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Millions of years have dropped into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in the memory of the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western chronology as to the origin of Man and the history of the primeval races.
All depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If the still-debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the Homo primigenius, then science may be right (argumenti causâ) in basing its present anthropology — as to the date and mode of origin of “ Homo sapiens ” — on the Darwinian theory. * But if the skeletons of man should, at any time, be discovered in the Eocene strata, but no fossil ape, thereby proving the existence of man prior to the anthropoid — then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in another direction. And it is said in well-informed quarters that the XXth century will be yet in its earliest teens, when such undeniable proof of Man’s priority will be forthcoming.
Even now evidence is brought forward that the dates for the foundations of cities, civilizations and various other historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a peace-offering to Biblical chronology. “ No date,” writes the well-known Palæontologist, Ed. Lartet, “ is to be found in Genesis, which assigns a time for the birth of primitive humanity ” ; but chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the Bible facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single date of “ Creation ” ; “ and between the extreme variations there is a discrepancy of 3,194 years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the world and the birth of Christ. † Within the last few years, archæologists have had to throw back by nearly 3,000 years also the beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the
It may here be remarked that those Darwinians, who with Mr. Grant Allen, place our “ hairy arboreal ” ancestors so far back as the Eocene Age, are landed in rather an awkward dilemma. No fossil anthropoid ape — much less the fabulous common ancestor assigned to Man and the Pithecoid — appears in Eocene strata. The first presentment of an anthropoid ape is Miocene.
† Ed. Lartet, “ Nouvelles Recherches sur la co-existence de l’homme et des Grands Mammitères Fossils de la dernière période Géologique.” Annales des Soc. Nat., t. XV., p. 256.
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foundation cylinder deposited by Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, conquered by Cyrus — are found the records of the former, in which he speaks of his discovery of the foundation stone that belonged to the original temple built by Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, of Accadia, the conqueror of Babylonia, who, says Nabonidus, lived 3,200 years before his own time.”
We have shown in Isis that those who based history on the Jewish Chronology (a race which had none of its own and rejected the Western till the XIIth century) would lose themselves, for the Jewish account could only be followed through Kabalistic computation, and with a key to it in the hand. . . We had characterised the late George Smith’s chronology of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, made by him to fit in with that of Moses, as quite fantastic. And now, in this respect at least, later Assyriologists have corroborated our denial. For, whereas G. Smith makes Sargon I. (the prototype of Moses in his legend) reign in the city of Akkad about 1600 B.C. — probably out of a latent respect for Moses, whom the Bible makes to flourish 1571 B.C. — we now learn from the first of the six Hibbert lectures delivered by Professor A. H. Sayce, of Oxford, in 1887, that : “ Old views of the early annals of Babylonia and its religions have been much modified by recent discovery. The first Semitic Empire, it is now agreed, was that of Sargon of Accad, who established a great library, patronized literature, and extended his conquests across the sea into Cyprus. It is now known that he reigned as early as B.C. 3750.” “ The Accadian monuments found by the French at Tel-loh must be even older, reaching back to about B.C. 4,000,” in other words, to the fourth year of the World’s creation agreeably with Bible chronology, and when Adam was in his swaddling clothes. Perchance, in a few years more, the 4,000 years may be further extended. The well-known Oxford lecturer remarked during his disquisitions upon “ The origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Babylonian Religion ” that : “ The difficulties of systematically tracing the origin and history of the Babylonian Religion were considerable. The sources of our knowledge of the subject were almost wholly monumental, very little help being obtainable from classical or Oriental writers. Indeed, it was an undeniable fact that the Babylonian priesthood intentionally swaddled up the study of the religious texts in coils of almost insuperable difficulty.” That they have confused the dates, and especially the order of events “ intentionally,” is undeniable, and for a very good reason : their writings and records were all esoteric. The Babylonian priests did no more than the Priests of other ancient nations. Their records were meant only for the Initiates and their disciples, and it is only the latter who were furnished with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor
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Sayce’s remarks are promising. For he explains the difficulty by saying that as — “ the Nineveh library contained mostly copies of older Babylonian texts, and the copyists pitched upon such tablets only as were of special interest to the Assyrian conquerors, belonging to a comparatively late epoch, this added much to the greatest of all our difficulties — namely, our being so often left in the dark as to the age of our documentary evidence, and the precise worth of our materials for history.” Thus one has a right to infer that some still fresher discovery may lead to a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian dates so far beyond the year 4,000 B.C., as to make them pre-Kosmic in the judgment of every Bible worshipper.
