in various parts not only of the old world continents, but also of america, and even on some of the islands of the pacific, are the ruins of stone buildings which, from their general character, are well called “kyklopean.” the style of architecture varies in different countries according to the uses for which the buildings were designed, or the local influences among which they were erected. whatever their form, all those ancient buildings agree in the massive character of their structure, and most of them in the fact that the stones are put together without mortar or cement. kyklopean architecture proper (in which large unhewn blocks are rudely put together with small stones to fill up the interstices) differs, however, from the polygonal or pelasgian, and from the horizontal or etruscan, which, in addition, has the courses scrupulously level, with joints vertical, and fitting accurately. general forlong, the author of “rivers of life, or faiths of man in all ages,” while pointing out that distinction, remarks that those several styles do not denote different ages, and that the builders were evidently of the same race. this opinion is confirmed by the fact that all the three styles are found in the ruins of peru, whose kyklopean structures, moreover, are not restricted to those of rectangular formation, but sometimes take the form of round towers.

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general forlong identifies the great building race of antiquity with the kushites or aithiopians of the greek historians, and with mr. fergusson, he supposes them to have belonged to the turanian family of peoples. the distinguished architect and arch?ologist affirms, indeed, that not only were the turanians the great architects and builders of remote antiquity, but that they were the inventors of all the arts, as well as the religions and mythologies, which were afterwards developed by the later shemites and aryans.

but how far does this conclusion agree with actual facts? m. georges perrot, in his important work on the “history of art,” says that the ancient oriental world has seen the birth of three great civilisations, that of egypt, that of chaldea, and that of china, all of which have features in common, although each preserves its own proper character. chaldea was the sennaar of the author of the book of genesis, the land in which were built the ancient cities of babel, erech, accad, and calneh. the mighty hunter or warrior nimrod, to whom the erection of those cities is ascribed, was the son of kush and the grandson of cham, and he is thus placed by the sacred writer in the same family as the egyptians, aithiopians, and the libyans, as also the canaanites and ph?nicians. the kushites, of whom nimrod is the representative in genesis, were located by the poets and classical historians in susiana rather than in chaldea. both of these countries, however, adjoin the valley of the tigris, and the name aithiopians applied by those writers to the inhabitants of the shores of the persian gulf and the sea of oman agrees with the relationship which, according to the130 genealogists of the hebrew scriptures, subsisted between the kushites of asia and those of africa. it is to the shores of the persian gulf that the development, if not the origin, of the chaldean civilisation has been traced. m. perrot calls egypt “the ancestor of civilised nations,” and he affirms that, in grouping the great peoples of antiquity to determine the part taken by each in the work of progress, it is necessary to commence with egypt as the point of departure of all the forces which operate to that end. the egyptians were not, however, indigenous to the valley of the nile. it is now almost universally acknowledged that they belonged to the white or caucasian stock of europe and western asia, from which they reached egypt by the isthmus of suez. their caucasian origin is confirmed by their language, which, with the other hamitic idioms, had, as m. lenormant shows, a relationship to the semitic languages, the two families having a common mother language, the native country of which was in asia at the east of the basin of the euphrates and tigris. we are thus taken to the region where the old chaldean civilisation flourished for the place of origin of the egyptians; but did they belong to the same kushite stock? in endeavouring to answer this question, it is necessary to remember that before the foundation of the empire by menes egypt had comprised two kingdoms, that of lower egypt or the country of the north, and that of upper egypt or the country of the south. these kingdoms must have existed a considerable period, judging from the fact that the later monarchs carried two crowns to indicate the dominion exercised over the two great131 divisions of the empire, and probably it represented some race difference in their inhabitants. the aryan character described by m. l. page renouf to the egyptian mythology, and the features of many of the figures represented on the tombs of the fourth dynasty, might lead us to suppose that the earliest egyptians belonged to the aryan stock. this opinion is, perhaps, confirmed by the consideration that the earliest and most sacred towns of the egyptians were situate in upper egypt.

