Abstract
LONDON
Anthropological Institute, January 1.-Sir John Lubbock, Bart, F.R.S., President, in the chair.-Messrs. J. Thallon and J. Jeremiah, jun., were elected members.-Mr. C. Staniland Wake read a paper entitled "The Adamites.“The object of this paper is to show, by reference to evidence extraneous to the Hebrew Scriptures, what peoples are entitled to be classed as Adamites. 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 Mach or Ach. The first Babylonian dynasty of Berous 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, was 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 a remembrance of the traditional Ad. The first part of the Parsee work known as The 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 of Western Europe was called Gaidai i.e., the progeny of Gaid or Aid, who may be identified with Dis, the mythical ancestor, according to Caesar, of the Gauls. Dis (the Greek Hades) was also “Lord of the Dead “among the Chaldeans, and may well, therefore, have been the same as the legendary ancestor Ad. Among Hamitic peoples, the original Arab stock trace their first orign to Father Ad, who is probably referred to also in the name of the Egyptian deity, At-um. The paper also mentions certain facts showing that the name of the legendary ancestor of the Adamites may be traced in the names of the deities of Turanian and American peoples, and also among the Polynesian Islanders, whose word for “spirit“is atua, or a fata, and whose Great Ancestor is called Ta-ata. Dividing all the races of mankind, according to the simple classification of Retzius, into brachycephali and dolicho-cephali, the conclusion arrived at by the paper is, that Ad was the legendary ancestor of the former, the Adamites, therefore, embracing all the actually brachycephalic peoples, and those whose brachycephalism has been lost by intermixture with the long-headed stock. The Adamites extend through the whole of the northern hemisphere, and are found in various parts of the southern hemispheae, on both the old and the new continents. The names "Adam“and "Eve“were, however, merely expressions of the philosophical notion of the ancients that the male and female principles pervade all, nature, and originated all things and personifications of the ancestral idea in relation to the human race.
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Societies and Academies . Nature 5, 195–196 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/005195a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005195a0