These are the three sons of Noah, and of them was the whole earth overspread. (Genesis 9:19) This is a perfectly intelligible statement and must be capable of demonstration if the Bible is anything but a will-o�-the-wisp.

We find history continually verifying the statements of Scripture, and no monument ever dug up, no manuscript that has ever been discovered, has been other than an evidence of Bible truth. The determined efforts of modern philologists to reach the truth have proven that language is no sure test of race and have given rise to a still more determined search to trace modern nations to their remote ancestors.

The �Saxon riddle� came first in interest because English philological historians believed there was no such race as Aryan and that the whole distribution into Aryan, Semitic and otherwise was, from the first, simply a distribution of languages; a classification of types of speech and nothing more.

And true it is in this day that �the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations� (Isaiah 25:7) is being destroyed. The literal meaning of the Hebrew words translated �the covering cast over� is �the hiding that hides them.� Thus it was that the people and their history beyond a span of centuries were hidden. But this uncertainty is to be removed. Scripture says the �veil� shall be lifted off.

�And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations.� (Isaiah 25:7)

The cradle of the human race was, undoubtedly, Central Asia. Most Biblical students have acquiesced in the long prevalent localization of Ararat in Armenia, forgetful of the fact that the first migration recorded in Scripture was to the plain of Shinar �from the east,� (Genesis 11:2) while Armenia is due north of Shinar.

Not one of the three distinct races, it must be noted, resided around this Armenian mountain; Turkish, Armenian or Persian, call it Ararat. Traditions have arisen connecting this spot with the point of Noah�s exit from the Ark, but in the face of the strong concurrent testimony of the Scripture statement and modern ethnological researches this association of Armenia with Ararat can only be one of the many instances extant in the world�s topography of �transference of site.�

In the United States, for example, are towns named Cairo, Syracuse, Paris, Troy, etc.; and by old geographers the Hindyu Kush mountains, running west from the eastern extremity of the Himalayas were called Caucasus but �now� the name is applied to the range which crosses the interval between the Black and the Caspian Seas.

The Ararat of Genesis was not a mountain, but a land; a land of mountains. Indian legends tell of the land of Arya-varta in the northern highlands of Kashmir, whence the early patriarchs descended to replenish the earth. This name is nothing, but a lengthened form of Ararat. Now �ar, or and ur,� in Hebrew, mean �light� and �rt� is a Hebrew root meaning �thrust out,� so �Ararat� means the �issuing forth� or the �thrusting forth of light.�

Northward, from the point of junction of the two great mountain ranges of Hindu Kush and Karakorum mountains, a third lofty chain divides Russian from Chinese Turkestan. This was of old, called the Bolor Tagh or Bolor mountains. The word Bolor bears this meaning in Hebrew, �The issuing forth of light.� The light was the light of true religion let out on a yet to be renovated earth from the sanctuary of the Ark of Noah; and from these lofty mountains, towering peaks succeeding each other at close intervals, rising to a height of 25,000 feet or more above the sea, no gathering of high mountains to match them elsewhere in the world; from these �mountains of Ararat,� Noah and his sons, and their wives passed down to renew the earth.

This region of Bolor and the table lands of Pamir; �the roof of the world,� was also at one time called �Thibet,� and Great Thibet is that province of the Chinese Empire which lies immediately north of the main chain of the Himalayas. Now Thibet is a word from the Hebrew root, �Th�be,� the word used in Genesis 6:4, for the Ark of Noah.

Moreover, the Chinese claim that their ancestors came form the Tarim Basin, and this immense Basin fills nearly the whole southwestern part of Chinese Turkestan, of which �Kashgar� is the capital and it lies closely adjacent to the land of �Kashmir� and the Indus River, where Noah and his sons dwelt after coming forth from the Ark. This, coupled with the known fact of Chinese veneration for Noah and their traditional ancestor worship shows a national subconscious recognition of a lineage tracing directly to the patriarch. The line of descent will be shown to come first from Ham and additionally from Japhet.

Tracking The Tarim Mummies

A solution to the puzzle of Indo‑European origins?

Archaeological and linguistic evidence places the Indo‑European homeland in the North Pontic region. Members of one Indo‑European group (the Yamnaya culture) that migrated to the western Altai Mountains, where they are identifiable as the Afanasievo culture, may have later moved into the Tarim Basin of what is now western China.

The Indo‑European problem is one of archaeology�s oldest, most contentious questions. More than 200 years ago, in 1786, English jurist and scholar Sir William Jones realized that Latin and Greek shared a common origin with Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu law and religion. These three languages, he proposed, had developed from a single ultimate parent language, now called Proto‑Indo‑European.

