Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-11-21
Problems of History

Problems of History
DO YOU KNOW
Where agriculture had it's first be-
ginnings? IT,.
DO YOU KNOW
What people probably were the first
farmers?
DO YOU KNOW
When the Desert of Sahara was a
rich and fertile plain?
DO YOU KNOW
When European Russia was a mass
of impossible swamps?
Answers in tomorrow's instalImert of
H. G. Wells "Out line of History
n EXT to Aryan, philologists distin>
" guish another group of languages
which seem to have been made quite
separately from the Aryan languages, the
Semitic. Hebrew and Arabic are kindred,
but they seem to have even a different set
of root words from tho Aryan tongues; they
express their ideas of relationship in a differ
ent way; the fundamental ideas of their
grammars are generally different. They
were in all probability made by human COM
mun1tles quite out of touch with the Aryans,
separately, and Independently.
Hebrew, Arabic, Abyssinian, ancient AS
syrian, ANCIENT Phoenician and a number of
associated tongues are put together, there
fore, as being derived from a second pri-
mary language, which is called the Semitic.
In the very beginnings of recorded history
we lind Aryan-speaking peoples and Semitic
l1V0l6St
intercourse OF War and trade round and
about the eastern end of the Mediterranean,
but the fundamental differences of the pri-
mary Aryan and primary Semitic languages
oblige us to believe that in early Neolithic
times, before the historical period, there
must for thousands of years have been an
almost complete separation of the Aryan-
speaking and the Semitic-speaking peoples
The latter seem to have lived either in south
Arabia or in northeast Africa.
In Different Worlds
In the opening centuries of the Neolithic
age the original Aryan speakers and the orig
inal Semitic speakers were probably living.
mum OF intercourse. Racially, it would
seem, they had a remote common origin !;
both Aryan speakers and Semitic A.are class
ed as Caucasians, but while the orisna, Ar
yam speakers seem to have been of Nordic
race, the original Semitic were rather of the
Mediterranean type.
Philologists speak with less unanimity of
third group of languages, the Hamitic
which some declare to be distinct from, and
others allied to, the Semitic. The weight of
opinion inclines now toward the idea of
some primordial connection of these two
groups.
The Hamitic group is certainly a much
wider and more variout language group than
the Semitic Of the Aryan, and the Semitic
tongues are more If family, have more of
common likeness than the Aryan.
The Semitic languages may have arisen
as some specialized proto-Hamitic group, just
as the birds arose from special group of
; reptiles. 1t is tempting speculation, but
one for which there is really no basis of
justifying TACT, to suppose that the rude
prim ordlal ancestor group of the Aryan ton
cues branched off from the proto-Hamitic
speech forms at some still earlier date than
the separation and specialization of Semitic.
The Hamitic speakers today like the Sem
itic speakers, are mainly Of the Mediterra-
mean Caucasian race. Among the Hamitic
languages are the ancient Egyptian and Cop
tic, the Berber languages (of the mountain
people of north Africa, the Masked Tuaregs
and other such peop'es), and what are call
ed the Ethiopic group of African languages
in eastern Africa, including the speech of
the Calais and the Somalis. I
The general grouping Of these various