ANTIQUITY OF MAX. 3OC, 



made by 1 nedrich Mlillcr as to the development of 

 the languages of the Mediterranean races. The lin- 

 guistic families of the nations dwelling chiefly in the 

 basin of the Mediterranean are Basque, Caucasian, 

 Hamito-Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages. "The 

 languages of these four families," says Friedrich Muller, 

 "are, as is generally accepted by the most competent 

 linguists, not mutually related. If we therefore see 

 that the Mediterranean race includes four families of 

 people in no way related to one another, the inference 

 is obvious that, as each language must be traceable 

 to a society, the single race must have gradually fallen 

 into four societies, of which each independently created 

 its own language. A further inference is, that the 

 race, as such, does not acquire a language ; for, were 

 ihis the case, race and language would now be co- 

 extensive, which is not the case. 



** We must therefore assume that at the time when 

 the various nations of the Mediterranean race were one, — 

 the time when man belonged to no nation, but merely 

 to a race, — mankind was destitute of language. Miilier 

 considers 3000 years approximately sufficient for the 

 period elapsing between the divergence of the race into 

 still speechless societies, and the epoch at which they 

 formed nations, separated and characterized by lan- 

 guages ; a period which might seem to many, estimated 

 as far too short. If the ancient civilized people of Eg}'pt 

 be now added on, and the period of its conjectured 

 migration from Asia computed, "the year 6,500 before 

 I he commencement of our chronology seems to be the 

 earliest epoch at which we may speak of a Hamito- 

 Semitic primaeval people in the north of pAirope." There- 



