the Nilotic were the earliest, were built on no unsound foundations.
They made possible "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that
was Rome", and it is only within recent years that we have begun to
realize how incalculable is the debt which the modern world owes to
them.




CHAPTER I.

THE RACES AND EARLY CIVILIZATION OF BABYLONIA


Prehistoric Babylonia--The Confederacies of Sumer and
Akkad--Sumerian Racial Affinities--Theories of Mongolian and
Ural-Altaic Origins--Evidence of Russian Turkestan--Beginnings of
Agriculture--Remarkable Proofs from Prehistoric Egyptian
Graves--Sumerians and the Mediterranean Race--Present-day Types in
Western Asia--The Evidence of Crania--Origin of the Akkadians--The
Semitic Blend--Races in Ancient Palestine--Southward Drift of
Armenoid Peoples--The Rephaims of the Bible--Akkadians attain
Political Supremacy in Northern Babylonia--Influence of Sumerian
Culture--Beginnings of Civilization--Progress in the Neolithic
Age--Position of Women in Early Communities--Their Legal Status in
Ancient Babylonia--Influence in Social and Religious Life--The
"Woman's Language"--Goddess who inspired Poets.


Before the dawn of the historical period Ancient Babylonia was