How much more would palæontology have learned had not millions of works been destroyed ! We talk of the Alexandrian literary lore, which has been thrice destroyed, namely, by Julius Cæsar B.C. 48, in A.D. 390, and lastly in the year 640, A.D., by the general of Kaliph Omar. What is this in comparison with the works and records destroyed in the primitive Atlantean Libraries, wherein records are said to have been traced on the tanned skins of gigantic antediluvian monsters ? Or again the destruction of the countless Chinese books by command of the founder of the Imperial Tsin dynasty, Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, in 213 B.C. ? Surely the brick-clay tablets of the Imperial Babylonian Library, and the priceless treasures of the Chinese collections could have never contained such information as one of the aforesaid “ Atlantean ” skins would have furnished to the ignorant world.
But even with the extremely meagre data at hand, Science has been able to see the necessity of throwing back nearly every Babylonian date, and has done so quite generously. We learn from Professor Sayce that even the archaic statues at Tel-loh, in Lower Babylonia, have suddenly been assigned a date contemporary with the fourth dynasty in Egypt. Unfortunately, dynasties and Pyramids have the fate of geological periods ; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the respective whims of the men of science. Archæologists know now, it is said, that the aforementioned statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that can only be got in the Peninsula of Sinai ; and “ they accord in the style of art, and in the standard of measurement employed, with the similar diorite statues of the pyramid builders of the third and fourth Egyptian dynasties. . . . . Moreover, the only possible period for a Babylonian occupation of the Sinaitic quarries must be placed shortly after the close of the epoch at which the pyramids were built ; and thus only can we understand how the name of Sinai could have been derived from that of Sin, the primitive Babylonian moon-god.” This is very logical, but what is the date fixed for these “ dynasties ” ? Sanchoniathon’s and Manetho’s Synchronistic tables and their figures have been rejected, or whatever
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remained of these after holy Eusebius’ handling of them ; and still we have to remain satisfied with the four or five thousand years B.C. so liberally allotted to Egypt. At all events one point is gained. There is, at last, a city on the face of the earth which is allowed, at least, 6,000 years, and it is Eridu. Geology has found it out. According to Professor Sayce again, —
“ They are now also able to obtain time for the silting up of the head of the Persian Gulf, which demands a lapse of between 5,000 and 6,000 years since the period when Eridu, now twenty-five miles inland, was the seaport at the mouth of the Euphrates, and the seat of Babylonian commerce with Southern Arabia and India. More than all, the new chronology gives time for the long series of eclipses recorded in the great astronomical work called ‘ The Observations of Bel ’ ; and we are also enabled to understand the otherwise perplexing change in the position of the vernal equinox, which has occurred since our present zodiacal signs were named by the Earliest Babylonian astronomers. When the Accadian calendar was arranged and the Accadian months were named, the sun at the vernal equinox was not, as now, in Pisces, or even in Aries, but in Taurus. The rate of the precession of the equinoxes being known, we learn that at the vernal equinox the sun was in Taurus from about 4,700 years B.C., and we thus obtain astronomical limits of date which cannot be impugned.” *
It may make our position plainer if we state at once that we use Sir C. Lyell’s nomenclature for the ages and periods, and that when we talk of the Secondary and Tertiary age, of the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods — this is simply to make our facts more comprehensible. Since these ages and periods have not yet been allowed fixed and determined durations, 2½ and 15 million years being assigned at different times to one and the same age (the Tertiary) — and since no two geologists and naturalists seem to agree on this point — Esoteric teachings may remain quite indifferent to whether man is shown to appear in the Secondary or the Tertiary age. If the latter age may be allowed even so much as 15 million years’ duration — well and good ; for the Occult doctrine, jealously guarding its real and correct figures as far as concerns the First, Second, and two-thirds of the Third Root-Race — gives clear information upon one point only — the age of “ Vaivasvata Manu’s humanity.” ( Vide Part I., Vol. II., “ Chronology of the Brahmins.” )
Another definite statement is this : It is during the so-called Eocene period that the continent to which the Fourth Race belonged, and on which it lived and perished, showed the first symptoms of sinking. And it was in the Miocene age, that it was finally destroyed — save the little island mentioned by Plato. It is these points that have to be checked by the scientific data.
* From a Report of the “ Hibbert Lectures, 1887. Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, and Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians.” By A. H. Sayce. (London : Williams and Norgate.)