The Atlantis Code Read Online Free PDF Page B

be in one of the Altaic languages. Turkic, Mongolic, or Tungusic.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “It’s a family of languages,” Lourds explained, “that encompassed this area. It’s where all language here sprang from. Although the subject is hotly contested by linguists. Some linguists believe the Altaic language resulted from a genetically inherited language, words and ideas—and perhaps even symbols—that are written somewhere in our genetic code.”
    “Genetics predisposes language?” Leslie arched a narrow eyebrow in surprise. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
    “Nor should you. I don’t believe it’s true. There’s another, more simplistic reason why so many languages at the time shared common traits.” Lourds calmed himself. “All those people, with all their different languages, lived in close proximity. They traded with one another, all of them in pursuit of the same things. They had to have common words in order to do that.”
    “Sort of like the computer explosion and the Internet,” Leslie said. “Most of the computer terms are in English since the United States developed much of the technology, and other countries simply used the English words because they had no words in their own language to describe the computer parts and terminology.”
    Lourds smiled. “Exactly. A very good analogy, by the way.”
    “Thank you.”
    “That theory is called the
Sprachbund
.”
    “What is the
Sprachbund?”
    “It’s the convergence area for a group of people who ultimately end up partially sharing a language. When the Crusades took place, during the battles between the Christians and the Muslims, language and ideas were traded back and forth as much as arrows and sword blows. Those wars were as much about expanding trade as they were about securing the Holy Land.”
    “You’re telling me that they ended up speaking each others’ language.”
    “The people that fought or traded, yes. Bits of it. We still carry the history of that conflict in words of modern English. Words like
assassin, azimuth, cotton
, even the words
cipher
and
decipher
. They come from the Arabic word
sifi
, which is the number zero. The symbol for zero was central to many codes. But this artifact shares nothing with the native languages of this area—or with any language I’ve ever heard or seen.” Lourds held up the bell. “In those early years, craftsmen—especially craftsmen who wrote and kept records—would be part of that
Sprachbund
. That’s a logical assumption. But this bell—?” He shook his head. “It’s an anomaly. I don’t know where it came from. If it’s not a forgery, and it doesn’t feel like one, what we’re looking at is an artifact from some other place than the Middle East.”
    “What other place?”
    Lourds sighed. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. And I should know that as well.”
    “You think we have a real find here, don’t you?” Excitement gleamed in Leslie’s eyes.
    “A find,” Lourds agreed tentatively, “or an aberration.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The inscription on that bell could be . . .
humbug
, for lack of a better term. Simply nonsense made up to decorate the bell.”
    “Wouldn’t you know, if that were the case? Wouldn’t it be easy to spot?”
    Lourds frowned. She had him there. Even an artificial language would require a basis in logic. As such, he should be able to spot that.
    “Well?” she pressed.
    “I should be able to tell. This looks authentic to me.”
    Leslie smiled again and leaned toward the bell, regarding it with intensity. “If that’s truly written in a heretofore undiscovered language, then we’ve made an astonishing find.”
    Before Lourds could respond, the door suddenly ripped from its hinges. Armed men burst into the room, aiming their weapons at the people inside.
    “Everybody freeze!” a man yelled in accented English.
    Everybody froze.
    Lourds thought he recognized an