THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
By Feu v. Luscuan, M. D., Ph. D., 
Professor of Anthropology in the University of Berlin. 
[With 12 plates.] 
Standing on the ‘‘New Bridge” in Constantinople, near the 
Mosque of the Sultan Validé, I have more than once tried to count 
the languages and dialects spoken by the crowds pressing and pushing 
between Galata and Stamboul. Turkish and Greek are naturally 
the most frequently spoken, but one also easily distinguishes much 
Armenian, Arabic, Kurdish, and Persian. We hear the harsh voices 
of some Circassian soldiers, and learn from an Abkhasian friend that 
he does not understand their language and that “it might be” 
Lesghian. He also tells us that many of his Circassian friends 
serving in the same regiment are obliged to speak Turkish when they 
want to understand one another. 
We then meet Albanians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, and are 
addressed in Serbo-Croatian by an’ old priest from Bosnia. You are 
sure to hear in less than five minutes five other modern European 
languages, English, French, German, Italian, and Russian, and then 
your ear is delighted by the melodious Spanish of some Spaniole Jews 
from Salonika, who still retain the idiom spoken in Spain when they 
were expelled from there more than 400 years ago, and have thus 
actually preserved the language spoken by Cervantes. And we hear 
other Jews on their pilgrimage from Russia and Poland to Jerusalem, 
speaking their curious Yiddish, a sort of German that no German could 
understand without making it a special study. Once on this bridge, 
I had to play the interpreter between a Hungarian Gypsy and some 
Aptals or other Gypsies from Anatolia, and an instant later I saw a 
Dinka eunuch sitting on the motor car of an imperial princess and 
making his selam to a group of equally dark and equally tall Bari or 
Shilluk. 
Bilin and Nuer also are very commonly spoken by Stamboul 
eunuchs, and I was once told by one of my colored friends there that 
more than 1,000 female servants are living in metropolitan palaces, 
all coming from Bornu and speaking Kanuri. Another day, on the 
same bridge, I met some East Indians, speaking, as they told me, 
1The Huxley Memorial Lecture for 1911. Reprinted by permission from The Journal of the Royal 
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 41,1911. July to December. London. 
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