The Peopling of the Earth

MAGOG

This name, like that of Gomer, is not mentioned in the Scriptures, apart from its genealogical relation, except in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and Revelation 20:8. And, like Gomer, the land of Magog and his people is placed in the north from Palestine. Ezekiel 38:15 says; “And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army.” In the account of the Cimmerians we stated that the Scythians who inhabited the vast regions to the north of the Caspian Sea swept down upon the Cimmerians, drove them out, and took possession of their country. These Scythians were the people of Magog. By some of the successors of Alexander the Great, there was a wall built, called the Caucasian wall, which extended from the western shore of the Caspian Sea, at Derbend, almost to the eastern shore of the Black Sea. This wall was built as a defense against the inroads of the Scythian hordes, and is still called “the wall of Gog and Magog.” POTE 255.3

“From the accounts found among the Arabians, Persinus, and Syrians, ... we learn that they comprehended under the designation Yajuj and Majuj all the less known barbarous people of the Northeast and Northwest of Asia.”-McClintock and Strong, article Magog. POTE 256.1

Of these peoples Rambaud says:- POTE 256.2

“Beyond the line of Greek colonies [about the northern coast of the Black Sea] dwelt a whole world of tribes, whom the Greeks designated by the common name of Scythians.”-History of Russia, chap. ii, par. 2. POTE 256.3

Of the multitude of people who dwelt in this boundless region, the chief in the time of Herodotus were three distinct bodies of Scythians properly so called. First, there were the “Scythian cultivators,” or “husbandmen,” who possessed the country drained by the Dnieper-the Ukraine-of which the Cimmerians had been dispossessed. Secondly, the “Nomad” or “Wandering Scythians, who neither plough nor sow.” Thirdly, the Royal Scythians, “the largest and bravest of the Scythian tribes, which looks upon all the other tribes in the light of slaves.” These were of the same habits as the wandering Scythians. Their principal seat was between the Dnieper and the Don. Besides these there was a fourth division composed of tribes that had revolted from the Royal Scythians and dwelt upon the eastern sources of the Volga. POTE 256.4

“The Nomads were the genuine Scythians, possessing the marked attributes of the race, and including among their number the Royal Scythians-hordes so much more populous and more effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed ascendency, and to account all other Scythians no better than their slaves.” “If the habits of the Scythians were such as to create in the near observer no other feeling than repugnance, their force at least inspired terror. They appeared in the eyes of Thucydides [b. c. 471-429] so numerous and so formidable that he pronounces them irresistible, if they could but unite, by any other nation within his knowledge. Herodotus, too, conceived the same idea of a race among whom every man was a warrior and a practiced horse-bowman, and who were placed by their mode of life out of all reach of an enemy’s attack.”-Grote’s History of Greece, part ii, chap. xvii, par. 17, 19. POTE 256.5

About 630 b. c., after driving out the Cimmerians from the Ukraine, a torrent of the Scythians swept down by the Caspian Sea and overran Media, Assyria, and Upper Mesopotamia, clear to the borders of Palestine, and kept Media and Assyria in a state of terror for about twenty years before they could be driven out. Nor were the Scythians confined to the country of the Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga, for when Alexander the Great, in his conquering march reached the River Jaxartes-the present Syr-Daria-at the seventieth degree of east longitude, he found Scythian warriors there to dispute his passage of that river; he crossed nevertheless and defeated them. In truth the region of the Altai Mountains was about the center, from east to west, of the widespread people of Magog; for they reached from Europe to the Pacific Ocean. Of the principal divisions of the races that spring from these we may name:- POTE 257.1

1. The ancient Mongols, or Mongolians, from whom came the Chinese and Indo-Chinese, the Siamese, the Anamese, the Burmese, the Cambodians, the Thibetans, the Japanese, and the aborigines of North and South America, from Alaska to Patagonia. “Says Fontaine: ‘If a congregation of twelve men from Malacca, China, Japan, Mongolia, the South Sea Islands, Chili, Peru, Brazil, Chickasaws, and Comanches were dressed alike, or undressed and unshaven, the most skillful anatomist could not from their appearance separate them.’”-Bricks from Babel, chap. xi. POTE 257.2

