Besides those we might have unjustly forgotten, we thank the fol- lowing friends who helped us bring this book into print and do this ...
Besides those we might have unjustly forgotten, we thank the fol-
lowing friends who helped us bring this book into print and do this
in an alphabetical order that is not to be interpreted as a hierarchy
of gratitude:
Edwin F. Barber, our patient, friendly, encouraging, and skillful
master editor
Mindy Hepner, our word-processing expert who almost allowed us
to meet our schedule
Julie Hubley Levy, understanding critic, enthusiastic and loving
supporter
Landon Prieur, the Weidlinger Associates librarian, who ferreted
out valuable hidden sources of information
Carol B. Salvadori, private editor and copy reader to one of us,
who translated into correct English all the Italianate chapters
of this book
Erica Vogt and Midge Esterman, our extraordinary secretaries at
Weidlinger Associates, who, unbelievably, succeeded in putting
this book together.
According to the Old Testament, the early inhabitants of the
earth, the ancient Babylonians, were "of one language,
and of one speech." Linguists, with the help of archaeol-
ogists, paleontologists, and geneticists, have been able to
reconstruct between 150 and 200 words of this Babylonian-claimed
proto-world language, the earliest we know of in humanity's one
hundred thousand years. It is a magnificent thought: one people,
one language. But our earliest forefathers were not content. So
ambitious were they that they determined to build a city with a
tower reaching heaven, and God, offended by their pride, broke
their single speech into so many different languages that the Bab-
ylonians, unable to understand one another, were stymied in their
18 WHY BUILDINGS FALL DOWN
plan, and their tower collapsed. The God offenders were scattered
over the face of the earth: "Therefore is the name of it called Babel
[from the Hebrew balal (to mix up)]; because the Lord did there
confound the language of all the earth."
