It is true, then, that the curse of blackness is not recorded, but the distribution of the races is at least implied: Deut. xxxii. 8, "_When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam_, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel;" and Acts xvii. 26, "And hath made of one all mankind, to dwell upon the _whole face_ of the earth, _determining appointed times_, and _the limits_ of _their habitation_." (The Prot. version translates, "Having appointed the _predetermined seasons_ and _boundaries of_ their dwellings." _Vide_ Hales's Chron., i. 351, who adds that this was conformable to their own allegory "that Chronos, the god of time, or Saturn, divided the universe among his three sons.")[74] [74] _Vide_ also ch. x., p. 239. The tradition that Phoroneus, "the father of mankind," distributed the nations over the earth, _idem nationes distribuit_. If, then, the different races of mankind, according to their merits or demerits, were apportioned to, or miraculously directed or impelled to, respective portions of the earth, which necessarily superinduced certain effects, is not the curse as apparent in its indirect operation as it would have been in its suddenness and directness? This consideration must, I think, bring those who raise scriptural difficulties against the theory to the admission that blackness was a sign of inferiority, and that certain races were either smitten with, or were predestined to, in consequence of culpability, this degradation. This, I admit, is no reply to those who argue from the evidence of the Egyptian monuments. But the evidence from the monuments, so far from embarrassing my conclusion, seems absolutely to enforce it. If, indeed, the evidence from the monuments did not stare one in the face, we might fall back upon the line of argument which I have just indicated, and whilst recognising in their blackness the operation of a curse, trace it in the lapse of centuries and the influences of the torrid zone. But they are recorded as being black on the earliest monuments known to us, and within a few centuries of the Deluge. The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable, that they were so from the commencement, which exactly hits in with the tradition of the curse of Canaan. Such, from his own point of view, is the conclusion of Sir J. Lubbock ("Prehistoric Times," p. 478)-- "If there is any truth in this view of the subject (p. 478), it will necessarily follow that the principal varieties of man are of great antiquity, and, in fact, go back almost to the very origin of the human race. We may then cease to wonder that the earliest paintings on Egyptian tombs represent so accurately several various varieties still existing in those regions, and that the Engis skull, probably the most ancient yet found in Europe, so closely resembles many that may be seen even at the present day."