DAWN OF THE APE-MAN--Hunting for a Frozen Cave-Man-KAPTEREFF, SIBERIA, 1937

 

---

The Paleolinguist Bulletin                                                                            Summer 2023

---

Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph, 18 April 1937, The American Weekly, Page 7.

Hunting for a Frozen Cave-Man

(Moscow, April 5) To find a perfectly-preserved caveman, even to the color of his eyes and skin as well as the clothes he wore, on a certain fatal day some 30,000 years ago, is the hope of a Russian scientific expedition, led by Professor P.N. Kaptereff, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, to "Nature's Icebox," an area of eternal frost far up in the Siberian Arctic Circle.

---

The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 February 1925, Page 17

PREHISTORIC MAN. 

DISCOVERY OF SKELETONS. 

LONDON, Feb. 20, 

Two Russian scientists (Bontsh and Osmo-lovsky) hare announced the discovery in pre-historic caves at Simferopol, in the Crimea, of two skeletons of "Neanderthal men," who lived 40,000 or 50,000 years ago. They have also found skeletons of prehistoric animals and a number of flint implements. 

     [The fossilised remains of part of a cranium and some long bones found by workmen during 1856 in the Neanderthal Valley (Rhenish Prussia) represented a discovery of the first importance to the science of anthropology. A few years before a fossil skull bad been found at Gibraltar, but no attention was paid to it until after the discovery in Prussia. The skull is now supposed to be that of a female of the same species as the Neanderthal remains, which are those of a male. Among anthropologists the remains are 

generally accepted as those of a genus Homo definitely differentiated from the species Homo Sapiens to which all living races of man belong. These remains and a remarkable series of skeletons found in France in the first yearss of the present century are considered to give a complete picture of this brutal extinct species. Modern research  reveals Neanderthal man as an uncouth being with a large flattened head, a coarse face, short body, and robust limbs. The broad shoulders carried an abnormally thick neck, on which the head was projected sharply for-ward. The hands were large and coarse. It le considered clear that Neanderthal man's brain and hands were incapable of the delicately skilled movements that are the prerogative of Homo Sapiens, and that enabled him to compete with the brutal strength of the Neanderthal species. The latter disappeared suddenly from Europe before an invasion of immigrants belonging to the species which has survived till to-day.] 

---

James C. L'Angelle  Undergraduate Research            University of Nevada, Reno    Summer 2023

---

comm check

 \5x5

PALEOPACIFIC--South Seas Sandalwood English--POLYNESIAN PIDGIN, 1881-93

---

The Paleolinguist Bulletin

---

     (BERLIN)-- Considered to be a sub-dialect of Chinese Pidgin-English, information on this other form of communication between islanders of the South Pacific and English traders is scant. It appears to have the same history of the Chinese version, but the foreigners were bartering for the purchase of sandalwood, prized for its superior quality and fragrance. 

---

 The Hawkes Bay Herald, New Zealand, 04 January 1881, Page 2

South Sea Massacres

Mr Walter Coote, a gentleman practically acquainted with the difficulties of trade in the South Seas, writes to the Melbourne Argus :—" The islanders have begun to argue that the white men are, to use a sandalwood English expression, 'all same woman, and that, although we often talk about inen•of-war, we evidently have not got any, or tho murders that aro so con. tinually taking place would be avenged. 

---

The London Standard, 21 April 1888, Page 5, Col. 3

     They learn all the vices and few of the virtues of civilisation, and, with their amazing capacity for picking up a language, some acquire English of the " sandal-wood " order, as it is called because it was first taught by the now fast disappearing barterers in that article. It is chiefly characterised by the interpolation of words and sentences of " exceptionally vigorous profanity," which the native linguist utters without a sus-picion of the impropriety of the phrases. Grammar he does not affect. " That fellow woman MARY he belong a me," or " Big fellow Yam he stop Telma," is the beach-comber's pupil's way of intimating that MARY is his wife, and there are big yams in Telma. This sandal-wood English is in the Pacific what the lingua Franca is in the Le-vant, and the Chinook jargon in North-West America. 

---

The London Standard, 26 December 1893, Page 5, Column 3.

The South Sea Islanders

About a tenth of them have been to Queensland, and can speak the Pacific lingua franca, or "sandal-wood English," first learned at a time when the sandal-wood traders and the " beach-combers "—those rude lotus-eaters of Polynesia and Melanesia—were about the only white men scattered over that island-dotted world of waters. Nowadays, this jargon is so widely spread, that even in the French Law Courts at Noumea natives are sworn in it. "Me talked true," so runs the oath. "My word, me no tell lie, me no gammon ; me," raising the right hand, " swear ! " Considering the source of this " beche-de-mer lingo," it is not surprising that one of its most marked charac-teristics is the frequent interpolation of much exceptionally vigorous profanity. 

---

William T. Wawn, The South Sea Islanders,

https://books.google.com/books?id=bC8ZAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Tahiti photo: https://www.tripsavvy.com/a-guide-to-tahitis-best-beaches-1532890

---

James C. L'Angelle            Undergraduate Research        University of Nevada, Reno

---