Much has from time to time been written as to the distinction between the Adamites and the pre-Adamites, although little has been done to identify the members of the two great divisions into which the human race has been thus divided. Those who accept the Deluge of Noah as a historical fact, stated however in terms too wide, may say generally that all the descendants of this patriarch are, as such, Adamites, while the pre-Adamites comprise the peoples of the primitive area inhabited by the dark races, supposed by some writers to be referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures under the term _ish_, “the sons of man,” as distinguished from the sons of Adam. Little value, however, can be attached to such a general statement as this. Supposing Noah to have been a second common father of the race, we are still ignorant as to what peoples are to be classed among his descendants. No doubt the _Toldoth Beni Noah_ of Genesis throws considerable light on the question. According to that genealogical table the whole earth was divided after the Flood among the families of the three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japheth. It is not necessary here to identify the peoples described as the descendants of these patriarchs. It will suffice to say that Professor Rawlinson, who differs only in one or two particulars from other recent authorities, writes as to the distribution of those peoples: “Whereas the Japhetic and Hamitic races are geographically contiguous, the former spread over all the northern regions known to the genealogist—Greece, Thrace, Scythia, most of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Media; the latter over all the south and the south-west, North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, Southern and Southeastern Arabia, and Babylonia—so the Semitic races are located in what may be called one region, that region being the central one, lying intermediate between the Japhetic region upon the north and the Hamitic one upon the south.”