Progress of Civilization
How the Earth Was Peopled
The record of the actual origines of the human race, as communicated by God Himself, tells us that one spot was selected, for the purpose in question, by Creative Power; and that to one aboriginal pair was consigned the office and destiny of replenishing the earth. The same record, moreover, informs us, that, when the earth was corrupt before God, through the wickedness of their posterity, the whole race was destroyed, save the family of one man; and that, of the three sons of that one man was the whole earth overspread. And, lastly, we have this account confirmed to us by the testimony of an inspired servant of God, who has declared, that He hath made, of one blood, all nations of men, for to dwell on the face of the earth.
Now, according to this account, Noah may be considered, for the purposes of ethnological inquiry, as the sole forefather of the existing race of man. Of antediluvian men, all, except Noah, are entirely out of the question. Of the remarkable physical varieties of complexion, stature, or temperament, among the races before the Flood (if any such varieties existed), we are profoundly ignorant. We do read, it is true, that there were giants in those days; but the meaning of this term seems very doubtful. It is most generally understood to indicate a gigantic scale of iniquity, licentiousness, and violence, rather than of corporeal bulk and might. At all events, Noah himself, and his three sons, were the only males spared from the general destruction: and the mother of these three sons, together with their three respective wives, the only females; eight persons in all. And, so far as race or family are concerned, the sons are clearly identified with their father. It is, indeed, just possible that all these four females may have been of so many different tribes or races. But this surmise is wholly gratuitous, and very far from probable. And, even were it admitted, it could not affect any argument respecting the origin of the present inhabitants of the earth, without assuming the falsehood of that part of the sacred narrative which traces them all, Noah and his whole family included, to one and the same common parentage.
Since the days of the patriarch upwards of 4000 years have elapsed, and we now find the earth inhabited by at least eight hundred millions of souls. And, so it is, that these vast multitudes exhibit, within certain limits, almost every imaginable variety of form, of constitution, and of stature.—English Review, No. 2.
Nevertheless, the Unity of the Human Race is a much-vexed question among ethnologists. Mr. Dunn is convinced of the original unity of the human species, and, after adducing the best ethnological evidence attainable, he earnestly appeals to the philologists to help him. Admiral Fitzroy reduces mankind to one, or, at least, to three types; and these three varieties he reverently ascribes to the three sons of Noah, with the help of the hypothesis that they may have been the sons of different mothers. On the other hand, Mr. Craufurd, President of the Ethnological Society, admits of no compromise with orthodoxy, maintaining that the hypothesis of the unity of our race is without foundation. There are, he says, some forty races of men, which to pack into the five pigeon-holes of Cuvier and Blumenbach, or the seven of Prichard, would produce confusion instead of order. The supposition of a single race peopling all countries by migration he holds to be “monstrous,” and contradictory to the fact that some of them to this day do not know how to use or construct a canoe. Migration, he contends, is the achievement of races possessed of resources in food and means of transport. It is to little purpose that Admiral Fitzroy dwells on the capacities of rafts, double canoes, and ocean currents. Mr. Craufurd is incredulous as ever, and fights for his forty Adams with unchecked vivacity, kicking a tremendous hole in the “frail canoe,” and leaving the ocean currents to deal with it more oceanico.