Semitico-Oceanic Linguistic Affinities

Abstract

TO the Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria for May, 1883, the Rev. D. Macdonald contributes a paper, in which he endeavours to establish the identity of the Oceanic and Semitic languages. This is announced as an important discovery both ethnologically and from the theological standpoint. It clears up, we are told, “the hitherto impenetrable mystery surrounding the origin of the Oceanians,“ because “the Semitic language could only have been carried into Oceania by Semites from the Semitic mainland.” It also disposes of the newfangled “evolution theory,” which draws support “from the existence of savages and the supposition that they are descended from hairy quadrupeds',... for it shows, as to one of the greatest bodies of savages, that they are descended from the most renowned and civilised people of antiquity.” Certainly these are weighty conclusions, which, if established, would fully justify the further inference that “this discovery is more important on the whole than that of the Assyrian or Euphratean inscriptions deciphered of late with such marvellous ingenuity.”