The tenth chapter of Genesis is called the 'Table of Nations'. It is the famous chapter in which the names of the immediate descendants of Noah to the second and in some cases the fourth and even seventh generation are recorded. There is an intimation that these became the names of the nations that sprang from them and the territories in which they lived. It has been argued that the reverse is really the case, that the names of existing nations and peoples have been applied to mythical ancestors and so written up in Genesis. This is a hypothesis having no logical foundation and is advanced in order to dispute the historical accuracy of the account. The rational explanation of the name of a people is that it was derived from the founder of that people just as the surname of a family is derived from the ancestor of that family in the male line. In fact many of the names in Genesis 10, crop up regularly in the later historical books of the Bible and in secular history as those of nations occupying the lands Genesis says they did. Some of the place names have endured into much later historical periods, even modern times. The outward expansion of peoples from the originating centre at Shinar at the time of the episode of Babel, recorded in Gen.11, was likely to have commenced round about 3000 BC. This follows from a comparison of the declared ages of the patriarchs succeeding Noah with what is known of earliest history and pre-history in the land of the Old Testament. Within the ensuing two centuries most of the so-called 'Bible lands' were occupied and being populated by their respective peoples. The principal basis for this conclusion is the probable time of the beginning of Egyptian and Sumerian civilisations. The time of the dispersal must have 'sparked off' the emergence of those civilisations. In those two centuries the population could have grown to something like sixty millions, spreading over the present lands of Egypt, Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, an area of about three million square miles of which the population at the present time is about 80 millions. The location of the various nations hearing these tribal names, the names of their first ancestors, is in most cases fairly attested by reference not only in the Bible but in the writings of ancient historians and also in the inscriptions and records left by those ancient nations themselves. The patriarchs must have had other sons, whose names are not recorded. Those that are known became the tribal names. One nation often dispossessed another of their territory or settled down beside them and eventually amalgamated, so that it is not possible to be too precise. Accepted history, however, leaves the general framework of the dispersal in little doubt.

The sons of Japheth (Gen 10.2-8) appear to have left the plain of Shinar completely. They rarely appear in later Bible history. They migrated north and then west and east, moving up the valleys of the rivers Tigris and Diyala into the mountainous regions and beyond. Extensive remains in northern Iraq dated by archaeologists to what is called the Halafian period, from Tel Halaf where the first such remains were found by Baron von Oppenheim in 1914 and later by Mallowan in 1933 are perhaps due to their passage. Eventually they penetrated into what is now modern Turkey, whence they later advanced westward into Europe, and eastward into Siberia. Many centuries later in the days of Ezekiel some of their offspring, the tribes of Meshech, Tubal and Gomer, all names of sons of Japheth stormed down from their Siberian homes to invade the lands of the Middle East. But in these first two centuries of the dispersal, Turkey and northern Iran was probably as far as they got. Bible maps of the 19^th century show them penetrating into southern Russia. During the 20^th century it was established that at the time in question the great Russian seas, the Black Sea, the Caspian and the Aral, were connected by an extensive sheet of water stretching far into Central Siberia, so the old maps are incorrect. The sons of Japheth had only the alternatives of turning east or west. It is generally accepted that Javan and possibly Tiras, and their sons, colonised Europe, and the others, Asia. The writer of Genesis 10 denoted both these continents by the expression 'the coastlands of the Gentiles' (Gen.10.5), territories he knew very little about.

The sons of Ham went south, then west and east, in the opposite direction to that of Japheth, The descendants of Ham's sons Mizraim settled in Egypt, which thereafter bore his name (Misr) and the Egyptian language bears it still. Here was speedily set up the second great civilisation of the ancient world. Before another two centuries had passed away they were building the Pyramids and the glory that was Egypt was beginning to flourish. It is important to realise that they were already a civilised people and the rule of the Pharaohs commenced almost at once.

