A Case for Proto-Sapiens Roots: hankwa and henkwi Across World Languages

TL;DR

• Nicolas Bruneteau’s glossary proposes two Proto-Sapiens roots: hankwa “breath / life / wind” and henkwi “snake / dragon”.
• Cognate-looking forms for both roots appear in Papuan, African, Eurasian, Austronesian and even American families, hinting at inheritance from an ancestral tongue.
• Tables below collate the strongest examples; a brief critique weighs inheritance against coincidence or borrowing.
• The discussion closes by linking the linguistic evidence to dragon–breath myths and Cutler’s snake-venom consciousness hypothesis.

Introduction#

The Proto-Sapiens hypothesis posits that all modern human languages ultimately descend from a single ancestral tongue spoken by early Homo sapiens. Although highly controversial, this hypothesis gains plausibility when globally distributed cognates with similar form and meaning can be identified in far-flung language families. In this article, we examine two reconstructed roots from Nicolas Bruneteau’s comparative glossary of 250 Proto-Sapiens roots, as case studies in favor of common descent. These roots – *hankwa (meaning to breathe; breath; life, soul; blood; wind; to blow) and *henkwi (meaning snake; mythical snake/dragon; to creep like a snake) – show striking phonological and semantic parallels across multiple macro-families. We present evidence that these parallels are better explained by inheritance from a Proto-Sapiens ancestor than by chance convergence or borrowing.

First, we outline each root’s purported reflexes worldwide, organizing the data into two tables. Each table groups examples by phonological similarity and notes the region/family, semantic field, and whether the proto-form was proposed by Bruneteau or by other linguists. We then discuss additional evidence (such as pronoun paradigms) used in macro-family classification – especially in the Trans–New Guinea family – to provide context for evaluating deep genetic relationships. Next, we critically assess whether the global distribution of *hankwa and *henkwi favors a monogenetic origin versus alternative explanations. Finally, we consider how these findings resonate with broader theories about early human cognition and mythology, notably Andrew Cutler’s Eve Theory of Consciousness and the idea of an archaic global snake cult.

The Proto-Sapiens Root hankwa (“breath, life, soul, wind”)#

Bruneteau reconstructs *hankwa as the Proto-Sapiens term for the vital breath – encompassing the act of breathing, the life force or soul carried by breath and blood, and the wind or air itself. He suggests this word is built from ancient onomatopoeic elements: ha imitating the sound of exhalation, n(a) representing the nose, and kwa the mouth, together meaning “the air entering the nose and mouth”. In ancestral animistic worldview, breath and wind were likely seen as the essence of life and spirit. It is therefore unsurprising that words for soul in many languages are historically linked to words for breath or wind.

Table 1 below surveys reflexes of *hankwa across selected language families. We list forms that retain a similar consonant pattern (comprising some or all of h, n, k, w) as well as related semantic extensions. Notably, proposed cognates appear in Papuan (Trans–New Guinea), Khoisan, Afroasiatic, Eurasiatic (a macro-family including Indo-European, Uralic, etc.), Austronesian, Amerind (Indigenous American), and other groups. Many of these reconstructions are drawn from Bruneteau, though we also note established forms from classical historical linguistics (e.g. Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic) for comparison. Each entry indicates the region or family, a representative form/meaning, and attribution of the reconstruction.

Table 1: Reflexes of *hankwa (breath, life, wind) across selected language families. Cognate forms are grouped roughly by similarity in form (h-n-k-w consonants), though some exhibit metathesis or sound shifts. Note: Many macro-family reconstructions here (Trans–New Guinea, “Macro-Khoisan,” etc.) are as proposed by Bruneteau and are not (yet) widely accepted by historical linguists. Mainstream comparative linguists have, however, reconstructed analogous roots in established families like Indo-European, Uralic, Afroasiatic and Austronesian, as shown above. For example, Proto-Indo-European *h₂enh₁- “breathe” and Proto-Uralic *wajŋe “breath, spirit” demonstrate that the connection between breath and life/soul is ancient in those lineages. Likewise, Ancient Egyptian ʿnḫ (ankh, “life”) reflects a similar form and concept in Afroasiatic. The recurrence of an HNKW-like phonetic template linked to air, breath, life across continents is striking. Bruneteau argues that only a Proto-Sapiens origin can convincingly explain this pattern. The alternative would be an extraordinary series of coincidences or parallel semantic shifts in unconnected lineages. While some of these forms could indeed be onomatopoeic (e.g. ha for breathing) or loans, the global scope of the pattern (from New Guinea to Africa to America) and the inclusion of non-onomatopoeic elements (nasal + velar consonants) bolster the case for a common inheritance.

