ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 309 



by Friedrich Miiller as to the development of the lan- 

 guages of the Mediterranean races. The Hnguistic fam- 

 ihes 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 Miiller, " are, as is 

 generally accepted by the most competent linguists, not 

 mutually related. If we therefore see that the Mediter- 

 ranean 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, doei 

 not acquire a language; for, were this 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. Miiller 

 considers 300Q years approximately sufficient for the 

 period elapsing between the divergence of the race into 

 still speechless societies, and the epoch at which they 

 forrhed 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 Egypt 

 be now added on, and the period of its conjectured mi- 

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

 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 Europe." There- 



