The Early History of Babylonia

I N a previous paper I endeavoured to collect the evidence which points to the primitive people of Lower Chaldea having formed part of that dark-skinned and adventurous race, sometimes distinguished as Cushite, which in the earliest times inhabited nearly all the seaboard of the Indian Ocean. It stands out among the fogs which envelop the beginnings of human history as the pioneer of commerce, of the art J, and of culture; and though it is impossible to say how far its enterprise really extended we may well believe that it was at least co-extensive with the distribution of the race itself. Its ships doubtless coasted along the margins of that Indian Ocean which some of the earliest Hindoo legends, as preserved in the Ramayana, show was as busy with traffickers and traders in the very early ages as it was in later times when first the Phoenicians and then the Arabs held the monopoly of Eastern trade. The craft of the sailor is a very conservative one. In no other human occupation, possibly, do we find maintained in the same way old fashions and old methods, old shapes of ships, &c., and it seems very probable that the earliest sea-going vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf still find their counterparts in ships and boats in current use there

Ancient Near East History · Classics · History · Linguistics and language evolution