It is important to acknowledge that many of the macro-family reconstructions in Table 1 (e.g. Proto-Nostratic hankwa, Proto-Austric hankwal) come from the same source (Bruneteau’s work) rather than independent scholars. This raises a methodological caution: if one researcher postulates similar forms across families, the evidence is not as independent as it might appear. Nevertheless, even established proto-languages contribute pieces to this puzzle – for instance, the Proto-Austronesian word for “wind” (haŋin) and the Proto-Indo-European root for “spirit, breath” (anh-) share a resemblance that has long been noted in linguistics. The Proto-Sapiens hypothesis essentially ties together these disparate threads into a single deep origin. In summary, *hankwa appears to be a strong candidate for a global etymon: a word inherited from our species’ first language, signifying the life-giving breath or animating wind recognized by our distant ancestors.

The Proto-Sapiens Root henkwi (“snake, dragon, to crawl”)#

Our second case study is *henkwi, reconstructed as the Proto-Sapiens term for snake – not just any snake, but often with connotations of a mythical serpent or dragon. This root taps into one of humanity’s most enduring mythological motifs. As Julien d’Huy (2013) has shown, dragon myths are nearly universal and may date back to the Upper Paleolithic era. The Proto-Sapiens root *henkwi might represent the linguistic imprint of that primeval snake/dragon concept. In Bruneteau’s glossary, *henkwi carries the meaning of snake, including giant or magical serpents, and the verb sense “to creep (like a snake)”. He notes that the persistence of this word in far-flung languages is “a precious testimony of ancient Sapiens mythology”.

Indeed, snakes have a rich symbolic association with wind, water, earth, and sky in many cultures (e.g. storm-god serpents, rainbow serpents, guardian dragons). Bruneteau observes that the Proto-Sapiens term for snake appears bound up with other primordial elements like hankwa (wind, breath) and henke (fire) in a complex symbol cluster. This suggests that the snake occupied a central place in early human spiritual life – a notion corroborated by Cutler’s and d’Huy’s research (addressed later). From a linguistic perspective, if a similar-sounding word for “snake/dragon” is found on multiple continents, it strengthens the argument that our ancestors already had a word for this culturally salient creature before the diaspora out of Africa.

Table 2 lists correspondences of *henkwi across various language families and regions. We focus on forms containing some subset of the consonants h, n, k, w (or v) in that general arrangement (allowing for minor shifts like hɦ, kg, w~v), and meaning snake or serpent/dragon. As before, many proto-forms are Bruneteau’s proposals, supplemented by known roots from historical linguistics (Proto-Indo-European, etc.). We also note cases where reflexes appear to have diverged significantly (e.g. Bantu, Dravidian) to acknowledge that not all families retained the same sound – some innovated new snake words, which if anything underlines how peculiar it is that so many others did preserve or borrow a similar form.

Table 2: Reflexes of *henkwi (snake/dragon) across selected language families. Phonologically closer forms are listed toward the top. For instance, Papuan hankwi, Afroasiatic hengwi, and Eurasiatic hengwe all contain a comparable h-N-kw sequence. In other cases, the root survives with modifications (e.g. loss of initial h in Thai ŋuu from ŋwɯ, meaning “snake”). Some families innovated entirely different snake words – Dravidian pāmpu (Tamil pāmpu) and Bantu joka (Swahili joka), for example, have no obvious phonetic link to henkwi. Bruneteau interprets such cases as independent developments (or replacements) that occurred in those lineages, whereas the persistence of henkwi-like words elsewhere signals a common inheritance. Notably, even languages of the Americas are posited to retain this root: Proto-“Abya-Yala” kankwi, virtually identical to henkwi aside from the h~k shift, would be a striking example of deep-time preservation (if valid). While Greenberg’s Amerind hypothesis remains speculative, a trans-Pacific pattern is intriguing.