m. lenormant thinks that the descendants of mizraim settled in egypt at different epochs, and that the earliest settlers, the anamim of the old testament and the anou of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, were driven by the later ones into different parts of egypt, but principally into nubia. the former may, therefore, have been pure aryans, the southern country being referred to as the home of the race; although the empire was first established in lower egypt, its chief centre being memphis, from which its culture gradually overspread the whole country. the early inhabitants of the delta region were represented at a later date by the hyksos, who have been identified by professor duncker with the philistines of the syrian coast. this people are spoken of in the book of genesis as descendants of mizraim, and their neighbours, the ph?nicians, stood in the same relation to the northern egyptians as did the kushites of chaldea. like the latter peoples, the ph?nicians were great builders. the remains of vast structures still exist throughout ph?nicia, which was known to the ancient babylonians as martu, “the west.” among modern writers,132 m. renan is of opinion that “singular relations exist between the ethnographic, historic, and linguistic position of yemen and that of ph?nicia,” as showing that there was a close relationship between the latter and the ancient people of southern arabia. mr. baldwin accepts both these views, and comes to the conclusion that the first great civilisers and builders of antiquity were the kushites or aithiopians of southern arabia, and that they colonised or civilised chaldea, ph?nicia, and egypt. tradition speaks of kepheus as one of the great sovereigns of ancient aithiopia, whose kingdom extended from the mediterranean to the persian gulf, and whose capital was joppa, one of the most ancient cities of ph?nicia. we may well believe that this very early kushite kingdom comprised part of northern africa, and therefore that it included the delta of the nile with the great city, memphis, of the egyptian pyramid builders. the similarity in many features of the ph?nician and egyptian architecture points to a close connection between those peoples, and a portion of the kushite race which peopled ph?nicia doubtless settled in the delta, from whence its culture would easily spread throughout the nile valley. it is certain that southern arabia was the seat of a very primitive civilisation, which influenced all the regions around. ph?nicia, however, would seem to have been most intimately allied with chaldea, the origin of whose civilisation, although ascribed to the fish-god oannes, can hardly be traced to arabia.

according to the biblical writer, kush was the eldest son of ham, who was also the father of mizraim, phut,133 and canaan. all these peoples were great builders, and it is very probable, therefore, that they, as well as the kushites, derived their knowledge from a common source. in this case, and even if mizraim, canaan, and phut were the descendants rather than the brethren of kush, the civilisation with which the kushites are accredited was, in reality, that of the earlier hamites. the probability is that all the peoples belonging to the hamitic stock possessed the elements of a very ancient civilisation, which was handed down in the most direct line through the kushites of chaldea. m. perrot accepts the opinion of m. oppert, that when the primitive chaldeans first settled in the plains of sennaar they already had a national organisation, and that they possessed writing, the most necessary industries, a religion, and a complete legislation. if this was so we shall have to seek a very primitive source for the kushite or hamitic civilisation. what was its origin can only be ascertained when the race ancestry of the hamites is known. in relation to this point it must not be forgotten that ham was the brother of shem and japhet, and therefore that they were all members of a common family. as the descendants of noah, they all alike belonged to the great white or caucasian stock. m. lenormant, while endorsing this view, says that anciently, as in the present day, there was an anthropological distinction between the hamites and the shemites, which he accounts for by supposing the former to have become intermixed with a dark or black race, which they found already established in the country to which they spread, while the shemites, who stayed behind,134 preserved the purity of the white race. the facts of linguistic science and anthropology can thus be made to agree, but m. lenormant has to admit that the eastern kushites cannot be brought within that theory, as from the earliest historical period they have spoken a language radically distinct from those of the shemites and the other hamitic peoples. he adds that the coast between the persian gulf and the indus appears to have been, from a remote antiquity, the point of meeting and fusion of two distinct races having brown complexions, but inclining more or less to pure black. the eastern kushites are thus confounded by a gradual series of transitions with the dravidians of india. this reference to the dravidians is perfectly just, as there is no doubt, whatever may be the case now, that originally they partook of the high qualities possessed by the peoples of the kushite stock. as a race they were noted for their love of art and commerce, and general forlong, after having examined minutely most of the famous shrines of india, came to the conclusion “that there is nothing to equal those of dravidia, save some small ones in western india, which, in their completeness, form, and conception, denote the same master builders who, as jainas, &c., learned in mysore and the south under those great architects.” there is indeed reason to believe that the marvellous temples of cambodia and java, of which the ruins still exist, were erected by dravidians from india. m. moura, the learned author of a history of cambodia, has established that the great architects of that kingdom were the peoples to whom the name of khmerdoms is given by their de135scendants, the khmers. they were of hindoo origin, and emigrated from the neighbourhood of delhi in the fifth century before christ. whether the original khmers were of pure aryan stock is, however, very doubtful, and it is extremely probable that they were hinduised dravidians. the hindoos, to whom the civilisation of java is ascribed, are spoken of as coming from kling, by which is meant the dravidian telinga.

