I suppose the best way to explain different races is that when they were scattered as a result of Babal falling, they adapted to their new surroundings. So that in Africa where is is very hot tey got dark skin and in in colder climates they had less pigment becuase the sun is not as bright there.
That's what evolution teaches, but it's not true. If it were, then Eskimos would have less Indian features and more Caucasian.
Native Americans did indeed come over the landbridge from Siberia, where very similar Shamanistic beliefs are still practised in some areas, so even today there is still a link after all those years.
The Harvard School agrees with evolution theory, a total disconnect from the idea of the peoples at Babel being scattered to the four corners of the earth per Gen.10-11. What they call someone like me is a Diffusionist. Because of Harvard's mainstream evolutionist bent, they have a hard time recognizing pre-Columbian (pre-Columbus) archaeology in the Americas. One of their own Harvard trained archaeologists from New Zealand, Dr. Barry Fell, covered a lot of the ancient artifacts in the Americas, proving how people from different continents in ancient times were not so disconnected from each other. There's aritifacts of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, and Egyptians in the Americas. See his book
America B.C.
As for the people who lived in Nod. I've heard that they might have been children of Adam and Lillith. Lillith however is only a legend that appears in a lot of Old testament Appocryphal writings that never came near to becoming scripture. But for those who might not be familiar with her, she was said to be Adam's first wife and ran away from the guarden of Eden because Adam wanted her to be subordinate to him and she wouldn't play ball. This was prior to the creation of Eve, so Lilith never fell like Adam and Eve did. She became known as Lilitu in Babylonian mytholgy and was a night demon that seduced young men and killed infants. Even today there are Orthodox Jews who are afraid of her and place charms on their babiy's cribs to ward her off.
This is jsut speculation but I think the Lillith stories came into the Jewish imagination while they were exiled in babylon and beame a kind of folk belief which is why there is so little about Lillith in scripture.
Anyway Lillith is supposed to have had many children with Adam and in some legends she is Cain's mother and sometiems she is his wife.
One of the the things to remember, is that Israel failed to destroy all the nations of Canaan like God told them to do (Judges 2 & 3). So the remnant of Canaanites left became bondservants to Israel (1 Kings 9:19-22), and then some of them worked their way up into the position of scribes and priests. That's about the Nethinims and priests that couldn't find their lineage of Israel per Ezra 2. Then, when the house of Judah went captive to Babylon for 70 years, that began another era of corruptions creeping in, with some of the ideas in the Babylonian Talmud, and with taking wives of the Canaanites, as many of the house of Judah took wives of the Canaanites during that time (Ezra 10). Most likely from all that, it's where some Jewish customs with a pagan bent originated among them. Look at Ezekiel 8 of what God showed Ezekiel that Israel was doing in the temple involving paganism. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to get rid of all that pagan stuff from among us, for both Israelites and Gentiles.
The Babylonian creation account is full of pagan symbology, it's difficult to make real heads or tails out of it by the names and some of its descriptions, but the type of acts and events it describes points directly to events with Adam and Eve and God's Garden.
I think Nod mean't wandering, so Cain went into the land of wandering. Maybe it isn't a place, just Cain wandering through the widlerness.
Sargon was the first Semite to appear among the ancient Sumerians. The Sumerian record then reveals later Semites began appearing there afterwards also. The remarkable thing with the Assyriologist like Sayce, is that his original date translation for Sargon first appearing among the Sumerians was 3800 B.C., and then he later changed his translation just to fit the then-held Assyriology view (see
Sargon The Magnificent by Bristowe).
In answer to the origin of Arabians... you might find this interesting...
ARABIA
V. Inhabitants. - The inhabitants of Arabia are divided into three classes. There are in the first place a number of tribes which became extinct, and which are not connected genealogically with those which survived.
1. Classification: The latter are divided into two great stems, the south Arabian and indigenous branch descended from Kahtan, and the north Arabian or immigrant tribes descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham. There is naturally a good deal of inconsistency in the various traditions of the origins of these tribes and their subsequent history.
