Chapter III

Tiras is the seventh and youngest son born to Japheth. I had read Herman Hoeh’s article, Origin of the Nations, July 1957, in the 1980s while at University. When looking at the identities more closely in the 1990s, I did not know who Tiras was definitively, until I had studied Japheth’s other sons, for Tiras is next to impossible to identify solely from the Bible, as he is listed just twice in the genealogies of Genesis Ten and 1 Chronicles One.

It was therefore a process of elimination, and once the other six sons of Japheth were identified, it cemented Tiras as the Indigenous Amerindians of North, Central and South America.

I ultimately agreed with Dr Hoeh’s findings on the Native American Indians – though not with the Polynesians being identified as Tiras. The descendants of Tiras are unusual, in that they are uniquely scattered throughout two vast continents and not identifiable in just one nation.

Tiras is mentioned in the Book of Jubilees 9:16

And For Tiras there came forth the seventh portion, four great islands in the midst of the sea, which reach to the portion of Ham…

The islands at the time of writing would have been the Greek Isles in the Mediterranean Sea [refer Chapter II Japheth Orientalium]. Other sons of Japheth also migrated to the Grecian Archipelago before moving further into Southern Europe and then migrating in a wide arc eastward towards central Asia [refer Chapter VII Javan: Archipelago South East Asia & Polynesia]. The portion of Ham mentioned would have been North Africa.

A H Sayce confirms the difficulty in tracing Tiras, for he says on page 48: 

‘Tiras is the only son of Japhet whose name continues to be obscure…’

Herman Hoeh’s research regarding Tiras – capitalisation & emphasis his, bold mine:

‘The word “Tyrus” used for the city of Tyre in Palestine has no relationship with Tiras, the son of Japheth. 

Tiras journeyed to Asia Minor… there is more historical evidence concerning the migrations of Tiras than of any other son of Japheth. Yet the world has never guessed to what land the descendants of Tiras finally migrated!’

Tyre was southward, on the coast of present day Israel and in the opposite direction from that travelled by Tiras.

‘The river Dniester, which flows into the Black Sea near the border of Romania was anciently called Tiras. That was the main seat of the people of Tiras for many centuries [known as Tyragetae]. These people migrated along the shores of the Black Sea, the Aegaean and the Mediterranean Seas – before the coming of the Greeks. The Greeks finally displaced them. Where were the people of Tiras driven to?

Before we can answer these questions we must first learn the tribal names into which the family of Tiras subdivided. Here are some of their names: Dyras, Teres, Tauri, Carians, Calybes, Thyni, Amazons, Maias, Milyaes, Mauri, Gasgars… (See SMITH’s CLASSICAL GREEK AND ROMAN DICTIONARY for most of these names.) Where, today, do we find these same people located among the nations? In the NEW WORLD: where the American Indians are!’

Regarding the Milyaes, Mauri and Gasgars. We will find that they are Malays and Polynesians and not the same as Amerindians, or descended from Tiras. 

Additional interesting Indian tribal names include: Teyas in Texas; Tiwa in New Mexico; Tarahumara, Terocodane and Teroodane in Mexico; Terraba in Central America; Tairona in Colombia; Taruma in Guiana; Tariano, Tariana and Terena in Brazil.
‘The Amazons… in South America who gave their names to the Amazon River. The Mayas live in Mexico and Guatemala. The Tinne’ Indians – the Greeks called them Thyni… live… in Canada. The Tarascan Indians of Mexico are called after “Taras, the name of a tribal god”, wrote Daniel G. Brinton in THE AMERICAN RACE… In South America live the Dures Indians, the Doraqsques, and the Turas, the Tauri and the Dauri; the Trios and Atures. In the Caribbean live Calybes – the same tribe that once lived by the Black Sea.

