Peter,
According to the opinion of the vast majority of biologists we were all, "Semites", "Aryans" etc., at one point (many many years ago) exactly as intelligent as an amoeba. By the universal law of continuity, one may argue, we were, at one time or another, at every stage in-between. ...
No, Isaac. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire humans and their ancestors have controlled fire for something of the order of a million years. No linguist would hope to reconstruct language further back than 10,000 or possibly 20,000 years.
I think you will agree with me that the phenomenon of Linguistics is curious: Here you have super-intelligent, high-powered, goodly-supported, vastly-educated, all-knowing, computer-toting, professors ponderously discussing a language originally developed by people who barely knew how to start a fire.
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.