Abstract
ANTHROPOLOGY tells the march of mankind out of savagery, in which different peoples have advanced in varying degrees, but all started in progress in civilisation from a point lower than that now occupied by the lowest of the tribes now found on earth. The marks of their rude origin, retained by all, are of the same number and kind, though differing in distinctness, showing a common origin to all intellectual and social development, notwithstanding present diversities. The most notable criterion of difference is in the copiousness and precision of oral speech, and connected with that, both as to origin and structure, is the unequal survival of gesture signs, which it is believed once universally prevailed. Where sign-language survives it is, therefore, an instructive vestige of the prehistoric epoch, and its study may solve problems in philology and psychology. That study is best pursued by comparing the pre-eminent gesture system of the North American Indians with the more degenerate or less developed systems of other peoples.
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The Gesture Speech of Man 1 . Nature 26, 333–335 (1882). https://doi.org/10.1038/026333a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/026333a0