| Show WAS ADAM A CHINAMAN r The Latest Contribution to the Gaiety j of the World I If there ever were an Adam was he j a Chinaman If there ever were an f Eve was she un almondeyed tiny footed Celestial If there ever were a tit l garden Of Eden was it in China If 1 i there ever were a snake in that garden was it a dragon of the Chinese sort too hideous of aspect to have enticed any woman to sin These questions are note likely to agitate the scientific world if not the theological one It is probable the latter lat-ter will scout them altogether as irrelevant irrel-evant if not irreverent The scientific however will probably stop to consider as it always does whenever a new proposition is advanced I The new proposition that Adam was a Chinaman has been advanced by Professor J de Morgan for many years director general of antiquities of the Egyptian government His contention is that the civilization of Egypt came by way of Assyria from central China I hence that our civilization did not I come primarily from Assyria and Egypt but from China He says that I the African race went directly from flint to iron and that the link of bronze Is missing That link he finds in China where there was the regular advance j j from stone to bronze and from bronze I I to iron and hence he concludes that the art of working metals came from I China to Assyria and from Assyria to 1 Egypt More than this he finds that I the hieroglyphics of Egypt are but another an-other form of the writing among the j Assyrians M de Morgan is more or less sustained by Professor Haupt of Johns Hopkins university who says I I have always believed that the civilization civ-ilization of ancient i Egypt was derived from Babylonia more especially from southern Babylonia bordering on the northern shore of the Persian gulf The Babylonians who invaded Egypt may have been Semites but their civilization civil-ization was no doubt derived from the nonSemitic aborigines of Babylonia viz the Sumerians Many points of contact between the Sumerians and the Chinese have already been pointed outSuch Such is the substance of the new proposition The scientific and higher critics as is well known regard the Adam and Eve garden of Eden and fall of many story found in Genesis as an ancient myth imported from Babylonia or Assyria by the Jews perhaps per-haps during the captivity The old testament does not state who wrote the story The popular belief is that it was Moses but this Is only uesswork I Again the scientific opinion is that man evolved from some lower intellect many hundred centuries ago and slowly I i progressed above the ape species that I at one time he might have been a sort Ioc I cousin to the ape but mqved on upward up-ward leaving the simian speciesfar behind This theory however did not conflict con-flict with the proposition of Professor de Morgan Assuming that man has evolved from the ape it makes little j difference whether the ape was Egyptian I Egyp-tian Assyrian Semite Sumerian or Chinese An ape is an ape the world I over and time out of mind and all demands de-mands of pride of birth as well as all glories of ancestry can be as well ast isfied with a Chinese ape as with any 1 other ape As a matter of fact a I Chinese ape is probably more pictur esque than apes of other countries and ifAdam if there were an Adam came slowly up from a long line of pre Adamites stretching back to a common com-mon simian beginning we certainly should have as much pride in our original or-iginal ancestor chattering among the mulberry trees of China as we would had he been the original cupant of Edens garden Even if the doctrine of evolution be unsound and Adam if there were an Adam was an original special creation as well as his rib it I does not detract from the reputation of I i either to believe that they first saw the light of day in central China formed of Celestial dust and that the I tree of knowledge may have been a mulberry or huge bamboo and that when they had sinned they went out I from their garden to earn their living at raising paddy by the sweat of their I faces And what is China itself but another form of the wordsin Adam if there were an Adam may just as well have been born in China as1 anywhere any-where else As a matter of fact it is immaterial where he was born The world somehow is not overwhelmingly interested in the founder of the race I I if he were thefounder 1 I |