Linguists soon added most of the languages of Europe (including English), Iran, and northern India‑ Pakistan to the family, and eventually discovered several extinct cousins, including Hittite, spoken in Anatolia about 2000‑1000 B.C., and Tocharian, a group of two (or possibly three) languages spoken about A.D. 500‑800 in the Buddhist monasteries and caravan cities of the Tarim Basin in what is now western China.

All of these languages still display telltale traces of the same Proto‑Indo‑European grammar and vocabulary. But where and when was the elusive mother tongue spoken? And by what historical circumstances did it generate daughter tongues that became scattered from Scotland to China?

In 1995, media reports brought to the public�s attention astonishingly well‑preserved remains of European‑looking people, dressed in European‑ looking clothes, buried in the Tarim Basin between about 1800 B.C. and A.D. 500. This came about through the persistent efforts of Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese and Indo‑Iranian literature and religion at the University of Pennsylvania.

Long known to specialists but poorly understood and little studied, the Tarim mummies (not really mummies, but bodies preserved by dry conditions) quickly became the focus of intense interest and debate. Riveting photographs appeared in Archaeology (March/April 1995, pp. 28‑35) and Discover.

Academic papers on the mummies were edited by Mair for the 1995 Journal of Indo‑European Studies. Film crews working for Nova and the Discovery channel soon followed Mair to the deserts of northwestern China; the Discovery show (�The Riddle of the Desert Mummies�) was nominated for an Emmy. In 1996, Mair hosted a conference of 50 international experts on the archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology of the Central Eurasian societies related to the mummies; the proceedings were published in two dense and informative volumes in 1998, and textile specialist Elizabeth Barber issued a book on the Tarim textiles.

Now Mair has teamed with James Mallory, a distinguished Indo‑European linguist and archaeologist at Queen�s University in Belfast, to write The Tarim Mummies, which explores the difficult and controversial questions about the languages, identities, technologies, migrations, and physical traits of the mummies.

It is a fascinating and readable account and presents a valuable compendium of recent research on a little‑known region that has long been the focus of romantic speculation by travelers and explorers from Marco Polo to Aurel Stein. To determine the ethnic and linguistic identity of the Tarim mummies requires, as they say, �a feat of archaeological and linguistic legerdemain,� but it is an intriguing game to follow, for it sheds light on the documentary, linguistic, archaeological, and skeletal evidence that must be used to attempt a linguistic and ethnic prehistory of eastern Central Asia.

In the end, their �working hypothesis� is that the earliest Bronze Age colonists of the Tarim Basin were people of Caucasoid physical type who entered probably from the north and west, and probably spoke languages that could be classified as Pre‑ or Proto‑Tocharian, ancestral to the Indo‑European Tocharian languages documented later in the Tarim Basin.

These early settlers occupied the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin, where their graves have yielded mummies dated about 1800 B.C. They did not arrive from Europe, but probably had lived earlier near the Altai Mountains, where their ancestors had participated in a cultural world centered on the eastern steppes of central Eurasia, including modern northeastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tadjikistan.�

At the eastern end of the Tarim Basin, people of Mongoloid physical type began to be buried in cemeteries such as Yanbulaq some centuries later, during the later second or early first millennium B.C.

About the same time, Iranian‑speaking people moved into the Tarim Basin from the steppes to the west. Their linguistic heritage and perhaps their physical remains are found in the southern and western portions of the Tarim. These three populations interacted, as the linguistic and archaeological evidence reviewed by Mallory and Mair makes clear, and then Turkic peoples arrived and were added to the mix. (The Tarim Mummies, by J.P. Mallory and Victor Mair; New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000, $50.00 (cloth); 352 pages, ISBN 0‑500‑05101‑1; David W. Anthony is a professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, and co-director of excavations for the Samara Valley Project in Russia.

People used to think that Hebrew was the origin of all other tongues (because the Hebrew alphabet represents the foundation of all things, each letter being at the same time a number). What �is� probably is that, in Hebrew, we have a comparatively unchanged development of the one tongue of the early ages.

For Shem was the Priest, and his descendants did not share in the �confounding of language,� (Genesis 11:7) which fell upon the Hamites in their rebellion against God at Babel. Neither did Japhet participate in that confusion, hence �their� words were one until, after time and separation, their different types of language developed by purely natural processes.

Shem being the one chosen to transmit the Promise would naturally inherit the sacred, mystical, numerical Hebrew tongue.

When Abraham (of the house of Shem) commenced his long journey to his new home in the land of promise, from what country did he emigrate?

