394
FOOTNOTE TO “PUZZLES FOR THE PHILOLOGISTS”
[The author, Mr. Gracias, discusses the problem of the great emigrations of people from their primeval seats in the table-land of Central Asia, and, in closing, says that “the exact period of these emigrations . . . is not ascertainable; but if we may accept the Biblical statement, the period would seem distinctly to refer to that immediately following the Noachian deluge, which by Scriptural chronologists is said to have occurred about 2,343 years before the Christian era; and the separation of three sons of Noah with their children and families would appear to explain the several emigrations in question, viz., that Cham went to Africa, and Japhet to Europe, Sem remaining at home in Asia.” H. P. B. remarks:]
The able young writer acts prudently in prefacing his Biblical reference with the conjunction “if.” That there never was nor could have been a “universal deluge” in 2,343 B.C. is proved beyond any doubt or cavil by geology. Baron Bunsen in Egypt’s Place in Universal History allows a partial deluge more than 10,000 years B.C. “Cham” or Ham is now shown by anthropology to have had nothing to do with the Egyptian race, the skulls of whose mummies have been proved Indo-Caucasian and whose high civilization antedated the Noachian deluge as the waters of the Red Sea antedate the Suez Canal.