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'Savages have a far-stretching unknown history behind them. 'The past of savages, I say, must have been a long past. So, once more, the Nemesis of De Brosses fails to touch me and, of course, to touch more learned anthropologists. There is yet another Nemesis the postulate that Aryans and Semites, or rather their ancestors, must have passed through the savage state. Dr.
Again, while, as has been several times intimated, the culture in the south is older than that of the north, it does not necessarily follow that the settlement of Babylonia antedates that of Assyria. The answer to this question would depend upon the answer to the question as to the original home of the Semites.
This name is in some way connected with an Assyrian stem signifying 'great, and it is at least worthy of note that the word for palace is written by a species of punning etymology with two signs, e=house and gallu=large. Such plays on names are characteristic of the Semites, and indeed in a measure are common to all ancient nations, to whom the name always meant much more than to us.
Geographical and climatic conditions have been appealed to: the Semitic area was small and isolated the Semites were shut off by oceans, mountains, and rivers from the rest of the world, were disposed to migrate only within the limits of their area, and long lived under the monotonous influence of the desert; thus, it is said, their conception of the world became objective and limited they were clannish, practical, unanalytic, and unimaginative.
No doubt, because they and their armies, which were not yet recruited from other populations than the Semites of Assyria proper, so far as we know, were by origin Arabs, men of the south, to whom the high-lying plateau country beyond Taurus was just as deterrent as it has been to all Semites since.
The Semitic family of languages, in which the vowel has a subordinate character and never can begin a word, facilitates on that very account the individualizing of the consonants; and it was among the Semites accordingly that the first alphabet in which the vowels were still wanting was invented.
In Sumer, at the time of the composition of our text, Ziusudu was still only one in a long line of Babylonian rulers, mainly historical but gradually receding into the realms of legend and myth. At the time of the later Semites there had been more than one complete break in the tradition and the historical setting of the old story had become dim.
Above, a reïs with a stick bids other peasants squat on the ground before addressing the scribe, and he is saying to them: "Sit ye down to talk." The third scene is in another style; on it may be seen Semites bringing offerings of vases of gold, silver, and copper to the royal presence, bowing themselves to the ground and kissing the dust before the throne.
Their wars are his wars; when any of them is injured or slain he joins in their necessary acts of retaliation; it is a religious duty for each of them to be faithful to the others, and to keep up the tribal customs, of which the god approves. Thus the Semites have as many gods as they have clans; and these gods do not greatly differ from each other.
This "Aryan" theory has been practically abandoned in the light of recent research, and it seems probable now that from the primitive Negroid stock evolved in Asia the Semites either by local variation or intermingling with other stocks; later there developed the Mediterranean race, with Negroid characteristics, and the modern Negroes.
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