MANKIND.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 193, 8 November 1872, Page 3

MANKIND.

At the ordinary meeting of the Anthropological Institute, in Loudon recently, Sir John Lubbock in the chair, a paper was read by Mr C. Staniland Wake, on " The Adamites," the object being to show, by reference to evidence extraneous to the Hebrew Scriptures, what peoples are entitled to be classed as Adamites. Mr Wake holds that the name of the primitive race from which the Chaldeans sprung, the Akkad, proves- that they must be thus classed. Akkad would seem to mean " sons of Ad," the first syllable of the word being the same .as the Gaelic Much or Aeh. The first Babylonian dynasty of Berosus was Median ; and Sir Henry Rawlinson says that the name by which the Medes are first noticed on the Assyrian monuments is Mad. This people, the. initial letter of whose name may be treated as a prefix, were doubtless the primitive stock from which the Akk-Ad were derived. The Medes had also the distinctive title Mar; and many of the Aryan peoples appear to have retained remembrances of the traditional Ad. The first part of the Parsee work known as " Tte Desatir " is .called " the Book of the Great Abad," i.e., Father Ad. The Puranas of the Hindus refer to the legendary king, It or Ait who is supposed to be the same as the Greek Aetus. The primitive Celtic race ot Western Europe was called Gaidal, i.e., the progeny of Gaid or Aid, who may be identified with. Dis,, the mythical ancestor, according to Caesar, of the Gauls. I)is (the Greek Hades) was also " Lord of the Dead " among the Chaldeans, and may well,, therefore, have been the same as thelegendary ancestor Ad. Among the Hamitic peoples, the original Arabstock trace their first origin to FatherAd, who is probably referred to also in the name of the Egyptian deity, At-iiin. The paper also - mentions certain facts showing that the name or the legendary ancestor of the Adamites may be traced m the names of thedeities of Turanian and American peoples, and also among the Polynesian Islanders, whose word for " spirit " is Atua or Akua, and whose greatancestor is called Ta-ata.

Dividing all the races of mankind, according to the simple classification', of Eetzius, into brachycephali and dolichocephali, the conclusion arrivedat by the paper is, that Ad was the legendary ancestor of the former; the Adamites, therefore, embracing all theactually brachycephalic peoples, and: those whose brachycephalisrn has been lost by intermixture with the longheaded stock. The Adamites extended; over the whole of the northern hemisphere, and are found in various parts of", the southern hemisphere/ on both the old and the new continent. . The naiiies "Adam" and " Eve " were, however,, merely expressions of the philosophical notion of the ancients that the maleand female principles pervade all nature, and originated all things and * personifications of t ! ie ancestral idea, in relation to the human race.