The people of Tiras are painted on the earliest monuments of the Mediterranean. The (colour) of their skin? – “of … reddish-brown complexion… with… their long black hair done up into a crest!” (quoted from THE SEA-KINGS OF CRETE, by James Baikie, page 74). From page 212 we read: “Judging from the surviving pictures, the Minoan men [the Island of Crete where the people of Tiras early settled prior to the actual Minoans – refer Chapter XV The Philistines: Latino-Hispano America] were bronzed, with dark hair and beardless faces.”’

‘The Mexicans called their temple Teocallis. This word is directly related to the Greek, meaning “place of worship of God”. The Greeks called the sons of Tiras, “sea people”. 

The native Indian name Anahuac. which the Indians of Mexico apply to the Valley of Mexico, means “around the water”.

An analysis of the ancient Indian traditions points universally to “an eastern origin” – across the Atlantic, not the Pacific. (See THE AMERICAN RACE, pages 98-99.) 

In fact, the word Atlantic was used 2000 years before Columbus discovered America… it is an American Indian word. Its root is atlan meaning “water”. Only a slight migration may have taken place across the Pacific from Asia to America. The overwhelming movement has been out of the Mediterranean to the new world!’

Hoeh raises a significant point regarding the migratory direction of Tiras’ descendants. Japheth’s remaining six sons all travelled eastwards, across the vast Eurasian land mass. There were exceptions. The Polynesians travelled eastwards, though via the sea. Japheth’s Grandson Tarshish, also sailed but travelling westward; establishing trade routes and ports along the Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Iberian Peninsula, before doubling back eastwards.

There has been considerable conjecture and discussion by historians and scientists alike, regarding the Indians in the Americas; most maintain they approached via Russia across the Bering Strait – just 50 miles across – while others maintain a direction from Europe over the Atlantic Ocean as Herman Hoeh proposed.

Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews, held with other ancients that Tiras was the founder of the Thracians. The very original Thracians may have been from Tiras. Whereas, later Thracians included red headed people who had the same name ascribed to them. Please refer to point number two in the introduction. While other scholars consider Tiras as the founder of an ancient race of Pelasgian pirates and sea peoples called the Tursenich or Tursenioi, who once roamed the islands and coasts of the Aegean Sea. The name Thrusa or Turusha has been seen among Egyptian records, showing that they terrorised and invaded Syria and Egypt about 1250 BCE. They are referred to as Tursha in an inscription of Ramesses III and as Teresh of the Sea on the Merneptah Stele. Though Tiras would have well departed from the Mediterranean Sea by 1250 BCE, as would have all the sons of Japheth. Others have connected Tiras with the cities of Tarsus, Tarshish and even Troas, the city of Troy. 

Some researchers link Tiras to the Etruscans or Truscans of Italy – who had been living in Lydia as the Tyrsenoi, before emigrating to Italy in the Eighth century BCE. We will learn the Etruscans are not descended from Tiras [refer Chapter XVII Abraham & Keturah – Benelux & Scandinavia]. 

Tiras in Hebrew means: ‘desire, desirable’ or ‘moisturiser’ The verb rasas means ‘to moisten’ and the noun rasis means a ‘drop (of dew)’ or ‘fragment.’

A Chickasaw Woman

The Bible does not mention any sons of Tiras, though The Book of Jasher 7:9 and 10:14 records the sons of Tiras as Benib, Gera, Lupirion and Gilak asserting that Rushash, Cushni, and Ongolis are also among his descendants. An earlier rabbinic compilation, the Yosippon claims Tiras’ descendants to be the Rossi of Kiv or the Kievan Rus, listing them together with his brother Meshech’s supposed descendants as ‘the Rossi; the Saqsni and the Iglesusi.’ The name Cushni is interesting as it is similar to Cush, a son of Ham. We will refer back to this when investigating Cush [Chapter XIII India & Pakistan: Cush & Phut]. The linking of Tiras with Meshech – a son of Japheth – and the Russians is an incorrect tangent, though an understandable one as we will find when studying Meshech [refer Chapter X China: Magog, Tubal & Meshech].

