civilization,
and they possess the oldest alphabet and literature. The posterity of
Ham differs remarkably from the others. It spread itself over
Southern, Central, and Eastern Asia, Southern Europe, and Northern
Africa, and constitutes the stock alike of the Turanian and African
races, as well as probably of the American tribes. It has all along
displayed a great capacity for certain forms of art and
semi-civilization, but has rarely risen to the level of the Shemite
and Japhetite races. It established the earliest military and
monarchical institutions, and presents at the dawn of history--in
Assyria, in Egypt, and India--settled and arbitrary forms in politics
and religion, of a character so much resembling that of an old and
corrupt civilization that we can scarcely avoid supposing that Ham and
his family had preserved more than any of the other Noachian races the
arts and institutions of the old world before the flood. It certainly
presents itself in early postdiluvian times as the first
representative and teacher of art and material civilization. The
Hamite race is remarkable for the early development of pantheism and
hero-worship, and for the artificial character of its culture. It
presents us with the darkest colors, and in the vast solitudes of
Africa and Central Asia its outlying tribes must have fallen into
comparative barbarism a few centuries after the deluge. It is farther
to be observed that, according to the Bible, the Canaanites and other
Hamite nations spoke languages not essentially different from those of
the Shemites, while the Japhetite nations were to them barbarians--"a
nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand." There was, too, at the
date of the dispersion of Babel, already a distinction of tongues
within each of the great races of men.

6. All the divisions of the family of Noah had from the first the
domesticated animals and the principal arts of life, and enjoyed these
in a national capacity so soon as sufficiently numerous. The more
scattered tribes, wandering into fresh regions, and adopting the life
of hunters, lost the characteristics of civilization, and diverged
widely from the primitive languages. We should thus have, according to
the Hebrew ethnology, a central area presenting the principal stems of
all the three races in a permanently civilized state. All around this
area should lie aberrant and often barbarous tribes, differing most
widely from the original type in the more dis