"Few traditions respecting the primitive condition of mankind are more remarkable, and perhaps none are more ancient, than those that have been preserved by Sanchoniatho; or rather, we should say, that are to be found in the fragments ascribed to that writer by Eusebius. They present us with an outline of the earlier stages of human progress in religious speculation, which is shown _by the results of modern inquiry to be wonderfully correct_. They tell us for instance that '_the first men consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, and judged them gods_, and worshipped them upon whom they themselves lived, and all their posterity, and all before them, and to these they made their meat and drink offerings.'[102] They further tell us that the first men believed the heavenly bodies to be animals, only differently shaped and circumstanced from any on the earth. 'There were certain animals which had no sense, out of which were begotten intelligent animals ... and they were formed alike in the shape of an egg. Thus shone out Môt [the luminous vault of heaven?], the sun and the moon, and the less and the greater stars.' _Next they relate, in an account of the successive generations of men_, that _in the first generation the way was found out of taking food from trees_; that, in the second, men, having suffered from droughts, began to worship the sun--the Lord of heaven; that in the third, Light, Fire, and Flame [conceived as persons], were begotten; that in the fourth giants appeared; while in the fifth, 'men were named from their mothers' because of the uncertainty of male parentage, this generation being distinguished also by the introduction of 'pillar' worship. It was not till the twelfth generation that the gods appeared that figure most in the old mythologies, such as Kronos, Dagon, Zeus, Belus, Apollo, and Typhon; and then the queen of them all was the _Bull_-headed Astarte. The sum of the statements is, that men first worshipped plants; next the heavenly bodies, supposed to be animals; then 'pillars;' ... and, last of all, the anthropomorphic gods. Not the least remarkable statement is, that in primitive times there was kinship through mothers only, owing to the uncertainty of fatherhood."[103] [102] A tradition of the constellations, a proof from tradition that they were so named in the ante-diluvian period. [103] Sanchoniatho's "Phoenician History," by the Right Rev. R. Cumberland. London, 1720, pp. 2, 3, 23, _et seq._ Eusebius, Præpar. Evangel. lib. i. cap. 10. The fragments of Sanchoniathon here referred to are found at earlier date than Eusebius, having been copiously extracted by Philo (_vide_ Bunsen's "Egypt").