Chapter 3
Before the arrival of
the Gauls in France, the country was populated with other races which
history knows principally under two general names: the Ligurians and the Iberians.
When did these people
appear in Western Europe? From where
did they come?
With remarkable
nonchalance and never having furnished proof, historians hazard dates,
such as six thousand, ten thousand — and even fifteen thousand years — before
Christ, even though, in the admission of all, no one has any
precise information on the arrival date of any people in Gaul.
“As for the history of
France,” writes Jubainville candidly, “the earliest date that the authors of
antiquity have given us is that of the founding of Marseille one hundred
twenty years before the battle of Salamis (500 B.C.), thus six hundred years
before Christ” (The First
Inhabitants of Europe, Jubainville, p. 26).
Who then were these Ligurians
and Iberians? Let’s glance
at their history, before studying that of the Celtic peoples.
Characterized by their
small waistline, their slightly swarthy skin, black hair and small head, the
Ligurians, sometimes called “Liguses,” are of Greek origin. This fact is admitted by historians.
“Thus small built were
the Ligurian people, their origin linked with the most famous of the
Greek colonies, Sicily” (Histoire des Gaulois, Thierry, Intro., p. 23), writes Amedes Thierry. But the knowledge of scholars and historians
stops there! This is not surprising, since
they never turn to the Bible to pursue their research. Thus they can add nothing to the story with
certainty.
Dottin writes: “The problem [the origin of the Ligurians] remains
insoluble, because no one is able to determine to which family the Ligurian
language belongs” (The Ancient
Peoples of Europe, Dottin, p. 188).
He should have said: “...because
no one will look to the Bible for the truth”!
Noah had three
sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The Bible affirms that it was their
descendants who, after the flood, would people the entire earth (Genesis
9:19).
One of the sons of
Japheth was called Javan, from which we have the terms “Ionia” and
“Grecia” or Greece (Strong’s
Concordance). In turn, Javan became
the father of four sons: Elishah,
Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim. It is from their descendants that the Greek and Latin peoples
came.
The four sons of Javan
dispersed to the southwest of the European continent, along the
Mediterranean coast. Elishah, for
example multiplied in Hellas (Greece) and in the isle of Cyprus, which
the ancients called “Alisha.”
As for Rodanim,
brother of Elishah (his name is sometimes spelled Dodanim), he passed by
the Dodecanese (a group of islands in the Aegean Sea) and the island of Rhodes,
to which his descendants gave his name; then they went to settle around the
mouth of the Rhone, on the Mediterranean coast; from Gaul they went to
Italy and Rome, but the center of their region was the country of the Genosee,
which still today carries the name “Liguria.”
There are the Ligurians of
which history speaks — “history” which is not able to trace their origin! They were the descendants of
Javan, by Rodanim. As
we will see later (Chapter 7), it is indeed this Greek people who later
mixed with the Gauls, and it is a part of them who, under the general
name of Gauls or Gallics, established
themselves in Galatia about 280 B.C.
History doesn’t know
very much about this people (The Ancient Peoples of Europe, Dottin, p.
188). Baron von Humboldt, George
Dottin, as well as the great French historian Camille Jullian, each have
divergent ideas about the origins of the Iberians. But they agree that these people were among the first
inhabitants of Sicily. It is
equally averred that they ended up settling in the Iberian Peninsula, to which
they give their name. Italy, Sicily,
Sardinia, Corsica, and Languedoc “appear to have marked” their successive
stages before arriving in Spain.
“This much at least is
certain, that the Spanish Peninsula took its name (Iberia) from the
Iberians, a name of Greek origin, and that in the first century before
our era, one of their groups, known under the name of ‘Aquitains’, occupying the
region between the Pyrenees and the Garonne River, where the soldiers of Caesar
are going to find them” (Origins,
Brentano, p. 28), remarks Funck Brentano.
Once again, in order
to learn the entire truth, we must return to the Bible.
The Iberians descended
from Japheth by Javan and Tarshish. This latter, Tarshish, was one of the sons of Javan, I
Chronicles 1:7.
The descendants of Tarshish
settled first in Asia Minor, in the region of Cilicia,
where they gave their name to the city of “Tarsus,” the birthplace of the
Apostle Paul. From there, this tribe
emigrated to the west; it went just to the Iberian Peninsula, to which it gave
its name, as Brentano established.
Note well here that
the ancient port of Tarshish famous in the time of Solomon (II Chronicles 9:21), was founded by
them.
History tells us that
the heart of Iberian civilization was Andalusia, a province in southern
Spain. The Iberians were good
sailors. Their arts and industries, as
shown by the excavation enterprises since the beginning of the present century,
indicates a striking similarity to those of the Phoenicians and the Greeks.
The influence of
the Iberians in Gaul, and the role they played there, was always minimal and
negligible.
“Of all the countries
occupied by the Iberian race, Spain is the one in which this race maintained predominance
in number and language for the longest period of time, thus autonomy,” declares
Jubainville.
To conclude, we
emphasize the fact that neither the Ligurians nor the Iberians, who were
enemies, were the ancestors, properly speaking, of the French. As both Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo
affirm, the Ligurians and the Celtics (who lived around the Gauls) are
a very different race.
The Gauls — the
people of the Celtic race — are
those who actually are the ancestors of the French nation, since the Celts
and the Israelites are the same people!