Because of certain similarities of physique, of words, or of myths, or of customs, however slight, the Amerinds have been identified with almost every people under the sun.[23] These similarities are only such as might occur where similar organisms are continuously subjected to similar conditions, and the really remarkable fact is that there are not more and even closer resemblances. Some of the arguments advanced to uphold the so-called identifications are extraordinary. In language the Amerinds have been found to speak—or at least have been claimed to speak—Irish, Welsh, Norse, Chinese, and many other independent or interrelated tongues, yet with the exception of the Basque, the structure of all the Old World languages has little in common with the Amerind. Brinton has shown[24] that a number of Maya words resemble our English words of the same meanings, as, bateel and battle, hol and hole, hun and one, lum and loam, pol and poll (head), potum and pot, pul and pull, and so on, but nobody has yet ventured to deduce from this that the Mayas are first cousins of the English.[25] The Maya language certainly does differ from almost all others on the continent in its construction. Before Gallatin’s time, the wildest statements flourished because the few linguists who had paid attention to Amerind languages had worked in rather a desultory manner and had made no determined effort to systematise them and group them under their stock names. Gallatin was the first to bring order out of what appeared to be an almost hopeless tangle, and Powell, Brinton, and others, supplementing and developing these labours of Gallatin, have been able to present the subject in definite shape with a promise of greater accuracy in the near future. Many languages which are known to have existed at the beginning of European acquaintance with America have disappeared with the tribes which used them. Some of these were spoken by mere handfuls of people, while others were wider spread. With so many distinct languages on the continent, and with many tribes totally ignorant of the speech of their neighbours, there became necessary a means for the interchange of ideas which should not entirely rely on spoken words, and this means was found in a “sign-language” assisted by a few words of each spoken language which were simple and commonly known, or by words which belonged to no spoken language but which through accident were attributed by each side to the other. This sign-language was of extensive development and existed not only among the Amerinds but all over the world, and bore a resemblance to the sign-language now used in some of our deaf-mute schools. This peculiar sign-language possessed varieties like spoken language corresponding to dialects. For a time its existence was disputed, but the work of Mallery and others has established it beyond question.