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We see that our ancestors were no savages, but agricultural nomads, that they laboured, made roads, possessed the art of weaving and sewing; they built towns, kept domestic animals, lived under a kingly government, and counted at least up to one hundred. We learn this not only from the words father, mother, son, daughter, heaven, earth, but also from house, town, king, dog, cow, hatchet, and many others, which are found to be the same in the German, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek, Latin, and Sanscrit. They are the same because they all point to some more ancient language, the mother-tongue in use before the separation of the various Aryan tribes. From this period the other words also date, expressing all the degrees of relationship, even those by alliance, thus giving clear proof of the early organisation of family life.

At the same time a decimal system of numeration also existed, the numbers from one to a hundred, “in itself one of the most marvellous achievements of the human mind, produced from an abstract conception of quantity, regulated by a spirit of philosophical classification, and yet conceived, matured and finished before the soil of Europe was trodden by Greek, Roman, Slav, or Teuton. Such a system could only have been formed by a very small community, in which by the help of a tacit agreement, each number could only bear one signification. If we were suddenly obliged to invent new names for one, two and three we should quickly feel the great difficulty of the task; to supply new names for material objects would be comparatively easy, as these have different attributes which could be used in their designation; we could call the sea, the salt water; and the rain, the water of heaven; numbers are, however, such abstract conceptions that it would be foolish to attempt to find in them palpable attributes, and thus give expression to a merely quantitative idea.”[27]