THE PKIMiTIVE IDEA OF GOD. 277 



haps before the historical deluge, " did not belong to 

 a less developed stage of humanity than some hunter 

 tribes of the present day." He might have added 

 that in their arts and superstitions, as well as in 

 their physical characters, they approached very near 

 to the somewhat noble type of semi-barbarous man 

 still extant in America. 



In summing up this subject, it may be well to refer 

 to the probability that the race of men known by the 

 general name Turanian is the oldest now extant. This 

 race, occupying the northern parts of Asia, and iden- 

 tical in physical characters on the one hand with the 

 American tribes, and on the other with the oldest races 

 whose skulls are found in the European caves, seems 

 also to have been that which preceded the Aryan races in 

 India and in the south of Europe, and the Semitic races 

 in western Asia. On the one hand, its religious ideas 

 are identical with those still surviving in America and 

 northern Asia, as well as to some extent in China, and 

 with the oldest religions shadowed forth to us in the 

 ancient records and traditions of Palestine, Aryan 

 India, and Greece, and crystallised for us in the child- 

 like narratives of the book of Genesis.* From these 

 primitive ideas were developed on the one hand the 

 Hebrew prophecy which culminates in the glorious 

 truths of Christianity, and on the other all the wonder- 

 ful myths of the Aryan polytheism. 



* And also represented in the Chaldean legends of the 

 Creation and Deluge, recently translated by the late Mr. 

 George Smith. 