A mediaeval Hebrew compilation, the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, provides an alternative tradition of Tiras’ sons, naming them as Maakh, Tabel, Bal’anah, Shampla, Meah, and Elash. These names were based on Pseudo-Philo [circa 75 CE], which lists Tiras’ sons as Maac, Tabel, Ballana, Samplameac, and Elaz. 

The Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari [circa 915 CE], states a tradition that Tiras had a son named Batawil and his daughters Qarnabil, Bakht, and Arsal, became the wives of sons of Ham: Cush, Phut, and Canaan respectively.

Cush is mentioned again and we will return to this relationship. It is interesting Tiras may have had four to six sons, for though his descendants are not prolific, they are scattered over a vast section of the earth with a variety of racial characteristics; as the Native American Indians, stretching from Canada all the way to Argentina. If Tiras had three grand daughters, who married Cush, Put and Canaan, then his descendants in part, are innumerable. This is certainly plausible, as Noah’s grandsons would have had to take wives from their cousins when repopulating the earth.

Genesis 9:1,7

New Century Version

1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Have many children; grow in number and fill the earth. 7 “As for you, Noah, I want you and your family to have many children, to grow in number on the earth, and to become many.”

The nation with the most Amerindians is Mexico. We will look at Mexico and its combination of people in more depth, though for now concentrating on its Indian population. They are known as Mexican Native Americans, Native Mexicans or the Indigenous peoples of Mexico. These peoples trace their communities back to the population existing in Central America prior to the arrival of the Spanish. Interestingly, The 2nd article of the Mexican constitution classifies and numbers Indians not according to racial-ethnicity but rather cultural-ethnicity of ‘indigenous communities that preserve their indigenous languages, traditions, beliefs, and cultures.’

The INEGI [official census institute], reported in 2015 that 25,694,928 people in Mexico self-identified as being indigenousof many different ethnic groups;which constitute 21.5% of Mexico’s population. 

At the time of the Spanish conquest in the late fifteenth century, the indigenous population of Mexico had been estimated at about twenty-five million people and has only reached this figure again, over five hundred years later. A remarkable statistic and a tragic indictment of one peoples actions against another family member of Tiras [refer Chapter XV The Philistines: Latino-Hispano America].

The Amerindian population of other nations in the Americas include 9.8 million in Bolivia the second highest; 5.2 million in the United States; 2.13 million in Canada;  997,000 in Brazil and 955,000 in Argentina; with a total of approximately Seventy million people.

Historically, the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints has taught that the American Indian are the descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel. 

Following are the opening remarks in an article by William Lobdell, a Times staff writer, 2006 – emphasis & bold mine:

‘From the time he was a child in Peru, the Mormon Church instilled in Jose A. Loayza the conviction that he and millions of other Native Americans were descended from a lost tribe of Israel that reached the New World more than 2,000 years ago.

“We were taught all the blessings of that Hebrew lineage belonged to us and that we were special people,” said Loayza, now a Salt Lake City attorney. “It not only made me feel special, but it gave me a sense of transcendental identity, an identity with God.”

A few years ago, Loayza said, his faith was shakenandhis identity stripped awayby DNA evidence showing that the ancestors of American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East.’

We will study the unique lineage of the apparent ‘lost tribes of Israel’. They are not related directly with the Amerindian descended from Tiras. The DNA evidence highlights the American Indians’ origin in common with the people of East Asia, but is not accurate regarding their origin of location. 

The Diego antigen [blood group] system, composed of 21 blood factors or antigens are inherited through alleles. The Diego antigen is common in Indigenous peoples of the Americas [North and South America] and East Asians, but very rare or absent in most other populations, reflecting that the two groups share common ancestry [refer Homo neanderthalensis I, II & III and Chapter X China: Magog, Tubal & Meshech]. The Amerindians from Tiras are a line of the East Asian family of peoples that have sprung from Japheth. The Diego antigen discovered in 1953, is in all the peoples of East Asia in varying percentages. 

The Di^a antigen is very rare in African and European populations and the Di^a antigen is either very rare or absent in Aboriginal Australians, Papuans, natives of New Britain and Polynesians. 

