ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 309 
made by Friedrich Miiller as to the deveiopment 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 Miiller, 
“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 
this the case, race and language would now be co- 
éxtensive, 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 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 
asfar too short. If the ancient civilized people of Egypt 
be now added on, and the period of its conjectured 
migration 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 primeval people in the north of Europe.” There- 
