Only humans speak,

yet apes can learn to

understand speech;

Neanderthals probably had speech,

but speech does not fossilize;

yet Neanderthals spoke the language of love,

Most humans carry Neanderthal genes;

The last “caveman” lived and died silently

Thirty millennia ago in southern Spain.

Basque humans colonized Spain and France,

their human language has no known living relative.

 

Sephardic Ladino Jews came to Spain with the Romans:

Expelled from in 1492, they were accepted

by Ottoman Turks and North Africa.

In Greece, Sephardic Jews were

exterminated by Germans,

though some escaped

thanks to secret Spanish passports.

Now Spanish Sephardic Ladino Jews live in Spain again.

Il Greco grew up on Venetian-ruled Crete,

Not in Turkish-rule Greece.

A bit of a young Turk in Rome,

el griego moved to Spain, became famous,

And became El Greco.

 

While in colonial Argentina, griego mutated to gringo.

In colonial New México,

Spanish-speaking Christian Native Americans

Were called janissaries,

Turkish for the captured Christian children.

Turks turned into Islamic warriors;

The Spanish burned most of the books

Mayans wrote in their language, then

Colonial Mayan Christians, called ladinos,

Wrote down their ancient stories in secret

Using Roman characters.

Two centuries later, a Spanish missionary

Found, read and translated

The Book of the Community into Spanish.

 

The Popul Vuh says

The four Mayan creator gods needed

Four attempts to create humans.

On the third try they created monkeys.

A Mayan Theory of Evolution

Centuries before Darwin;

Bone fossils and genes unite humans,

Neanderthals, and apes in one family,

Linguistic fossils link all humans

Into one family as well,

 

You just have to sort out all the incipient chaos.