Canaan, son of Ham, did not go so far. His people reached the Mediterranean coast where Israel is now, built Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon and possibly Jericho. Sidon still exists In later times they were overwhelmed and absorbed by descendants of Shem and after the conquest under Joshua lost their identity as a nation, surviving only as scattered tribes subject to the Israelites and others thus fulfilling Noah's prediction in Gen.9.26. The settlement of the Canaanite tribes is detailed in Gen.10.15-19.

Phut is the son of Ham of whom the Old Testament writers know little or nothing. Gen.10 records neither the names of his sons nor where he went. It is evident that he and his descendants lost all contact with their fellows after the dispersal. The Old Testament mentions the Phutites only twice afterwards, in connection with matters two thousand years later, from which it appears they were celebrated as mariners and soldiers. It is known that the Phutites in after years became a virile race of commercial traders ranging over the whole of North Africa from the borders of Egypt to the Atlantic. As late as the beginning of the Christian era they are noted by Roman writers. Their empire at its greatest extent included the whole of the Sahara desert, which four thousand years ago was a well wooded and fertile country with abundant animal life, capable of supporting a large population. It seems that the people of Phut made their way from Babel to north-eastern Africa and thenceforward broke off all contact with the homeland, spreading over westwards as the centuries passed until they reached the Atlantic ocean. The Book of Jubilees (c.150 BC) has a detailed account of the lands into which the grandsons of Noah migrated. A rather cryptic expression in Jub.8.22 could be held to infer that the territory assigned to Ham's posterity extended across the Atlantic to the Sargasso Sea and by inference to the West Indian islands immediately beyond. 'Jubilees' was written about BC 150 and the Phoenicians were in continuous contact with the West Indies and South America as far back as 800 BC. It not unreasonable to suppose that the first mariners fulfilled this part of the mandate and crossed the Atlantic although it must have been many centuries after Babel. Another point of interest in 'Jubilees' is the assertion that Canaan was first allotted the far west of Africa on the Atlantic seaboard as his domicile, but refused to go so far west and settled instead in the land later known as Canaan, after his name.

The Hamites of greatest moment in Bible history are the sons of Cush. Cush, son of Ham, was the ancestor of the Sumerians who played so important a part in the early history of Israel. The descendants of Cush appear to have been by far the most prolific of the Hamites. Some went southwards into Arabia and colonised the whole Arabian continent, passing over the Red Sea in later centuries to establish a powerful empire in what is now the Sudan. (The 'Ethiopia' of the later Old Testament   is the African Cush). From there they went on through the ages to colonise Equatorial and Southern Africa and most of the black races are their modern descendants. Another branch went down the other side of the Persian Gulf through modern Iran, by 2000 BC reaching north-western India which maintained close commercial links with their brother Sumerians back in Iraq. That civilisation was wiped out by Japhetic invaders from Siberia a thousand years later and the remnant slowly spread across and populated in turn central India and Bengal, the far eastern countries and eventually Australia. (In 1961 some 400 rock carvings were discovered near Alice Springs so similar to Assyrio‑Sumerian style that it was considered they must have been done by a people coming from the Middle East.)

But the flower of the Sumerian peoples remained in Sumer itself. Many of them did not leave Babel; they remained there and built what is universally considered the world's first and finest civilisation. It lasted a thousand years and in its development was set the pattern of future empires of mankind. Here the arts and sciences were born, reaching a level that in many directions has never been equalled. Their systems of measurement, of time, quantity, weights and measures, has formed the basis of all such systems in the world since then, until the modern introduction of the metric system. The degrees of the circle, the hours and minutes and seconds on our clocks, the days and months of our calendars, we owe to the Sumerian. The chariots gave us the width of our mediaeval farm cart tracks and therefore that of our present railway gauge. In almost countless ways the effect of Sumerian culture has survived five thousand years and remains with us today. Here, in this land, where the sons of Cush remained after the dispersion from Babel and multiplied and established their cities and their commerce, was the seedbed where the true faith of God lay dormant until many years later it found it most famous champion in the man God called his friend, Abram, the Semite, a citizen of the Sumerian city of Ur. When Abram obeyed the Divine call to leave that shining civilisation and go out to a strange land that God would show him, Sumer had served its purpose. It gave way before its enemies and ere long the glory of Sumer was no more.

