Not only was Adam a red man, but there is evidence that, from the highest antiquity, red was a sacred color; the gods of the ancients were always painted red.  The Wisdom of Solomon refers to this custom:  “The carpenter carved it elegantly, and formed it by the skill of his understanding, and fashioned it to the shape of a man, or made it like some vile beast, laying it over with vermilion, and with paint, coloring it red, and covering every spot therein.”

The idols of the Indians were also painted red, and red was the religious color. (Lynd’s Ms.  “Hist. of Dakotas,” Library, Hist.  Society, Minn.)

The Cushites and Ethiopians, early branches of the Atlantean stock, took their name from their “sunburnt” complexion; they were red men.

The name of the Phoenicians signified red.  Himyar, the prefix of the Himyaritic Arabians, also means red, and the Arabs were painted red on the Egyptian monuments.

The ancient Egyptians were red men.  They recognized four races of men—­the red, yellow, black, and white men.  They themselves belonged to the “Rot,” or red men; the yellow men they called “Namu”—­it included the Asiatic races; the black men were called “Nahsu,” and the white men “Tamhu.”  The following figures are copied from Nott and Gliddon’s “Types of Mankind,” p. 85, and were taken by them from the great works of Belzoni, Champollion, and Lepsius.

In later ages so desirous were the Egyptians of preserving, the aristocratic distinction of the color of their skin, that they represented themselves on the monuments as of a crimson hue—­an exaggeration of their original race complexion.

In the same way we find that the ancient Aryan writings divided mankind into four races—­the white, red, yellow, and black:  the four castes of India were founded upon these distinctions in color; in fact, the word for color in Sanscrit (varna) means caste.  The red men, according to the Mahabharata, were the Kshatriyas—­the warrior caste-who were afterward engaged in a fierce contest with the whites—­the Brahmans—­and were nearly exterminated, although some of them survived, and from their stock Buddha was born.  So that not only the Mohammedan and Christian but the Buddhistic religion seem to be derived from branches of the Hamitic or red stock.  The great Manu was also of the red race.

The races of men according to the Egyptians.

The Egyptians, while they painted themselves red-brown, represented the nations of Palestine as yellow-brown, and the Libyans yellow-white.  The present inhabitants of Egypt range from a yellow color in the north parts to a deep bronze.  Tylor is of opinion ("Anthropology,” p. 95) that the ancient Egyptians belonged to a brown race, which embraced the Nubian tribes and, to some extent, the Berbers of Algiers and Tunis.  He groups the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Andalusians, Bretons, dark Welshmen, and people