2. The Malays, who have peopled the Malay Peninsula, the Malay or East Indian Archipelago, Madagascar, and the greater portion of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. “This astonishing expansion of the Malaysian peoples throughout the Oceanic area is sufficiently attested by the diffusion of a common Malayo-Polynesian speech from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Hawaii to New Zealand.”-Encyc. Brit., article Malays. POTE 258.1

3. The Huns, whose “ancient and perhaps original seat” was in the country now called Mongolia, immediately above the Great Wall of China; who in the early part of the third century before Christ had spread their power eastward to the Pacific at the extremity of Corea, west to the River Irtysh, north to the extremity of Lake Baikal; and against whose inroads the Great Wall-1,500 miles long-was built to protect the territories of China. But in vain, for in 201 b. c., the Huns swept over China and brought it under tribute till about 87 b. c., when their power over China was broken. Their power then steadily declined till a. d. 93, when it was utterly destroyed in the east by the rise of the Sienpi. In a. d. 375 they poured into Europe, and under Attila, a. d. 433-453, their power was established from the Danube to the Ural, and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean Sea. At the death of Attila, their power was broken, their empire was destroyed, and they were driven back into the Scythian steppes, in the country of the Volga and the Ural. Their modern representatives are the Bulgarians proper, numbering about 1,500,000 people. Says Prichard:- POTE 258.2

“It may be considered, as M. Zeuss has shown, as an historical fact, that the Bulgarians were the remains of the Hunns, who, after their defeat on the death of Attila, retreated to the banks of the Wolga and the plains, extending from Bolgari [Wolga or Volga, Wolgari, Bolgari, Bulgari, Bulgarians] to the Euxine. From that country, called, as we have seen, Great Bulgaria, issued the hordes of Bulgarians who, at a later period, crossed the Danube and established the Bulgarian kingdom.”-Physical History of Mankind, vol. iv, chap. xvi, sec. vi, par. 1. POTE 259.1

4. The modern Mongols or Moguls, who, under Jenghiz Khan or Zingis Khan, and his sons, a. d. 1162-1241 established their empire from the China Sea to the borders of Moravia, and almost repeated it under Tamerlane a. d. 1361-1405, and who still remain in the country, and nation of Mongolia. POTE 259.2

5. The Tartars, who under the name of Sienpi broke the power of the Huns in a. d. 93; who led the vanguard in the great Mogul invasion of Europe, a. d. 1238; and whose name still remains in Uzbeck and Kalmuck and Crim or Crimea Tartars. POTE 259.3

6. The Turks, Turkmans, or Turcomans, who early in the Christian era emigrated from Central Asia to the northern country about the Caspian and Aral Seas. In a. d. 997-1028 Mahmud, the first who bore the title of Sultan, began a career of conquest that has made the name, and nation of the Turks one among the most mous in history, and is now a source of constant jealousy and contention among the nations of Europe. POTE 259.4

7. The Finns, who in five groups have peopled the following countries: (a) The Finns proper in Finland and the Baltic provinces of Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland; (b) the Lapps in Lapland and parts of northern Sweden and Norway; (c) the Permian Finns in the northern habitable portion of Russia proper; (d) the Volga Finns on both banks, and the branches, of the Upper Volga: (e) the Ugrian Finns, between the Ural Mountains and the Yenisei River above the fifty-ninth degree north latitude, and in Hungary. For it was from the tribes of Ugrian Finns that the Magyars came, who in the ninth century were such a scourge to Eastern Europe, and who in 889 and onward finally settled in what is now Hungary (Ugri, Wengri, Ungri, Ungari, Hungari, Hungary). Besides these there are, of the Ugrian Finns, the Esquimaux of North America. POTE 260.1

8. The Sarmatians, who sprung from the Royal Scythians, and who in the days of Herodotus dwelt east of the Don, but before the end of the first century of the Christian era had spread their name over all Eastern Europe from the River Volga to the Baltic Sea, and their name was even extended to the Baltic itself, that sea being then called the Sarmatian Ocean. From the Sarmatians are descended the Slavonians that have peopled Russia, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Servia, and other provinces, of lesser note, in those regions. See p. 299. POTE 260.2

All these are the people of Magog, and it will be seen at a glance that “the land of Magog” is the steppe country of Northern Asia, and is now represented in the Russian possessions, which stretch from the borders of Germany to the Pacific Ocean. POTE 260.3

The third of the sons of Japheth is POTE 261.1