Pre-Historic Nations ebook

The author's main zeal is for the Cushite race, for which he is as zealous as is Max Muller for the younger Aryan dynasty. He holds that the earliest civilization of which we have any trace, dating back to 7000 B. c. at the latest, was that commonly called the Ethiopic, but which really had its seat on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, and had no connection with over the way. Of this civilization, Egypt and Chaldea were but the children; it colonized the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates; it occupied India, Western Asia, and extensive regions of Africa. Commerce, manufactures, and astronomy all reached a high development during that great epoch of colonization. It was a branch of this race which established what is now called the Age of Bronze in Western Europe, and which built the temples of Abury and Stonehenge. The Cushites taught the Northern nations the worship of Baal, whose midnight fires on midsummer eve are hardly yet extinguished in England, and have testified to that remote idolatry as surely as the lingering fifth of November fires on our Essex hills still keep alive the memory of Guy Fawkes.