ANTEDILUVIANS (an't6-di-I7evi-ans), the name given collectively to the people who lived before the Deluge.
The interval from the Creation to that event is not less, even according to the Hebrew text, than 1657 years, being not more than 691 years shorter than that between the Deluge and the birth of Christ, and only 167 years less than from the birth of Christ to the present time, and equal to about two-sevenths of the whole period from the Crea tion. By the Samaritan and Septuagint texts (as adjusted by Hales) a much greater duration is assigned to the antediluvian period—namely, 2256 years, which nearly equals the Hebrew inter val from the Deluge to the birth of Christ, and much exceeds the interval from the birth of Christ to the present time. (See CHRONOLOGY.) All our authentic information prior to the won derful discoveries during the past few years made in Babylonia and Egypt, respecting this long and interesting period was contained in 49 verses of Genesis (iv:16 to vi :8), more than half of which are occupied with a list of names and ages, in valuable for chronology, but conveying no par ticulars regarding the primeval state of man.
In a most remarkable manner the testimony of the Old Testament and that of the monuments agree.
It is very evident from these accounts that so ciety did not begin afresh after the Deluge; but that, through Noah and his sons, the new families of men were in a condition to inherit, and did inherit, such sciences and arts as existed before the Flood. This enables us to understand how settled and civilized communities were established, and large and magnificent works undertaken, within a few centuries after the Deluge.
After that event, Nimrod, although a hunter (Gen. x:9), was not a savage, and did not belong to hunting tribes of men.
(1) Savagism and Degeneracy. In fact, sac agism is not discoverable before the Confusion of Tongues, and was in all likelihood a degeneracy from a state of cultivation eventually produced in particular communities by that great social con vulsion. At least that a degree of cultivation was the primitive condition of man, from which say agism in particular quarters was a degeneracy, and that he has not, as too generally has been supposed, worked himself up from an original savage state to his present position, has been pow erfully argued by Dr. Philip Landsley (Am. Bib.
Repos. iv:277-298; vi :1-27), and is strongly cor roborated by the conclusions of modern ethno graphical research; from which we learn that, while it is easy for men to degenerate into sav ages, no example has been found of savages rising into civilization but by an impulse from without, administered by a more civilized people; and that, even with such impulse, the 745 inertia. of estab lished habits is with difficulty overcome. The aboriginal traditions of all civilized nations de scribe them as receiving their civilization from without—generally through the instrumentality of foreign colonists: and history affords no example of a case parallel to that which must have occurred if the primitive races of men, being originally sav age, had civilized themselves.
The scriptural account clearly shows (see ADAM) that the father of men %vas something more than 'the noble savage,' or rather the grown up infant, which some have represented him. He was an instructed man ;—and the immediate de scendants of a man so instructed could not be an ignorant or uncultivated people. It is not neces sary indeed to suppose that they possessed at first more cultivation than they required; and for a good while they did not stand in need of that which results from, or is connected with, the set tlement of men in organized communities. They probably had this before the Deluge, and at first were possessed of whatever knowledge or civiliza tion their agricultural and pastoral pursuits re quired, Such were their pursuits from the first ; for it is remarkable that of the strictly savage nr hunting condition of life there is not the slightest trace before the Deluge. Astronomy, architecture, writing, music, manufactures, poetry, metallurgy, mineralogy, zoOlogy, and kindred sciences and arts were all known, some of them to quite a degree, to these antediluvians.