2. Extinct Tribes: Of the extinct tribes the most familiar name is that of Amlak or Amlik (Amalek). By the Arabian genealogists he is variously described as a grandson of Shem and as a son of Ham. In Gen 36:12 he is a son of Esau's son, Eliphaz, by Timna. They are said to be first met with in Chaldaea, from which they were expelled on the rise of the Assyrian power under Nimrod. They migrated into Ar, occupying in turn the Bahrein, Oman, the Yemen, and finally the Hijaz, where they are said to have been the first settlers at Yathrib (Medina) and also to have occupied land round Mecca and Kheibar. In the time of Abraham they were expelled from Mecca on the arrival of two new tribes from the South, those of Jurhum and Katura (Gen 25:1). Later, it is said, David, during the rebellion of Absalom, took up his quarters in Kheibar and ruled over the surrounding districts. According to another tradition Moses sent an expedition against the Amalekites in the Hijaz, on which occasion the Israelites, disobeying his orders, spared their king Arkam (compare Rekem, Num 31:8; Josh 13:21)-a reminiscence of the incident in the life of Saul (1 Sam 15).
In any case the Amalekites were supplanted in the northern Hijaz by Jewish tribes, who continued there until the time of Mohammad. The Amalekites migrated into Egypt and southern Palestine The Pharaohs of the time of Abraham, Joseph and Moses are represented to have been Amalekites. Finally, broken up by Josh, they fled into northern Africa, where they are said to have grown into the Berber races. The rest of the tribes which became extinct like the Amalekites are of less interest for the present purpose, being unconnected with the Bible narrative. They are mentioned in the Koran, in which book their destruction is attributed to their idolatrous proclivities and to their rejection of the monotheistic prophets. The best known and most important are 'Ad and Thamud 'Ad is variously named the son of Amalek and the son of Uz (Gen 10:23). The tribe dwelt in the deserts behind the Yemen. They became polytheists; the prophet Hud was sent to them; they rejected him, and were destroyed by a hurricane. The remnant grew into a new tribe, whose chief, Lokman, built the great dam at Marib. In the end they were conquered by a tribe of Kahtan. Thamud was closely related to 'Ad, being a son of Aram the father of Uz. They were driven out of the Yemen and settled in the northern Hijaz; they rejected their prophet Salih and were destroyed by an earthquake accompanied by a loud noise. The rock-cut sepulchral monuments of Medain Salih in the Wadi el-Kora are still pointed out as their dwellings. They were, therefore, considered to have been troglodites like the Horites of the Bible. A second pair were the brother tribes of Tasm and Jadis, grandsons of Aramaic Tasm oppressing Jadis, the latter rose and almost exterminated the former, only to be in turn destroyed by a king of the Yemen. Their home was Yemama.
3. South Arabian Tribes: The southern Arabs claim to be descended from an ancestor called Kahtan son of 'Abir, son of Shalikh, son of Arfakhshad, son of Shem, son of Noah. Kahtan is undoubtedly the Biblical Joktan (Gen 10:26), and the names of his descendants reappear as Arabic place names. Indeed the tenth chapter of Gen throws much light on the earliest history of Arabia and the movements of the tribes. Thus the fact that Sheba and Dedan appear as grandsons of Cush, that is, as Abyssinian tribes descended from Ham, in Gen 10:7 and again as descendants of Keturah and Abraham in Gen 25:3 points to the fact that parts of these tribes migrated from the one country to the other. Havilah in Gen 10:7 may similarly be connected with Havilah in Gen 10:29, the intercourse between Southwest Arabia and the opposite coast of Africa being always very close. Among the sons of Joktan are mentioned Almodad, Hazarmaveth, Uzal (Izal), Sheba, Ophir, Havilah. In Almodad we have probably the Arabic El-Mudad, a name which occurs among the descendants of Jurhum, son of Yaktan (Joktan). Hazarmaveth is obviously Hadramaut. Uzal is the ancient name of San`a, the capital of the Yemen. Sheba is the Arabic Saba or Marib. Ophir and Havilah were probably in South or East Arabia. In Gen 10:30 it is said that the camping grounds of these tribes stretched from Mesha as you go toward Sephar, the mountain of the East, that is, probably from the North of the Persian Gulf to the center of South Arabia, Sephar being Zafar, the capital of the South Arab kingdom near to the present Mirbat.
