Western Asia. The vast commercial system which formed a
connecting link between the various countries of the globe, was
created by this people, the great manufacturing skill and
unrivalled maritime activity of the Phoenicians which extended
down to the time of the Hellenes and the Romans having been a
result of the irgenius. It was doubtless during the supremacy of
the ancient Cushite race that a knowledge of astronomy was
developed and that the arts of life were carried to a high degree
of perfection. However, through the peculiar influences which
were brought to bear upon human experience, this knowledge, which
was bequeathed to their descendants or to the nations which they
had created, was subsequently lost or practically obscured, only
fragments of it having been preserved from the general ruin.
Within these fragments have been preserved in India certain
evidences of a profound knowledge of Nature, or of the at present
unknown forces in the universe, a demonstration of which, in our
own time, would probably be looked upon as a miraculous
interposition of supernatural agencies.
Regarding the refinements and luxuries of this ancient people,
Diodorus Siculus declares that they flowed in streams of gold and
silver, that "the porticoes of their temples were overlaid with
gold, and that the adornments of their buildings were in some
parts of silver and gold, and in others of ivory and precious
stones, and other things of great value."
From various observations, it is plain that the Etrurians
represented a stage of civilization far in advance of the
Pelasgians who founded Rome --a race which, although superior in
numbers, arms, and influence, were, when compared with this more
ancient people, little better than barbarians.[66]
[66] It is thought that as early as the nineteenth century B.C.
the Pelasgians or Pelargians went to Aenonia, or Ionia. It was a
detachment of this people which, according to Herodotus, captured
a number of Athenian women on the coast of Africa, lived with
them as wives, and raised families by them, but, "because they
differed in manners from themselves," they murdered them, which
act was attended by a "dreadful pestilence." It is the opinion
of certain writers that these women were of a different religious
faith from their captors, and that so intense and bitter was the
feeling upon the comparative importance of the sex functions in
pro-creation, that their husbands, unable to change their views,
