Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

More controversial still is the work of the Danish linguist Holger Pederson and the Russians Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aron Dolgopolsky, who believe that all languages of Europe and Asia and even north Africa – the so-called Indo-European tongues, Semitic, Uralic, Altaic and even the Eskimo-Aleut languages across the Bering Strait in Canada – were descended from a remote ‘ancestor’, called Nostratic, from the Latin adjective nostras, meaning ‘of our country, native’.⁴¹ (And meaning that, of 6 billion people in the world today, 4 billion speak Nostratic languages.⁴²) This act of ‘linguistic palaeontology’ takes us back, they say, some 12,000–15,000 years. It has an even more controversial relationship with an equally contentious entity, known as Dene-Sino-Caucasian, which includes languages as diverse as Basque, Chinese, Sumerian and Haida (spoken in British Columbia and Alaska). The relationship between Chinese and Na-Dene has been recognised since the 1920s but, besides being further proof of the links between New World peoples and those of eastern Asia, it raises an even more controversial possibility. This is that, perhaps, proto-Dene-Sino-Caucasian was spoken by the original inhabitants of Eurasia, and the people who moved into the Americas, but then the earliest farmers, who spoke proto-Nostratic, overcame them, and displaced them and their language.⁴³ This theory is supported by the very latest evidence, which finds a particular mutation of mitochondrial DNA shared between India, Pakistan, central Asia and Europe.⁴⁴

This is highly speculative (at best), as – inevitably – are the claims of some linguists, Merritt Ruhlen chief among them, who claim to be able to distinguish a Proto-Global or Proto-World language. While Dolgopolsky has published etymologies of 115 proto-Nostratic words, Ruhlen and his colleagues have published 45 ‘global etymologies’ of words which, they believe, indicate a connection between all the world’s languages. Here are three of the etymologies – the reader may judge their credibility.⁴⁵

MANO, meaning man. This is found as follows: Ancient Egyptian, Min, the name of a phallic god; Somali, mun = male; Tama, an East Sudan language, ma = male; Tamil, mantar = people, men; Gondi, manja = man, person; Austric, whose people call themselves man or mun; Squamish (a native Canadian language), man = husband; Wanana (South American), meno = man; Kaliana, mino = man, person; Guahibo, amona = husband; Indo-European, including English, man.

TIK, meaning finger or one. Gur (Africa), dike = 1; Dinka (African), tok = 1; Hausa (African), (daya)tak = only one; Korean, teki = 1; Japanese, te = hand; Turkish, tek = only; Greenland-Eskimo, tik = index finger; Aleut, tik = middle finger; Tlingit, tek = 1; Amerind (Karok, tik = finger, hand; Mangue, tike = 1; Katembri, tika = toe); Boven Mbian (New Guinea), tek = fingernail; Latin, dig(-itus) = finger, decem = 10.

AQ’WA meaning water. Nyimang (Africa), kwe = water; Kwama (Africa), uuku = water; Janjero (Africa), ak(k)a = water; Japanese, aka = bilge water; Ainu, wakka = water; Amerind (Allentaic, aka = water; Culino, yaku = water and waka = river; Koraveka, ako = drink; Fulnio, waka = lake); Indo-European (Latin, aqua, Italian aqua = water).

Dolgopolsky’s construction of the actual words in proto-Nostratic shows, he says, that the speakers of the language ‘were not familiar with agriculture, animal husbandry and pottery’ but his claims that they used ‘bows and arrows and fishing nets’ were attacked by fellow linguists.⁴⁶ He was also able to reconstruct what foods were available (eggs, fish, honey), a variety of tools (flint knives, hooks, poles), leather footwear, parts of the body (spleen, the neck), kinship terms (father, mother, in-laws, members of the clan) and supernatural entities (casting of spells, magic).⁴⁷ He found no word for a large body of water and so, partly for this reason, located the original homeland of Nostratic speakers inland in south-west Asia.⁴⁸

Attempts have also been made to reconstruct the way and order in which languages formed. An experiment published in 2003 reported that a chimpanzee in Atlanta had suddenly started ‘talking’, in that he had made up four ‘words’, or stable sounds, standing for ‘grapes’, ‘bananas’, ‘juice’ and ‘yes’. Among humans, according to Gyula Décsy, of Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana, the various features of language developed as follows:

H and e, the first vocal sounds, and the sounds made by Neanderthals, say 100,000 years ago

‘Timbric sounds’ (nasal) – u, i, a, j, w = 25,000 years ago

w, m, p, b = 15,000 years ago

t/d, k/g = 12,000 years ago

I/you, here/there, stay/go, good/bad = 10,000 years ago

Third person = 9,000 years ago.⁴⁹