Whereas, the incidence of Diego^a+, relatively high in Siberian Eskimos and Aleut people [the levels of Diego^a+ in Aleuts is comparable to South American Indians], occurs at a much lower frequency [less than 0.5%] among Alaskan Eskimos and has not been found in the Inuit of Canada.

Retina, Fifth Edition, M Cristina Kenney & Nitin Udar, 2013 – emphasis & bold mine:

‘Haplogroups are mtDNA sequence polymorphism variations that have occurred over [thousands of] years and correlate with the… origins of populations traced through the maternal lineages. The oldest haplogroups [originate] from [African peoples]… [of which]… European, Asian, and Native American haplogroups have evolved. 

Each haplogroup has related patterns of mtDNA sequences (haplotypes) that represent that population. [Y-DNA] Haplogroup Q is found in Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. One of its sub-clades, group Q3 is almost exclusively associated with the Native Americans…’

The mtDNA Haplogroups for the Indigenous Amerindians of North, Central and South America.

Regarding the genetic history of the Indigenous peoples of America, the occurrence of the mtDNA [maternal] Haplogroups A, B, C and D among the eastern Asian and Amerindian populations has been recognised for some time. Unlike haplogroup X, that is not strongly associated with east Asia, yet is the fifth most frequent mtDNA Haplogroup in the Indigenous Amerindian peoples. Rather, Haplogroup X is more strongly present in the Near East, the Caucasus region and Mediterranean Europe. 

Ninety-five percent of all Native Americans possess the sub-Haplogroups A2, B2, C1b, C1c, C1d, and D1. Haplogroup A being the predominant group overall in North and Central America and B, C and D are predominantly split in South America. 

A study in 2009, A great diversity of Amerindian mitochondrial DNA ancestry is present in the Mexican mestizo population, found that in Mexico the ‘frequency of the Amerindian haplogroups A2, B2, C1 and D1 was 51.1, 17.8, 18.5 and 5.9%, respectively.’ The remaining five percent possess the sub-Haplogroups X2a, D2a, C4c, and D4h3a. As these four sub-Haplogroups are rare, studies tend to exclude them. 

Whenever the results for any particular Amerindian population do not equal one hundred percent, it is because the remaining percent belongs to these rare sub-Haplogroups. This means that all Native Americans are descended from a small group of people, exhibiting a low genetic diversity, because they possessed only five mtDNA Haplogroups. A 2005 study conducted by Rutgers University, ‘concluded that the entire [Native American Indian] population of North America descended from just 70 individuals who arrived there about 14,000 years ago [after the global flood cataclysm]…’

In other words, these five mitochondrial DNA Haplogroups of the Indigenous Amerindian, are part of a single founding east Asian population. The link with East Asians, means scientists have assumed that migration had to be eastwards across the Bering Strait, based on the geography of similar related peoples. 

It does not seem to have occurred to the same scientists, that just because the Native American Indians are related genetically to east Asians, that it means they traveled together, or in the same direction – or even that it was the only migratory path.

Scientists base their theory heavily on the X2a and C4c lineages having a parallel genetic history, using this as proof that an Atlantic glacial entry route into North America is untenable – as C4c is a key Haplogroup in the east Asian portion of the mtDNA phylogeny.

There is support for Indian peoples in the British Isles, who were the original Picts. They painted and tattooed their bodies, which was copied later by the fair-skinned Caledonian peoples, also known as Picts by the Romans. 

Everything You Know Is Still Wrong, Lloyd Pye, 1997 & 2017, page 68 – emphasis & bold mine: 

‘Folsom points were supplanted in the 1930’s by an earlier, very distinctive type that came to be called “Clovis” points because the first were found near Clovis, New Mexico. These presented another unwanted mystery because they had no precedent in either Alaska or anywhere in Asia. The only precedent anyone could find was the Solutrean point culture of southwestern Europe. [The Solutrean hypothesis is the alternative theory, that the Amerindians approached the Americas from Europe]. By then every scientist in the world was wedded to the idea that the indigenous populations of the Americas came by the land bridge connecting Russian and Alaska (Beringia) during the tail end of the last Ice Age, so this was another one of those inconvenient facts that had to be swept under the rug and kept there.’