if, as m. lenormant supposes, the eastern kushites became fused with a brown or black race, it does not follow that this race was originally black, or that it belonged to a negroid stock. all the hamites, and especially the kushites, were of a more or less dark complexion, but the black hue may have been acquired through natural influences operating during a vast period of time. the dravidians have, at least from a linguistic standpoint, turanian affinities, and it is now almost universally admitted that the earliest civilised inhabitants of chaldea belonged to the great turanian family of peoples who are usually spoken of as the yellow race. there is no doubt that a yellow race, whose languages had an affinity on the one side with the languages of the altaic peoples, and on the other side with the dravidian dialects, and who preceded the shemitic and japhetic peoples in material civilisation, existed in eastern asia alongside of the white race.

m. ujfalvy supposes the eastern turanians to have descended the first from the plateau of the altai; to be followed by the western turanians, who occupied northern europe from time immemorial; the children136 of noah being the last to quit the primeval home. if this was so we can well understand that the average turanian physical type must present peculiarities which distinguish it easily from that of the caucasian races.

what we have now to do with is the origin of primitive civilisation, and everything points to the early turanians as the people among whom it was developed. we have already seen that if the primitive chaldeans did not belong to the turanian stock they were intimately associated with turanian peoples to whom they are thought to have been indebted for much of their culture. the great western division of the turanian race appears to have possessed an advanced civilisation long before its aryan neighbours. the tchoudes, who are described by ujfalvy as the most ancient people of the altaic race, were noted metallurgists, while the permians and the finns are supposed to have taught art and agriculture to the slavs and scandinavians of northern europe. m. reclus remarks that, not only did the turanians teach their neighbours the use of iron and other metals, but they have the glory of having given to us most of our domestic animals, and probably also the greater part of our most useful cultured plants. finally, the turanians were, says m. lenormant, “the constructors of the first towns, and the inventors of metallurgy and of the first rudiments of the principal arts of civilisation.” he adds that they were137 “addicted to rites which were reproved by yahveh, and were viewed with as much hatred as superstitious terror by the populations still in the pastoral state whom they had preceded in the path of material progress and invention, but who remained morally more pure and elevated.”

this description, applied by m. lenormant to the turanians, has reference primarily to the cainites, and it carries the origin of material civilisation much farther back in time than would have been thought possible a few years ago. the facts mentioned in connection with cain and his descendants strikingly confirm the opinion that the kushite civilisation was handed down from a period which, in relation to the deluge of genesis, may be called antediluvian. the tradition of the deluge is a primitive belief of the three white races, the aryan, the semitic, and the hamitic. it appears to have been originally limited to the peoples of the caucasian stock, and this fact requires that the turanians should be excluded from the effect of the supposed catastrophe. the yellow race, therefore, may claim an “antediluvian” descent, and as noah, the progenitor of the white races, belonged to the sethite stock, the common ancestor of the turanian peoples must have been a cainite.

the first public event recorded in the life of cain after his exile was the building of a town, which he called enoch, after his first-born son. this town has been identified with the city of khotan, which is situate in the region where cain is thought to have fixed his abode. according to abel rémusat the traditions of that city, preserved in the native chronicles and referred to by the chinese historians, go back to a much earlier period than those of any other city of central asia. baron d’eckstein has, moreover, shown that138 khotan was the centre of a district in which the art of metallurgy has been practised from the remotest antiquity. this is important, for tubal cain, the youngest son of lamekh, the descendant of cain, is said in genesis to have been “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.”

the ancestors of the present chinese appear not to have been acquainted with the blacksmith’s art when they first descended into the plains, although it was practised by the neighbouring tibetan tribes, who, we can hardly doubt, were allied to the kolarian population of eastern india, if not also to the dravidians of the south and west. the relationship of the dravidians to the peoples of the altaic stock, and the practice of metallurgy by the latter particularly, would tend, however, to prove that the jabal were not, as supposed by m. ujfalvy, turanians who settled in northern asia and europe. those facts would rather support the view of knobel, which identifies the jabal and the jubal as a musical and pastoral race, as distinguished from a settled metallurgic race to whom the name of tubal cain was given.

