- 

 nection. On the whole, the Egyptians may be a mixed race, 

 mainly of African origin, perhaps from the southern Somali- 

 land, whence the Egyptian tradition was that the gods came, 

 while their African type may have since been modified by Asiatic 

 admixture. Next, as to the early relations of Babylonia and 

 Media, a different problem presents itself. The languages of 

 these nations, the so-called Akkadian and the early Medic, were 

 certainly not of the same family with either the Assyrian or the 

 Persian which afterwards prevailed in their districts. Their 

 connection with the Tatar or Turanian family of languages, 

 asserted twenty years ago by Oppert, has since been further 

 maintained by Lenormant and Sayce, and seems, if not con- 

 clusively settled, at any rate to have much evidence for it, not 

 depending merely on similarity of words, such as the terra for 

 "god," Akkadian dingira, being like the Tatar ten«;ri, but also 

 on the similarity of pronouns and grammatical structure by post- 

 positions. Now language, though not a conclusive argument as 

 to race, always proves more or less as to connection. The com- 

 parison of the Akkadian language to that of the Tatar family is 

 at any rate primd facU evidence that the nations w ho founded 

 the ancient civilisation of Babylonia, who invented the cuneiform 

 writing, and who carried on the astronomical observations which 

 made the name of Chaldxan famous for all time, may have been 

 not dark- white peoples like the Assyrians who came after them, 

 but perhaps belonged to the yellow race of Central Asia, of 

 whom the Chinese are the branch now most distinguished in 

 civilisation. M. Lenormant has tried to identify among the 

 Assyrian bas-reliefs certain figures of men whose round skulls, 

 high cheek-bones, and low-bridged noses present a Mongo- 

 loid type contrasting with that of the Assyrians. We cannot, 

 I think, take this as proved, but at any rate in these figures the 

 features are not those of the aquiline Semitic type. The bronze 

 statuette of the Chaldxan king called Gudea, which I have ex- 

 amined with Mr. Pinches at the British Museum, is also, with 

 its straight nose and long thin beard, as un-Assyrian as may be. 

 The anthropological point towards which all this tends is one of 

 great interest. We of the white race are so used to the position 

 of leaders in civilisation, that it does not come easy to us to 

 think we may not have been its original founders. Yet the white 

 race, whether the dark-whites, such as Phoenicians or Hebrews, 

 Greeks or Romans, or the fair-whites, such as Scandinavians and 



Teutons, appear in history as followers and disciples of the 

 Eg) ptians and Babylonians who taught the world writing, mathe- 

 mathics, philosophy. These Egyptians and Babylonians, so far 

 as present evidence reaches, seem rather to have belonged to the 

 races of brown and yellow skin than to the white race. 



It may be objected that this reasoning is in several places im- 

 perfect, but it is the use of a departmental address not only to 

 lay down proved doctrines, but to state problems tentatively as 

 they lie open to further inquiry. This will justify my calling 

 attention to a line of argument which, uncertain as it at present 

 is, may perhaps lead to an interesting result. So ancient was 

 civilisation among both Egyptians and Chaldccans, that the con- 

 test as to their priority in such matters as magical science was 

 going on hotly in the classic ages of Greece and Rome. Look- 

 ing at the literature and science, the arts and politics, of Mem- 

 phis and of Ur of the Chaldees, both raised to such height of 

 culture near 5,000 years ago, we ask, were these civilisations not 

 connected, did not one borrow from the other ? There is at 

 present a clue which, though it may lead to nothing, is still 

 worth trial. The hint of it lies in a remark by Dr. Birch as to 

 one of the earliest of Egyptian monuments, the pyramid of 

 Kochome, near Sakkara, actually dating from the first dynasty, 

 no doubt beyond 3000 B.C., and which is built in steps like the 

 seven-storeyed Babylonian temples. Two other Egyptian pyra- 

 mids, those of Abu-sir, are also built in steps. Now whether 

 ihere is any connection between the building of these pyramids 

 and the Babylonian towers, does not depend on their being built in 

 stages, but in the number of these stages being seven. As to 

 the Babylonian towers, there is no doubt, for though Birs- 

 Nimrud is now a ruinous heap, the classical descriptions of such 

 temples, and the cuneiform inscriptions, put it beyond question 

 that they had seven stages, dedicated to the seven planets. As 

 to the Egyptian pyramids, the archaeologists Segato and Mast 

 positively state of one step-pyramid of Abur-sir, that it had 

 seven decreasing stages, while, on the other hand, Vyse's recon- 

 struction of the step-pyramid of Sakkara shows there only six. 

 Considering the ruinous state of all three step-pyramids, it will 

 require careful measurement to settle whether they originally had 

 seven stages or not. If they had, the correspondence cannot be 

 set down to accident, but must be taken to prove a connection 

 between Chaldcea and Egypt as to the worship of the seven 

 planets, which will be among the most ancient links connecting 

 the civilisations of the world. I hope by thus calling attention 

 to the question, to induce some competent architect visiting 

 Egypt to place the matter beyond doubt, one way or the other. 



While speaking of the high antiquity of civilisation in Egypt, 

 the fact calls for remark, that the use of iron as well as bronze 

 in that country seems to go back as far as historical record 

 reaches. Brugsch writes in his " Egypt under the Pharaohs,' 

 that Egypt throws scorn on the archxologists' assumed succes- 

 sive periods of stone, bronze, and iron. The eminent historian 

 neglects, how ever, to mention facts which give a different com- 

 plexion to the early Egyptian use of metals, namely, that chipped 

 flints, apparently belonging to a prehistoric Stone Age, are 

 picked up plentifully in Egypt, while the sharp stones or stone 

 knives used by the embalmers seem also to indicate an earlier 

 time when these were the cutting instruments in ordinary use. 

 Thus there are signs that the Metal Age in Egypt, as elsewhere 

 in the world, was preceded by a Stone Age, and if so, the high 

 antiquity of the use of metal only throws back to a still higher 

 antiquity the use of stone. The ancient iron- working in Egypt 

 is, however, the chief of a group of facts which are now affect- 

 ing the opinions of anthropologists on the question whether the 

 Bronze Age everywhere preceded the Iron Age. In regions 

 where, as in Africa, iron ore occurs in such a state that it can 

 after mere heating in the fire be forged into implements, the 

 invention of iron-working would be more readily made than that 

 of the composite metal bronze, which perhaps indicates a pre- 

 vious use of copper, after%vards improved on by an alloy of tin. 

 Prof. Rolleston, in a recent address on the Iron, Bronze, and 

 Stone Ages, insists with reason that soft iron may have been 

 first in the hands of many tribes, and may have been superseded 

 by bronze as a preferable material for tools and weapons. We 

 moderns, used to fine and cheap steel, hardly do justice to the 

 excellence of bronze, or gun-metal as we should now call it, in 

 comparison with any material but steel. I well remember my 

 own surprise at seeing in the Naples Museum that the surgeonsi 

 of Ilerculaneum and Pompeii used instruments of bronze. It 

 is when hard steel comes in, that wcajx>ns both of bronze and 

 wrought iron have to yield, as when the long soft iron broad- 



