Historic Periods, etc.
alluvial deposit.” In this deposit there are strata composed of a great variety of words. Some are very old. They were dropped by the different racial groups which were united by the language and the crude culture commonly called Aryan. Overlying these are strata which contain words of a later date from various sources. Some are of native origin; many are foreign; and a great number of our words are historic documents which, if translated with care, reveal the tendency of ancient thought, the characteristics, the attainments, and the pursuits of a people whose generations have passed through many thousands of years. These words form the slender but unbroken threads of historic unity. They connect temporary movements of thought, modern conceptions and emotions, with those of a more or less remote antiquity. Nearly all the words bear some impression, carry some trait, or conceal some hint of their vanished ancestry.
Thousands of years before the present era,
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