the opinion that the ancestors of the turanian peoples were cainites may be confirmed by reference to certain social and religious phenomena. in the story of the slaying by cain of his brother abel there is evident reference to antagonism between a pastoral and an agricultural people. m. lenormant, who sees a connection between the fratricide and the founding of the first city, has arrived at the conviction that the chald?o-babylon tradition concerning the primitive days of the human race included a reference to those139 two actions of cain. he says, however, “there are certain reasons for suspecting that the chaldeans took the part of the murderer cain against abel, as the romans did that of romulus against remus.” the preference of the chaldeans for the murderer agrees with the cainite origin ascribed to their turanian ancestors, among whom the polygamy and revenge attributed to lamekh were no doubt as prevalent as among some of their descendants at the present day. the french writer sees in the fourth chapter of genesis a condemnation of lamekh as the prototype of fierce vengeance, and at the same time of polygamy. the whole pre-deluge history of man, as given in genesis, would seem to imply the existence of an hereditary opposition between the descendants of cain and those of seth, who was regarded as standing in a special relation to the shemites. it was evidently written in the same spirit as that which saw in the enmity between the iranians and turanians a constant conflict between light and darkness. the race of cain are referred in the biblical narrative as “sons of men,” a title which implies a condition of religious or moral inferiority, as compared with the “sons of god” descended from seth. that narrative says, further, that in the time of enoch men began to call on the name of jehovah. this statement, which has reference only to the sethites, supposes that the cainites invoked some other god, and in the shamanism of the dravidians and various turanian peoples we have no doubt a phase of the religious worship prevalent among their cainite ancestors.

another point in connection with religious ideas,140 which is of great importance in relation to the above subject, is the origin of serpent-worship. m. lenormant remarks that “the arcadians made the serpent one of the principal attributes and one of the forms of héa.” this deity, who closely resembles wa?namo?nen, one of the three principal gods of the finns, occupied a very important position in the pantheon of the ancient chaldeans. héa, like the finnish god, was “not only king of the waters and the atmosphere, he was also the spirit whence all life proceeded, the master of favourable spells, the adversary and conqueror of all personifications of evil, and the sovereign possessor of all science.” the worship of serpent-gods is a practice to which many of the primitive turanian tribes have been addicted. this accounts for the curious association of serpent-worship with buddhism and siva-ism. both of these faiths, as exhibited in the marvellous sculptures of the ruined temples of cambodia, are intimately connected with serpent-worship. this cult was no doubt very prevalent among the native populations before the arrival of the hindoos, as legend states that the banished indian prince, for whom the city of nakon-thom was built, married a daughter of the king of the nagas or serpents, and became the sovereign of the country. serpent-worship, indeed, would seem to have been prevalent throughout northern india. the territory of the king of the serpent city taxila reached nearly to delhi, and it probably extended over kashmere and part of afghanistan. here was a very important centre of serpent-worship. general forlong states that in kashmere this cult appears everywhere,141 “and the records of the country point to its beautiful lake and mountain fastnesses as the earliest historic seats which we have of the faith.” it is remarkable that a king of the naga race was reigning in magadha when gautama was born in 626 b.c., and, according to a hindoo legend, even the buddha himself had a serpent lineage. if this was so, it is not surprising that his teachings should be accepted by the naga races, who no doubt belonged to the pre-aryan stock.

the constant introduction of the serpent, especially of the sacred cobra, into the sculptures of the cambodian temples, is remarkable. m. moura states that the ancient khmers of cambodia recognised both good and evil serpents, the former of which lived in the water and the latter inhabited the land. the buddhists of india and indo-china had the same idea, and m. moura supposes that the good serpents represented the human nagas who became buddhists, and the bad serpents those who refused to abandon their native serpent-worship. this explanation, however, is not necessary, as the ancient egyptians entertained analogous ideas. no other people, except, perhaps, the hindoos and allied races, were more thoroughly imbued with the serpent superstition than the egyptians. mr. cooper, in his “observations on the serpent myths of ancient egypt,” remarks that “the reverence paid to the snake was not merely local, or even limited to one period of history, but prevailed alike in every district of the pharian empire, and has left its indelible impress upon the architecture and the arch?ology of both upper and lower egypt.” the cobra di capello of the hindoos and cambodians142 was the sacred ur?us of the egyptians. with the latter it was used as the symbol of fecundity and immortality, and was also universally assumed as the “emblem of divine and sacro-regal sovereignty.” the ur?us was always represented in the female form, and all the egyptian goddesses were adorned with it, as the images of the hindoo gods were often surmounted with the sacred naga. among the egyptians another kind of serpent was also held in universal veneration. it was a gigantic species of coluber, which from the earliest ages was regarded as “the representative of spiritual, and occasionally physical, evil.” this was the great snake of the celestial waters, the adversary of the gods with which the soul had to contend after death. the egyptians had thus a good and an evil serpent, the former of which was small and the latter large. among the cambodians the reverse was the case, as the small serpent was the representative of evil, and the great serpent, the naga-naga, of good.

