The New York Times Obituaries column on May 15, 2001, ran the article “Joseph Greenberg, 85, Singular Linguist, Dies”.

I had never heard of Dr. Greenberg before. His books, such as “Indo-European and its Closest Relatives”, sound a bit intimidating to the casual reader such as myself.

Dr. Greenberg’s focus was apparently finding relationships between languages and placing them into groupings. He grouped most of the world’s languages into 12 superfamilies.

Most interesting: Dr. Greenberg postulated that the world’s original, ancestral language contained the word “tik”, Its reflection in the Indo-European language group includes the words “daktulus”, “digitus”, and “doigt”—Greek, Latin, and French for finger, as well as in the English word digital.

What other words from the human Ursprache did Dr. Greenberg deduce? Could “tik” have been the first word spoken by humans, and if so is it a coincidence that it in its “digital” form it defines a leitmotif of our culture 100,000 years later?

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