�They went forth ... from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan.� (Genesis 11:31)

In the Hebrew text of Genesis, the word translated �Ur� is a word of three letters �Aur.��Chaldees� also is merely a Greek and Latin rendering of the Hebrew �Chas-dim� or �Kash-dim;� both these words have very significant meanings. �Aur� is �Light.��Kash-dim;� means the keeper of secrets� or �interpreters of mysteries.� The �Chaldees� of the Book of Daniel were true �Kash-dim� ... they were not the common population of Babylon, but an aristocracy of science.

Thus Daniel 1:4 �the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans� is recorded; in Daniel 2:2 �the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans.� A Chaldee or �Kash-d� was an �interpreter� whether in the West or the East.

From time immemorial has the north of India been the home of mysterious science, such as the Kashdim of Babylon pursued. The province of Kashmir is about 1,900 miles due east of Mesopotamia (bordering on Chinese Turkestan and Thibet, both provinces of the Chinese Empire). The word �Kash� abounds and always has abounded in the local names of that region, as any good map will show.

Now note that the Bible is Hebrew Scripture, a history of the Hebrew or Shemitic people only. There are no Japhetic or Hamitic Scriptures, hence there is no specific record of the descendants of these two sons of Noah after the detailed genealogies in Genesis 9, 10 and the first 9 verses of Genesis 11.

But in this account careful reading and a comparison of chronology with ancient history shows that for a full century, at least, Noah and the two sons whom he had blessed continued to occupy their settlement on the Indus. It was not until the �days of Peleg,� who was born 101 years after the flood, that a great religious feud separated the families of Shem and Japhet. Then southward into Kashmir where, subsequently, Abraham was born, Shem journeyed, and in due time the nations sprung from him peopled, in the main, the southern half of Asia, below the Caucasus, Hindu Kush, and the Himalayas. The name Brahmin is from Abraham.

Northward, back along the tributary valley by which he had descended from the Ark, turning his back upon the Inuds, Japhet retraced his steps till he had placed another mountain range between his brother and himself. He was then in the very hart of Asia on the �Roof of the World,� and a glance at the genealogies of his sons shows the original names of thee Tartar and Mongol races, names now still in geographical evidence of their ancestry.

����������������� The History of The Jewish Khazars:

�...Our first question here is, When did the Khazars and the Khazar name appear? There has been considerable discussion as to the relation of the Khazars to the Huns on the one hand and to the West Turks on the other. The prevalent opinion has for some time been that the Khazars emerged from the West Turkish empire.

�Early references to the Khazars appear about the time when the West Turks cease to be mentioned. Thus they are reported to have joined forces with the Greek Emperor Heraclius against the Persians in A.D. 627 and to have materially assisted him in the siege of Tiflis. it is a question whether the Khazars were at this time under West Turk supremacy. The chronicler Theophanes {died circa A.D. 818} who tells the story introduces them as �the Turks from the east whom they call Khazars.�...

�A similar discussion on the merits of the different races is reported from the days before Muhammad, in which the speakers are the Arab Nu�man ibn-al-Mudhir of al-Hirah and Khusraw Anushirwan. The Persian gives his opinion that the Greeks, Indians, and Chinese are superior to the Arabs and so also, in spite of their low material standards of life, the Turks and the Khazars, who at least possess an organization under their kings.

�Here again the Khazars are juxtaposed with the great nations of the east. It is consonant with this that tales were told of how ambassadors from the Chinese, the Turks, and the Khazars were constantly at Khusraw�s gate, (Tabari, i, 899. According to ibn-Khurdadhbih, persons wishing access to the Persian court from the country of the Khazars and the Alans were detained at Bab al-Abwab (B.G.A. vi, 135)) and even that he kept three thrones of gold in his palace, which were never removed and on which none sat, reserved for the kings of Byzantium, China and the Khazars.

�In general, the material in the Arabic and Persian writers with regard to the Khazars in early times falls roughly into three groups, centering respectively round the names of (a) one or other of the Hebrew patriarchs, (b) Alexander the Great, and (c) certain of the Sassanid kings, especially, Anushirwan and his immediate successors.

