Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-11-25
The Outline of History-By H. G. Wells
|. The Romance of Mother Earth

1t is quite possible that over western and
southern Europe language groups extended
5000 or 10000 years ago that have COM
pIetely vanished before Aryan tongues.
Later on we shall note, in passing the posi-
bility of three lost language groups represent
ed by CD Ancient Cretan, Lydian, and the
like (though these may have belonged, says
Sir H. H. Johnston, to the "Basque-Cau-
casian-Dravidian CD group"), CD Sumer-
ian, and CD Elamite, The suggestion has
been made-it is a mere guess-that ancient
Sumerian may have been a linking language
between the early Basque-Caucasian and
early Monaghan groups.
A "Missing Link' of Language
1t this is true, then we have in this
Basque Caucasian Dravidian Sumerian-
proto . Monaghan" group a still more ancient
and more ancestral system of speech than the
fundamental Hamir1c. We have something
more like the linguistic missing link" more
like an ancestral language than anything else
we can imagine at the present time. 1t may
have been related to the Aryan and Semitic
and Hamitic languages much as the primitive
lizards of later Palaeozoic times were related
to the mammals, birds and dinosaurs re-
spectiVely.
The Hottentot language is said to have az
finities with the Hamitic tongues from which
it is separated by the whole breadth Of
Bantu-speaking central Africa. A HottentOt-
like language with Brsnman affinities is still
spoken in equatorial East Africa, and this
strengthens the idea that the whole of East
Africa was once Hamitic-speaking. The
Bantu languages and peoples spread, in COM
paratfvely recent times, from some center of
origin in West Central Africa and cut or the
HOttentots from the other Hamitic peoples.
But it is at least equally probable that the
Hottentot is a separate language group.
Among other remote and isolated little
patches of language ere the Papuan speech
~ E1Iin and hn n
The now extinct Tasmanan language is but
little known. What we do know Of it Is in
support of what We have guessed about the
comparative speechlessness Of Palaeolithic
man.
We may quote a passage from Hutchin-
sons Living Races of Mankind" upon this
matter:
Poverty Stricken Dialect
1.-THE language of the natives is irretr1ev-
ably lost, only imperfect indications OF Its
structure and small proportion Of its words
having been preserved. In the absence of
sibilanss and some other features, their dla-
lects resembled the Australian, but were OF
ruder, of less developed structure, and so i'm
perfect that, according to Joseph Mlll1gan,
our best authority on the subject, they OBJ
served no settled order or arrangement OF
words in the construction Of their sentences,
but conveyed in supplementary fashion by
tone, manner and gesture those notifications
of meaning which express by mood, tense,
number etc. Abstract terms were rare; for
every variety of gum-tree or wattle-tree there
was name, but no word for tree in gener-
al, nor for qualities such as hard, soft, warm,
cold long short, round etc. Anything hard
was like stone,' anything round like the
moon and so on, usually suiting the action
to the word and confirming by some sign the
meaning to be understood.
Copyright, 1929