The click language is thought to be associated with some of the oldest cultures in the world. New genetic research has proved that the "Click Language" may be adapted from the original human tongue. There are approximately 30 varieties of the Click Language that have survived in Southern Africa. Each variety has four or five different click sounds, which are made by sucking the tongue down from the roof of the mouth. Outside of Africa only one version of the Click Language remains. It is used by the Damin culture, an aboriginal culture from Australia.

All human groups are equally old, being descended from the same ancestral population. But geneticists can now place ethnic groups on a family tree of humankind. Groups at the ends of short twigs, the ones that split only recently from earlier populations, are younger, in a genealogical sense, than those at the ends of long branches. Judged by mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element passed down in the female line, the Ju|'hoansis' line of descent is so ancient that it goes back close to the very root of the human family tree.

-Nicholas Wade, New York Times

A few of the cultures that speak the Click Language in Africa are:

• The Khwe
• The San
• The Bantu
• The Hadzabe
• The Sandawe Learn more about the Bantu people

  Updated on: 3/28/03, Cory M.