Abraham was a Semite, a descendant of Shem. The evidence is that most of the Semites left the land at the time of Babel. Many returned in later centuries so that by the time of Daniel, for example, the Semites were in the ascendancy. But here at this time they seem to have turned their backs on the land of Shinar and made their way, in the main, north-westward along the course of the Euphrates to find new homes. They did not go so far as the peoples of Japheth and Ham. Elam went eastward into the Iranian mountains and became a powerful nation inter-marrying with the Sumerians and becoming indistinguishable from them. Ashur went northward and survived into later times as the Assyrians. Aram finished up in modern Syria and southern Turkey and perpetuated his name to the present day in the racial division known as Arameans. No satisfactory identification of Lud seems to have been made. It has been suggested that the much later kingdom of Lydia in Asiatic Greece stemmed from him but there is not much foundation for that although in all probability it is somewhere in what we now call Turkey, this people did settle. The remaining tribe that of Arphaxad, is of the greatest interest since it is from this that Abraham, and ultimately Israel, were derived. The known territories of Semitic peoples in later time seems to justify the conclusion that the people of Arphaxed settled on the middle Euphrates a few miles to the north of Babel, to give birth several centuries later to be the influential empire of Mari.

So within say two centuries from the first entry to the land of Shinar and the incident of the Tower of Babel, men had reached and populated a wide area reaching from Egypt to Iran west to east, and Turkey to Arabia north and south. These are the lands with which the Old Testament is mainly concerned, and in fact the further distribution of humanity after this time is barely noticed. It was, of course, to be a long time before the farthermost recesses of the earth were reached; a coherent picture of the process is almost impossible of attainment, for the migration communities crossed and re-crossed each other's paths and settled in each other' territories so that there was continual intermarrying and cross-breeding with consequent emergence of new and differing racial types. Various types of climate and food played their part in this and all these factors worked together so fulfilling the Divine purpose to produce the varied types of people with which we are familiar today.

It may seem difficult to accept the fact that the many widely divergent types of men, in colour of skin and hair, tall and short, some suited to extremes of heat and cold, should be derived from three sons of one father so recently as five thousand years ago. There are several main races of mankind but there has been a bewildering number of permutations from a vast number of intermingling peoples of those races during the five thousand years. This might be expected but the rapid change in racial skin colour took place in less than a thousand years as attested by tomb paintings of the 7^th Egyptian dynasty about 2100 BC. It is commonly held that the characteristic colours of different races are primarily due to the effect of food, climate and prolonged exposure over many generations to tropical, temperate and polar conditions. H.G.Wells in 'Outline of History' (1930) cites anthropological thought of his time that the human race in its early days was more 'plastic' in its reaction to external conditions, so that it responded much more quickly to factors inducing physical changes than would be the case in later times. The same authorities contended that the original colour of the race tended to be dark rather than light. (this raises questions of the inheritance of acquired characteristics ‑ ed.) With respect to Noah's three sons, there were also three wives whose different characteristics may have affected the divergence of appearance of the races.

The foregoing cuts right across accepted theories of the origin of man and the time he has inhabited the earth. There have been many theories such as 'The Testimony of the Rocks' by Miller concerning the degeneracy of the human race. What is known of the human race does not conflict with the Genesis record, that in the 3^rd Millennium BC it was wiped out and recommenced by three couples. Amid the changing theories and pieces of 'evidence' the Bible record remains consistent and unchanging.

The Genesis account indicates that about four centuries after the Flood, there was a concerted migration of peoples from the central homeland between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. These populated the Middle East that afterwards became famous as the lands of the Bible, those with which the history of Israel became bound up and subsequently with Christianity. That migration gave an impetus to the emerging nations that accelerated their development and then we pass to the sphere of recognisable history. We then can relate the continuing story of Genesis to the records and inscriptions that the archaeologists of the past two centuries have recovered in such profusion from the dust of long vanished cities of the ancients.

(To be continued) AOH