Brinton]. 21 2 
The Language of Paleolithic Man. 
By Daniel G. Brinton, M.D. 
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, October 5, 1888.) 
Archeologists tell us that the manufacturers of those rude stone 
implements called paleeoliths wandered up and down the world 
while a period of something like two hundred thousand years was 
unrolling its eventless centuries. Many believe that these early 
artisans had not the power of articulate expression to convey their 
emotions or ideas; if such they had, they were confined to inarticu- 
late grunts and cries. 
Haeckel proposed for the species at this period of its existence 
the designation Homo adalus, speechless man. Anatomists have 
come forward to show that the inferior maxillary bones disinterred 
in the caves of La Naulette and Schipka are so formed that their 
original possessors could not have had the power of articulation. 
But the latest investigators of this point have reached an opposite 
conclusion.t We must, however, concede that the oral communi- 
cation of men during that long epoch was of a very rudimentary 
character; it is contrary to every theory of intellectual evolution 
to suppose that they possessed a speech approaching anything near 
even the lowest organized of the linguistic stocks now in existence. 
By an attentive consideration of some of these lowest stocks, can 
we not form a somewhat correct conception of what was the char- 
acter of the rudimentary utterances of the race? I think we can, 
but, as I believe I am the first to attempt such a picture, I offer it 
with becoming diffidence. 
The physiological possibility that paleolithic man possessed a 
language has, as I have said, been already vindicated; and that he 
was intellectually capable of speech could, I think, scarcely be 
denied by any one who will contemplate the conception of sym- 
metry, the technical skill, and the wise adaptation to use, mani- 
fested in some of the oldest specimens of his art; as for example 
the axes disinterred from the ancient strata of San Isidro, near 
Madrid, those found forty feet deep in the post-glacial gravels near 
*“T/homme chelleen n’ avait pas la parole,’’ Mortillet, La Prehistorique Antiquilé de 
Vv Homme, p. 250 (Paris, 1883). 
+See Dr. H. Steinthal, Der Ursprung der Sprache, S. 264, et seq. (Berlin, 1888), who re- 
hearses the discussion of the point with sufficient fullness, 
