Europe & its islands by sea. Before those days it seems to
have been thinly peopled from the northern coasts of the Eu[x]ine
sea[ . ] by scythians who wandered without houses & sheltered
themselves [incaves] from rain & wild beasts in thickets & caves
of the earth, such as were the caves in mount Ida in Crete
in w^ch Minos was educated & buried, \the cave of [Cacus] &/ the Catacombs in Italy
near Rome & Naples, afterwards turned into burying places,
the Syringes & many other caves in the sides of the moun-
tains of Egypt, |the| caves of the Troglodytes between Egypt &
the red sea, & those of the Phaurusÿ in Afric mentioned by
^a 1 Strabo, & the caves & thickets & rocks & high places & pits
in which the Israelites hid themselves from the Philistims
in the days of Saul. I Sam. XIII.6. But of the state of mankind
in Europe in those days there is now no memory \history/ remaining.

The an[t]iquities of Lybia were not much older the[n]
those of Europe. For Diodorus ^a 2 tells us that Vranus the fa-
ther of Hyperion & grandfather of Helius & Selene (that
is Ammon the father of S[e]sa[c]) was their first king, &
& caus[e]d the people who till then w[a | o]ndered up & down,
to dwell in towns & cities, & reducing them from a lawless
& salvage [sic] course of life taught them to use & lay up the fruits
of the earth & to do many other things usefull for mans life. And
Herodotus ^b 3 tells us that all Media was peopled by δήμοι [ , ] towns with-
out walls, till they revolted from the Assyrians, which was
about 267 years after the death of Solomon; & that after
that revolt they set up a king over them & built Ecbatane
with walls for his seat, the first town which they walled about.
And about 72 years after the death of Solomon Benhadad king
of Syria ^c 4 had two & thirty kings in his army against Ahab. And
when Ioshuah conquered the land of Canaa[n], every city of the
Canaanites had its own king like the cities of Europe before
they conquered one another; & one of those kings (Adoni[b]ezek
king of Bezek) he \had/ conquered seventy other kings a little before
[Iudg. 1.7.] & threfore towns began to be built in that land
not many ages before the days of Ioshuah. For the Patriarchs
wandred there in tents, & fed their flocks wherever they
pleased, the fields of Phenicia not being yet fully appro-
propriated [sic] for want of people. The count[ri]es first inhabited
by mankind, were in those days so thinly peopled that four
kings from the coasts of Shinar & Elam invaded & spoiled
the Rephaims & the inha[b]itants of the countried of Moab,
Ammon, Edom, & the kingdoms of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah,
& Zeboim, & yet were pursued & beaten by Abraham
with an armed force of only 318 men, the whole force
which Abraham & the Princes with him could raise.
And Ægypt was so thinly peopled before the birth of
Moses, that Pharaoh said of the Israelites: Behold the
people of the children of Israel are more & mightier then we : & to prevent their multiplying & growing too
strong, caused their male children to be drowned.

These footsteps there are of the first peopling
of the earth by mankind not long before the days of
Abraham, & of the overspreading it with villages
towns & cities, & their growing into kingdoms first
smaller & then greater untill the rise of the monarchies
of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Greece, & Rome, the first great empires on this side India. Abraham was
the fift from Peleg, & all mankind lived together in Chaldea
under the government of Noah & his sons untill the days of