The base or core Y-DNA [paternal] Haplogroups for the Native American Indians are Q and C. There are a number of Indian tribes that also have R1. This is somewhat of a mystery and thought to be the result of European colonisation at different stages of their history. Haplogroup C is a key Haplogroup for east Asians, yet for the American Indian, Haplogroup C is secondary to Q and can be rare. Therefore, Y-DNA Haplogroup Q, is the defining marker Haplogroup for Amerindians. 

Added to this, is the fact that only some branches of both Haplogroup Q and C are Native American. Specifically, subgroups Q1a3a and C3b alone, are found among the Native peoples of North and South America. Other subgroups of Haplogroup Q and C are found elsewhere in the world, such as Europe and Asia. This makes it very easy to determine if your direct paternal ancestor was, or was not, Native American. 

The Algonquian of northeastern North America possess the following Haplogroup sequence: R1 [38%] – Q [34%] – C [8%]. The Apache of the southwestern United States: Q [78%] – C [15%] – R1 [5%]. 

The Cherokee of the eastern United States: Q [50%] – R1 [47% ] – C [2%]. The Navajo of the southwestern United States: Q [92%] – R1 [3%] – C [1%]; and the Sioux of central North America: R1 [50%] – Q [25%] – C [11%]. 

Native North Americans overall, have the following sequence: Q [77%] – R1 [13% ] – C [6%]; and in the United States specifically: Q [58%] – R1 [22%] – C [9%]. 

In contrast, the Inuit of the Artic have: Q [80%] – R1 [11%]; while the Canadian Inuit have: Q [55%] – R1 [34%] – C [2%]. The Mixe of Mexico are untouched by western influence with remarkably: Q [100%]; whereas the Mixtec have: Q [93%] – R1 [7%]; and the Zapotec: Q [75%] – R1 [6%].

As the research and understanding of the relatively new field of Haplogroups advances, refinements in the myriads of clades continues to evolve. Subsequent studies have highlighted that Q1a3a now includes both Native American and European members. Q1a3a1 is now a Native American only Haplogroup. There is also another recently discovered Haplogroup of Q1a3a4, that has also been designated purely a Native American group.

Prior to 1952 and the use of DNA in hereditary research, scientists used blood proteins to study human genetic variation.The ABO blood group system is credited to the Austrian Karl Landsteiner, who found three different blood types in 1900.Blood groups are inherited from both parents and the ABO blood type is controlled by a single gene – the ABO gene – with three alleles: i, IA and IB.

Research by Ludwick and Hanka Herschfeld during World War I, found that the frequencies of blood groups A, B and O differed markedly around the world.The O blood type – resulting from the absence of both A and B alleles – is very common, with a rate of sixty-three percent in all human populations. 

Type O happens to be the primary blood type among the indigenous populations of the Americas, in particular within Central and South American populations, with a frequency of nearly one hundred percent. In contrast, in indigenous North American populations the frequency of type A ranges from sixteen to eighty-two percent.This data supports the initial Amerindians descended from an isolated population with a minimal number of individuals.

Map showing the dominance of blood type O amongst the Native American Indians

There are two main hypotheses for the exceptionally high rate of type O blood amongst the Amerindians. One is Genetic drift, in which the small number of Native American populations meant the almost complete absence of any other blood gene or type being passed down through the generations. The other theory is the Bottleneck explanation, which proposes that there were high frequencies of blood type A and B among Native Americans but severe population decline during the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, caused by the introduction of disease from Europe resulted in a massive death toll of those with blood types A and B; leaving a large amount of type O survivors.

The mind of a person with understanding gets knowledge; the wise person listens to learn more.

Proverbs 18:15 New Century Version

“Rejecting God’s truth because of mankind’s hypocrisy is like rejecting mathematical truth because of mankind’s incompetence.” 

Orrin Woodward

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