This is from Henry Morris about the origins of the Chinese. I found it pretty interesting.
Below are comments from The Genesis Record by Henry Morris. He writes regarding Gen. 9:24:
Descendants of Ham included the Egyptians and Sumerians, who founded the first two great empires of antiquity, as well as other great nations such as the Phoenicians, Hittites, and Canaanites. The modern African tribes and the Mongol tribes (including today the Chinese and Japanese), as well as the American Indians and the South Sea Islanders, are probably dominantly Hamitic in origin.
Among the many ways in which the Hamites have been the great “servants” of mankind are the following:
(1) They were the original explorers and settlers of practically all parts of the world, following the dispersion at Babel.
(2) They were the first cultivators of most of the basic food staples of the world, such as potatoes, corn, beans, cereals, and others, as well as the first ones to domesticate most animals.
(3) They developed most of the basic types of structural forms and building tools and materials.
(4) They were the first to develop most of the usual fabrics for clothing and the various sewing and weaving devices.
(5) They discovered and invented a wide variety of medicines and surgical practices and instruments.
(6) They invented most of the concepts of basic practical mathematics, as well as surveying and navigation.
(7) The machinery of commerce and trade-money, banks, postal systems, and so forth—was developed by them.
(8) They developed paper, ink, block printing, movable type, and other accouterments of writing and communication.
If one traces back far enough, he will find that practically every other basic device or system needed for man’s physical sustenance or convenience originated with one of the Hamitic peoples. Truly they have been the “servants” of mankind in a most amazing way.
Regarding Gen. 10:16-18 Morris writes:
The Biblical mention of a people in the Far East named “Sinim” (Isaiah 49:12), together with references in ancient secular histories to people in the Far East called “Sinae,” at least suggests the possibility that some of Sin’s descendants migrated eastward, while others went south into the land of Canaan. It is significant that the Chinese people have always been identified by the prefix “Sino-” (e.g., Sino-Japanese War; Sinology, the study of Chinese history). The name “Sin” is frequently encountered in Chinese names in the form “Siang” or its equivalent.
The evidence is tenuous but, of all the names in the Table of Nations, it does seem that two sons of Canaan, Heth (Hittites = Khittae = Cathay) and Sin (Sinites = Sinim = China), are the most likely to have become ancestors of the Oriental peoples. Since it seems reasonable that divine inspiration would include in such a table information concerning the ancestry of all the major streams of human development, it is reasonable to conclude that the Mongoloid peoples (and therefore also the American Indians) have come mostly from the Hamitic line.
