| Show LANGUAGE CLEW TO ALL PAST HISTORY why archaeological archeological arch Arche eo logiCal work Is important to some ome it may seem foolish tor for A man dian to spend weeks and m months recording the of speech of an aged age d indian who recalls a language which will vanish completely complete ly with that persons death that language Is completely outworn the descendants of those who used it are now speaking english or spanish to the uninitiated it Is the mere recording of useless gibberish yet the american council of learned societies reports with pride that one research worker has baa nearly nearl y completed records of the southern language that another to Is piecing together a record of the nearly vanished mohican dialect of the th e eastern and that still another has found that a handful of indians in oregon still speak the t lie cayuse language which it was wall thought vanished 60 years ago such work Is more than a pastime or a hobby to archaeologists archeologists and others interested interest ed in americas america a past it Is of vital importance native languages form one of the most reliable means of tracing movements in prehistoric america pottery weapons jewelry basketry design and architecture all are clews to events in that forgotten past cut But language Is a thread running through them all ancient america the two continents ts had no fewer than languages lany each funda fundamentally fundamentals y different from the others in grammar vocabulary and phonetics most of them had dialects some even had bad separate forms for the use of men and women how complex this was and how great an aid it can lie be to the delver in pre history may be realized by remembering that europe and an 1 I asia combined have only about 25 language stocks in tracing the movements of ancient americans scientists can make uncannily accurate guesses from evidence they dig from ruined villages Cut But there are many ny open links occasionally casio caslo nally the antul student dent of native dative languages can alosa those links whether the pottery shards show it or not it if onetime one time inhabitants of idaho moved to pennsylvania the languages will show it it if the languages ca can n be studied it if the language of the mound builders of ohio were available for study for instance it might reveal similarities to the language of the mayans and the aztecs azteca to prove a relationship which many archaeologists archeologists have suspected but have never been able to prove this interest in indian languages Is in not new the spa spanish at sh priests priest 8 9 gathered indian words in mexico as early as 1571 roger williams studied indian languages in new england in the john eliot prepared his famous indian grammar begun in thomas jefferson in loul 1791 made an effort to rescue vani vanishing sh indian tongues and when he sent lewis and dark clark to the pacific lie he told them to study indian languages but only in recent years have scientists taken up the task in earnest as a phase of archeology archaeology arche |