we have already seen that the cobra occupies an important place in the buddhist sculpture, and that the great serpent with its human supporters was represented at both amravati and angkor wat. curiously enough a similar idea to this is represented on certain egyptian monuments. on the sarcophagus of oime-nepthah i. is sculptured a long serpent, which, says mr. robert sewell, is doubled into folds just like the roll of the buddhist frieze, and having a god standing on each fold in the places occupied by the sacred emblems of the buddhist faith at amravati. he supposes the long roll of the amravati frieze to be143 intended to represent a serpent, and to have had its origin in western asian or egyptian ideas. i had already, before meeting with this observation, been struck with the similarity between the egyptian and the buddhist representations, especially when considered in the light of the cambodian sculptures which undoubtedly represent the naga-naga. the gigantic serpent of the celestial ocean of egyptian mythology is aph?phis, the spirit of evil, and in the contest between him and horus we have, according to m. le page renouf, a form of the indra and vritra myth. an accadian text speaks of “the enormous serpent with seven heads,” the “serpent which beats the waves of the sea ... extending his power over heaven and earth.” this is supposed to refer to héa, and it reminds us of the heavenly naga-naga of hindoo mythology, which, like the accadian serpent deity, was representative of the good principle. such was also the case among all the old turanian nations, and it was only when, as remarked by m. lenormant, “the iranian traditions were fused with the ancient beliefs of the proto-medic religion, the serpent-god naturally became identified with the representative of the dark and bad principle.” it cannot be doubted that this was the later notion, and that the turanian belief which associated with the serpent ideas of goodness was of earlier date. thus, the dragon, says mr. doolittle,144 “enjoys an ominous eminence in the affections of the chinese people. it is frequently represented as the greatest benefactor of mankind.... the chinese delight in praising its wonderful prospects and powers. it is the venerated symbol of good.”