�A typical story of the first group is given by Ya�qubi in his History. After the confusion of tongues at Babel (Genesis 10:18; 11:19); the descendants of Noah came to Peleg (Genesis 10:25; 11:16-19; 1 Chronicles 1:19; 1:25), son of Eber (Genesis 10:21; 10:24-25; 11:14-17; Numbers 24:24; 1 Chronicles 1:18-19; 1:25; 8:12; Nehemiah 12:20), and asked him to divide (Genesis 10:5; 10:25; 10:32; Exodus 14:21; Deuteronomy 4:19; 32:8; 1 Chronicles 1:19) the earth among them. He apportioned to the descendants of Japheth (Genesis 5:32; 6:10; 7:13; 9:18; 9:23; 9:27; 10:1-2; 10:21; 1 Chronicles 1:4-5) - China, Hind, Sind, the country of the Turks and that of the Khazars, as well as Tibet, the country of the (Volga) Bulgars, Daylam, and the country neighboring on Khurasan. In another passage Ya�qubi gives a kind of sequel to this. Peleg having divided the earth in this fashion (Genesis 10:25; 11:16-19; 1 Chronicles 1:19; 1:25), the descendants of �Amur ibn-Tubal (Genesis 10:2; 1 Chronicles 1:5; Isaiah 66:19; Ezekiel 27:13; 32:26; 38:2-3; 39:1), a son of Japheth, went out to the northeast. One group, the descendants of Togarmah (Genesis 10:3; 1 Chronicles 1:6; Ezekiel 27:14; 38:6), proceeding farther north, were scattered in different countries and became a number of kingdoms, among them the Burjan (Bulgars), Alans, Khazars (Ashkenaz Genesis 10:3), and Armenians. Similarly, according to Tabari, there were born to Japheth Jim-r the Biblical Gomer (Genesis 10:2-3; 1 Chronicles 1:5-6; Ezekiel 38:6; Hosea 1:3), Maw�-� (read Mawgh-gh), Magog (Genesis 10:2; 1 Chronicles 1:5; Ezekiel 38:2; 39:6; Revelation 20:8), Mawday Madai (Genesis 10:2; 1 Chronicles 1:5), Yawan (Javan) (Genesis 10:2; 10:4; 1 Chronicles 1:5; 1:7; Isaiah 66:19; Ezekiel 27:13; 27:19), Thubal (Tubal), Mash-j (read Mash-kh), Meshech (Genesis 10:2; 1 Chronicles 1:15; 1:17; Ezekiel 27:13; 32:26; 38:2-3; 39:1) and Tir-sh (Tiras). (Genesis 10:2; 1 Chronicles 1:5) Of the descendants of the last were the Turks and the Khazars (Ashkenaz). There is possibly an association here with the Turgesh, survivors of the West Turks, who were defeated by the Arabs in 119/737, (H.A.R. Gibb, Arab Conquests in Central Asia, London 1923, 83ff. Cf. Chapter IV, n. 96) and disappeared as a ruling group in the same century.

�Tabari says curiously that of the descendants of Mawgh-gh (Magog) were Yajuj and Majuj, adding that these are to the east of the Turks and Khazars. This information would invalidate Zeki Validi�s attempt to identify Gog and Magog in the Arabic writers with the Norwegians.

�The name Mash-kh (Meshech) is regarded by him as probably a singular to the classical Massagetai (Massag-et). A Bashmakov emphasizes the connection of �Meshech� with the Khazars, to establish his theory of the Khazars, not as Turks from inner Asia, but what he calls a Japhetic or Alarodian group from south of the Caucasus.

�Evidently there is no stereotyped form of this legendary relationship of the Khazars to Japheth. The Taj-al-Artis says that according to some they are the descendants of Kash-h (? Mash-h or Mash-kh, for Meshech), son of Japheth, and according to others both the Khazars and the Saqalibah are sprung from Thubal (Tubal).

Further, we read of Balanjar ibn-Japheth in ibn-al-Faqih and Abu-al-Fida� as the founder of the town of Balanjar. Usage leads one to suppose that this is equivalent to giving Balanjar a separate racial identity. In historical times Balanjar was a well-known Khazar center, which is even mentioned by Masudi as their capital.

�It is hardly necessary to cite more of these Japheth stories. Their JEWISH ORIGIN IS priori OBVIOUS, and Poliak has drawn attention to one version of the division of the earth, where the Hebrew words for �north� and �south� actually appear in the Arabic text. The Iranian cycle of legend had a similar tradition, according to which the hero Afridun divided the earth among his sons, Tuj (sometimes Tur, the eponym of Turan), Salm, and Iraj.

�Here the Khazars appear with the Turks and the Chinese in the portion assigned to Tuj, the eldest son. Some of the stories connect the Khazars with Abraham. The tale of a meeting in Khurasan between the sons of Keturah (Genesis 25:1; 25:4; 1 Chronicles 1:32-33) and the Khazars (Ashkenaz) (Genesis 10:3) where the Khaqan is Khaqan is mentioned is quoted from the Sa�d and al-Tabari by Poliak.

