Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-11-23
Problems in History

Do you know
What forgotten language, different
from any now spoken, was for years a
mystery to scholars?
Do you know
Why science believes there once existed
coming among men many languages that
have since disappeared completely?
Do you know
How long ago men gave up their origin
al practice of talking partly by signs
and partly by words?
Do you know
What race speaks the language known
as "Bantu"?
Answers in tomorrow's tnstallment of
H. G.. Wells "Outline of History
34-BARRIERS TO A COMMON TONGUE
In addition, the following other great Ian
guage families are distinguished by the phi
Iologist. All the American-Indian languages
which vary widely among themselves, are
separable from any old world group. Here
we may lump them together not so much as
family as a miscellany.
There is one great group OF languages in
Africa, from a little way north of the
equator to it's southern extremity, the Bantu,
and in addition a complex of other languages
across the center of the continent about
which we will not trouble here. There are
also two probably separate groups, the Draw
idian in South India, and the Malay-Poiyne-
sian stretched over Polynesia, and also in
Guiding Indian tongues.
Widely Separated Peoples
Now 1t seems reasonable to conclude from
these fundamental differences that about the
time when men were beginning to form
rather larger communities than the family
tribe, when they were beginning to tell each
other long stories and argue and exchange
ideas human beings were distributed about
the world in a number of areas which COM
municated very little with each other. They
were separated by oceans, seas, thick forests,
or mr. ia in
There may have been in that remote time,
it may be $4,000 years ago or more, Aryan,
Semitic, Hamitic, Turanian, American and
Chinese-speaking tribes and fmailies, wan
dering over their several areas of hunting
and pasture, all at very much the same sta ge
of culture, and each developing it's linguistic
instrument in it's own way. Probably each of
these original tribes was not more numerous
altogether than the Indians in Hudson Bay
territory today. Systematic agriculture was
barely beginning then, and until agriculture
made denser population possible men may
have been almost rare the great apes
have always been. If agriculture was becom-
ing at all important in human life at that
time, and if population was anywhere denser,
it was probably in the Mediterranean region
andspossibly in areas now submerged.
In addition to these Neolithic tribes, there
must have been various still more primitive
forest folks in Africa and in India, Central
forest, impenetrable to ordinary human life,
forest of which the Congo forests of today
are the last shrunken remains.
Possibly the spread of men Of race higher
than primitive Australoids into the East In
dies, and the development of the languages
Of the Malay-Polynesian type came later in
time than the origination of these other Ian
guage crops.
The language divisions of the philologist
do tally it is manifest, in a broad sort of way
with the main race classes of the ethnologist,
and they carry out the same idea Of age-long
separations between great divisions Of man
kind.
Held Back by Cold
In the Glacial age, ice, or at least a climate