4. Migration of Tribes: Many of the most illustrious tribes are descended from Kahtan, and some of them still survive. A constant stream of migration went on toward the North. Thus the tribe of Jurhum left the Yemen on account of drought and settled in the Hijaz and the Tihama, from which they drove out the Amalekites, and were in turn driven out by Koda`a, another Kahtanite tribe. After that they disappear from history and are reckoned among the extinct tribes. Koda'a was a descendant of Himyar. The Himyarites founded, about the 1 st century BC, a kingdom which lasted for five centuries. The king bore the title of Tubba`, and the capital was successively Marib (Saba), Zafar and San`a. One of their monarchs was the queen Bilkis whom the Arabian historians identify with the queen of Sheba who visited Solomon, though she must have lived much later. The story of the meeting is given in the Koran, chapter 38. A chief occasion on which many of the tribes left the district Northeast of the Yemen was the bursting of the great dam, built by Lokman at Marib, about the 2 nd century AD. A section of these grew into the Arabian kingdom of Ghassan, whose capital was Damascus and many of whose kings bore the name Al-Harith (Aretas, 2 Cor 11:32). This kingdom lasted till the time of Mohammad (7 th century) and was in alliance with the Roman and Greek empires. On the opposite side of the Syrian desert the Lakhmid kingdom of Al-Hira on the Euphrates (also of Kahtanite origin) was allied to Persia. The two Arabian "buffer-states" were almost constantly at war with one another.
5. North Arabian Tribes: Among the Arabs Ishmael holds the place occupied by Isaac in the Hebrew tradition. It was to the valley, afterward the site of the town of Mecca, that Abraham conducted Hagar and her son, and that Ishmael grew up and became the father of a great nation. The locality is full of spots connected by tradition with his life history, the ground where Hagar searched for water, the well Zemzem of which Gabriel showed her the place, the mount Thabir where Abraham would have sacrificed his son (Ishmael), and the graves of Hagar and Ishmael. The Jurhum, among whom Ishmael grew up, gave him seven goats: these were the capital with which he began life. He married a woman of Jurhum. He had twelve sons (Gen 25:16) of whom Kaidar and Nabat are the best known, perhaps the Cedrei and Nabataei of Pliny; other sons were Dumah and Tema (which see). The subsequent history of the Ishmaelites is lost for several generations until we come to 'Adnan, who is said to have been defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, when the latter invaded Arabia. All the Ishmaelite tribes are descended from 'Adnan. They are the north Arabian tribes, as opposed to the Kahtanite or south Arabian. One of them, Koreish, under their chief, Kosay, became master of Mecca, driving out Koda`a. Later, as the tribe of the Prophet, they became the rulers of Arabia and the aristocracy of the Muslim empire; and the descendants of Mohammad remain to this day the only hierarchy known to Islam.
6. Other Tribes: There are one or two other branches which are not included in the above classification: such are the Nabateans (see NEBAIOTH), and the descendants of Esau and Keturah. The Nabateans are not generally reckoned among the Arabian tribes. They were an Aramaean stock, the indigenous inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and spoke not Arabic but Aramaic. They founded a kingdom in Arabia of which the capital was Petra (see SELA). This was the most famous of their colonies, and it endured, at first in alliance with the Romans and later in subjection to them, for 500 years-from the 2 nd century BC to the 3 rd century AD. Petra was an important trading emporium, but, when the trade left the overland routes and was carried by way of the Red Sea, it quickly fell into poverty and oblivion. The descendants of Esau are named in Gen 36:1 ff; they were allied to the Hittites and Ishmaelites. Among the tribes descended from Keturah are Jokshan and Midian, Sheba and Dedan (Gen 25:2 ff).
7. Foreign Elements: In Arabia there was and still, in spite of religious disabilities, is a large Jewish population. Before the age of Mohammad they lived chiefly in the Northwest, the two best known tribes-An-Nadir and Koreiza-occupying Yathrib (Medina). After the rise of Islam they were expelled from Arabia; but at the present time there are probably some 60,000 Jews in the Yemen alone. There has always been a close connection between the South and West of Arabia and the opposite African coast. Especially in the 6 th century there was a large influx of Abyssinians into the Yemen, as there still is into the western districts. A like intermixture of population went on between Zanzibar and Oman.
(from International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Electronic Database Copyright (c)1996 by Biblesoft)