�The tradition also appears in the Meshed manuscript of ibn-al-Faqih, apparently as part of the account of Tamim ibn-Babr�s journey to the Uigurs, but it goes back to Hishim al-Kalbi. Zeki Validi is inclined to lay some stress on it as a real indication of the presence of the Khazars in this region at an early date. Al-Jahiz similarly refers to the legend of the sons of Abraham and Keturah settling in Khurasan but does not mention the Khazars. Al-Di-Mashqi says that according to one tradition the Turks were the children of Abraham by Keturah, whose father belonged to the original Arab stock. Descendants of other sons of Abraham, namely the Soghdians and the Kirgiz, were also said to live beyond the Oxus...� (The History of The Jewish Khazars, by D.M. Dunlop, pp. 4-15. This book is especially important because the Jews make reference to it in all of their Jewish Encyclopedias, and uphold him as an authority on Jewish History)

But to go back, we read in Genesis 11:1-2, �The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east.��As they journeyed� is indefinite, i.e., as some journeyed, by no means as �all� journeyed. This was merely the first migration of a section of the human race from its eastern cradle and �they found a plain in the land of Shinar.� (Genesis 11:2)

This was entirely a Hamitic migration for Genesis 10 says Nimrod (grandson of Ham) began to be a mighty one in the earth, and the beginning of his kingdom was �Babel� and Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar. From thence �the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth� (Genesis 11:9); that is, all engaged in the building of the tower were scattered over the whole world. this may quite well have been the case, and yet not all mankind have been present at Babel. Even the whole Hamite family need not have been engaged n the work.

It seems possible certainly that some of the descendants of Canaan had already gone �abroad,� for after giving the genealogies of the �ites� Genesis 10:18 says, �afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad.�

The �Sinite� tribe of the widespread family of Canaan is, undoubtedly, to be looked for in China, �the land of Sinim,� mentioned in Isaiah 49:12. The people whom the English call Chinese call themselves the �Tsin� and by the Romans were called �Sinae.� The Hivite tribe, the �Hui,� as it is in the Hebrew may be traced in �Hue,� the capital of Annam, in Cochin China.

No three letters are more used in Chinese names than s, i and n; �sin.��Ahsin� is so common that it has become a synonym for Chinamen. The �land of Sinim� is an accurate title, �im� being the plural. The Encyclopedia Britannica states that ancient China was known by several names, according to location. The southern part, reached by sea route, was always some form of Sin, Chin, Sinoe or China. The northern part reached by land route through Asia was first Seres, and in the Middle Ages was known to Europe as Cathay.

Its original form was �Kitai,� and by this name is still known in Russia and to most of the nations of Central Asia. The name �Sin� probably came to Europe through the Arabs, who made the China of the Father East into Sin and perhaps sometimes in Tsin.

Claudius Ptolemy called Chinese the Sinae. The Encyclopedia says also that the name �Kitai� was given to northern China by foreign conquerors from the north; Mongols and antecedents of the Manchus. Southern China was conquered and subjected to Mongol rule about 1276. Til then it had remained under a native dynasty; the Sung of Sing. Now �Kitai� is another form of �Kittim,� son of Javan, son of Japhet. (Genesis 10:4) So we have here the same ethnic condition as exists in Turkey, Russia, etc., today, a ruling and a subject race.

Northern China was the nearest country on the east and south to the families of Japhet, when they moved north of Pamir, so their prophesied �enlargement� naturally carried them into it as conquerors of the land of those Canaanites who had reached it through the �Tarim Basin.�

When we consider the history of ethnic movements, we find that in every quarter of the globe a lower type of man has been pioneering and preparing for the advent of the higher races. Today the weaker intellect and more stunted stature are found at the extremities of the earth. This would answer to an early diffusion of the Hamitic races before the higher Japhetic and Shemitic races divided the world between them.

Canaan was the only one of Ham�s children selected for a destiny service. The predominance of the Canaanite element in this dispersion is strikingly illustrated by names of people and places still found in remote corners on the map of the world. Thus the Amur River in eastern Siberia may ark a settlement of the �Amorites,� the �Arkite� is found in the province of Further India named �Arak-an,� and the �Arvadite� is strictly the Arwdi, corresponding almost exactly in sound to the name of the river Irrawaddy, which flows through Burma.

Finally the ethnological researches of W.H.M. Milner, professor of philology at Oxford, England, established a school of evidence before which former teachings became untenable. Want of a reasonable basis of deduction had given rise to the claim of an Aryan race of which Saxons are a development, but now they have been proven historically, geographically and by lineal descent to be of the blood of Abraham: �heirs of the Promise,� for Shem was by divine appointment �Priest of the Most High God� and �guardian of the Promise.