the veneration of the serpent must have been of very early origin to occupy so strong a hold over the chinese, whose spoken language, according to m. terrien de lacouperie, forms a link between the accadian and the ugro-finnish divisions of the ural-altaic languages. the art of metallurgy was practised by the peoples belonging to both these divisions, and yet, according to m. lenormant, it was not known to the early chinese. we must thus suppose that the latter left the common home before the invention of metallurgy, and, therefore, that they represent a very early condition of the stock from which the turanian peoples sprang. we seem, indeed, to be carried back to the very earliest period of the legendary history of the cainite race, and possibly to that of the legendary ancestor of the race. according to the tradition preserved in genesis, there was a peculiar association between adam and the serpent. this animal is there the tempter satan, but according to another view adam, or rather ad, who was apparently the traditional ancestor of a portion at least of the old turanian stock, was himself the serpent. a rabbinical tradition makes cain the son, not of adam, but of the serpent-spirit asmodeus. the name eve is connected with an arabic root which means both “life” and “a serpent,” and if eve was the serpent mother, ad must have been the serpent father of the race. there is reason for believing that adam was the legendary ancestor of the cainites, as distinguished from the descendants of seth. the name adam, no doubt, signifies in the semitic languages “the man,” but it has been pointed out that the name borne by145 the son of seth, and therefore the ancestor of noah, that is enoch, is in hebrew the exact synonym of adam, and also signifies “the man.” there is, moreover, almost an exact parallel between the descendants of adam, through cain on the one hand, and those of seth through enoch on the other, and each line is terminated by three heads of races, that of the cainites by the sons of lamekh and that of the enocides by the grandsons of lamekh. in the latter there is the insertion of one additional generation, that of noah, between lamekh and the division of the family into three branches. this is, however, capable of explanation. m. lenormant shows, by a comparison of the various legends referring to the primitive age of mankind, that the number 7 or 10 was used by all the ancient nations as a round number for the antediluvian ancestors of the race. tradition seemed to float between these two numbers until the influence of the chald?o-babylonians caused the number 10, which is that of the generations of the sethites, to dominate over the number 7, that of the cainites. it is to that influence we would ascribe the existence among the descendants of seth of the legendary ancestor of the three caucasian races. the chaldean noah was khasisatra, whose vessel was saved during the flood by the god héa. this god himself was, however, supposed to have a vessel in which he sailed over the celestial ocean. he was, in fact, the fish-god oannes, from whom the chaldeans were said to have derived their civilisation, and we probably have in oannes the point of identification between héa and noah himself. the caucasian races, whose fathers had146 been saved from the deluge, could not have a better legendary ancestor than the divine teacher who, issuing from the egyptian sea, was the god héa, not only the soul of the watery element but the source of all generation. if noah, then, be a mythological being, introduced into the sethite genealogy under chaldean influence, lamekh becomes the direct ancestor of the caucasian stock as he is of the turanian peoples. an argument in favour of this view is furnished by the scripture account itself. among the sons of noah a peculiar position is occupied by ham. he and his son canaan are cursed, in like manner as cain was cursed. the sins were different, and therefore the punishments were different, but there appears to be a kind of parallelism between cain and canaan for which a good reason probably existed in the mind of the writer of genesis. we have seen that the hamites were intimately connected with peoples belonging to the turanian stock, and they were the special recipients of the old cainite civilisation. it is, indeed, far from improbable that they were more cainite than sethite. the three sons of noah would seem to answer to the three sons of adam, and as ham or canaan is a reproduction of cain, so japheth and shem are reproductions of abel and seth. in either case the elder brothers were put on one side or cursed, that the youngest brother might enjoy the inheritance. perhaps an explanation of this conduct may be found in the race relationships of the semites. that they had a closer affinity to the hamites than had the japhethites is unquestionable, and it can hardly be less doubted that the latter were the purest branch of the caucasian147 stock. the semites were, indeed, a mixed race, but as the hebrews professed to be the chosen people it was necessary that the hamite and japhethite races should be put on one side, as abel and cain had been, that their ancestor shem might take the chief place. the semites thus became the representative caucasian people who, as children of light, stand in opposition to the turanian hamites, in like manner as the sons of seth were opposed to the descendants of cain.

we have been led to believe that the civilisation of the ancient world originated among the cainites, of whom the turanians are the line of descendants. we have seen reason, moreover, for supposing that the particular branch of the turanian stock, among whom the development of the art of metallurgy first took place, was the ural-altaic, to which the earliest inhabitants of chaldea belonged, and whom dr. topinard supposes to be the connecting-link between the fair types of europe and the brachycephalic types of asia. the building art was one of the earliest to be developed, as is evident from the reference in genesis to the building of a city by cain. the erection of the first city is connected with the slaying of abel, and therefore the origin of architecture may be referred back to almost the earliest period of human culture, and we may well suppose that some of the least cultured turanian tribes represent a still earlier stage of cainite civilisation. m. lenormant objects to herr knobel’s theory that the chinese and the mongolian peoples are cainites, that “the geographical horizon of the traditions of genesis did not extend far enough to include them.” if, however, when the chinese148 first descended into the plains they were still in the stone age, they may have been true cainites, the more so as their immediate ancestors were located much nearer than are their descendants to the primeval home of adamite man. the remarkable influence which the veneration for the serpent has obtained among the chinese, a superstition which was developed no less remarkably among the peoples belonging to the western branch of the turanian family, and through them among the hamitic peoples, would seem to prove that it was of primeval origin. the arts of metallurgy and architecture appear to have had a later development, and to have originated among the turanian aithiopians or kuths, to whom the civilisation of the ancient world was ascribed. after leaving their home in west-central asia they settled in chaldea, from whence they gradually spread throughout western asia, northern africa, and europe, where, in later years, they came in contact with the caucasian races, who gave a higher tone to their intellectual culture and their religious ideas, the latter being especially observable in the position assigned to the great serpent as the embodiment of evil.

note.—the legend of the slaying of abel by his brother cain referred to at page 138, is met with in the mythologies of some of the american tribes. see monographie des dènè dindjié, by c. r. e. petitot, pp. 62-84, and for a similar legend of the aztecs, see american hero-myths, by daniel g. brinton, pp. 64-68.