Abstract
THE Zeitschrift für Ethnologie for the present quarter begins with a critical paper on “Ethnological Classifications,“especially those which rest on lannuage. The writer comments on the arbitrary character of the division of languages into “isolating,” “agglutinating,” and “inflecting,”and contrasts the comparatively exhaustive knowledge of animal types on which zoological classifications depend, with the very scanty acquaintance which ethnologists possess of the great mass of languages beyond the Indo-European group. Exact knowledge of these latter highly complex and differentiated languages is, he argues, of very little use in tracing the origin and affinities of more primitive speech. It is suggested that peculiarities of language often depend on local chatacters of climate rather than on race. Thus, short words may be the result of a warm and lazy climate, like Siam, while, on the contrary, the chilly Indians of Athapascow take an athletic delight in calling their feet “choachastlsokai.“l Many interesting examples are given of Dog-Latin, Pigeon-Eng-glish, Chinook-French, and other bastard varieties of civilised languages, which appear to be modified in a certain definite way according to climate and to race. Here is an example of Monks' Latin of the date 1127. “Donenl ill is in Dominicis diebus camem Mottotinum (Mouton) in quartis feras cicerones, cum lardo.” The second article in the.same journal, by Franz Eugel, is on the national types and races of Tropical America. It contains an interesting account of the habits and characters of the Spanish Americans, the Creoles, Negroes, and Indians, with the various cross-breeds among them. But there is little addition to our knowledge of their anatomical and physiological peculiarities, and the whole description is written in a diffuse and affected style, including in one passage a very prosaic travestie of verses from “Das Lied von der Glocke.“A much shorter but valuable paper, by Adolf Hiibner, gives an account, with figures, of a great series of drawings he discovered on a flat slate rock in the Trans-Vaal Republic of South Africa. Indigenous wild animals of all kinds were, to judge from the specimens given, very fairly represented, with a few human figures, one holding a bow; but no domestic animals were to be seen, nor was there any appearance of alphabetical or even picture-writing. The same writer gives also an account (with plans) of ancient Caffre fortifications in Mosalikatzi's kingdom.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Scientific Serials . Nature 4, 56 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004056b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004056b0