Looking at Table 2, we see that many Afroasiatic languages have cognates of henkwi but in divergent forms – for instance, Proto-Semitic naḥaš (nakw) “snake” (reflected in Hebrew nāḥāš, Arabic ḥanash) appears to be a metathesis of an earlier *hnaš/*hanš form. Egyptian Arabic ṯuʿbān “python” is explained as arising from a Proto-Afroasiatic *hanku (with a sound shift k > ṯ). This suggests the Afroasiatic branch split the original snake root into multiple offshoots, obscuring the form but not the ubiquity of snake terminology. In Indo-European, two separate roots – h₂éngʷʰis for ordinary snake (giving Latin anguis, Sanskrit áhi) and h₁ógʷʰis for dragon (giving Greek ophis ‘serpent’, perhaps originally mythological) – may both relate back to a single pre-PIE *hengʷis or hengwis. The Indo-European word was so stable that it even accreted an extra -s in some branches (Germanic, Indo-Aryan). Such stability aligns with Bruneteau’s claim that henkwi “is the most stable and reconstructible word for this animal” globally.

Once again, many of these cross-family comparisons rely on Bruneteau’s own reconstructions (Proto-Trans-New Guinea hankwi, Macro-Caucasian henkwe, Proto-Abya-Yala kankwi, etc.). The fact that one researcher is proposing cognates in Papuan, Caucasian, and Amerind families means the evidence is not independent. However, there are independent patterns that lend credence to the idea of an archaic snake word: for example, words for snake starting with a guttural or aspirate + nasal are common in Eurasia (PIE Anguis, Uralic kïŋe > kígyó, Sino-Tibetan kwoi/ŋwɯ). These could be coincidences—or they could be the residual echoes of *henkwi. The global mythological prominence of the snake/dragon motif adds weight to the latter interpretation. If early humans revered or feared a primordial serpent (as Cutler and d’Huy argue), it stands to reason they had a name for it, which would have been carried and transformed as humans spread around the world.

Pronouns as Macro-Family Evidence (Case of Trans–New Guinea)#

Up to this point we have focused on lexical evidence – similar-sounding content words – to argue for a Proto-Sapiens origin. Another line of evidence in macro-family linguistics comes from grammar and function words, especially pronouns. Pronouns are rarely borrowed and tend to be conservative, making them useful indicators of deep genetic relationships. A classic example is the Trans–New Guinea (TNG) family of Papuan languages. The initial proposal by Stephen Wurm (1975) and refined by Malcolm Ross (2000, 2005) grouped hundreds of Papuan languages into TNG largely on the basis of shared pronoun paradigms. Ross reconstructed Proto–TNG pronouns such as na(ŋ) for “I”, ni for “we”, and ŋgi for “you”. These forms (or regular reflexes of them) recur across diverse New Guinea languages, even when basic vocabulary differs greatly. The pronoun evidence is considered a strong signal of common descent, since it is unlikely that so many languages would coincidentally have similar pronouns or all borrow them from a single source.

The use of pronouns to establish relationships underscores an important point: not all linguistic features are equally prone to convergence. Core pronominal forms (like I, you) and inflectional morphology resist borrowing and spontaneous creation, whereas content words for culturally salient items (like “snake” or “soul”) might diffuse or arise independently. Thus, in evaluating a hypothesis as bold as Proto-Sapiens, one must ask whether there are deep correspondences in grammar or structure alongside lexical look-alikes. Critics of the Trans–New Guinea hypothesis noted that relying on a single diagnostic (pronouns) can produce false positives – some Papuan languages with “typical” pronouns turned out not to belong, and vice versa. Likewise, for Proto-Sapiens, one would ideally want to identify structural commonalities (for instance, similar pronoun sets or grammatical markers in all macro-families) to complement the lexical comparisons like hankwa and henkwi. Bruneteau does in fact attempt some of this in his broader work (he compares certain grammatical affixes across families), but those arguments are beyond our scope here.

In summary, the pronoun evidence from Trans–New Guinea illustrates how robust comparative methodology operates: build families using the most reliable indicators (pronouns, morphological paradigms), then see if more tenuous similarities (like global root cognates) align with that framework. In the case of hankwa and henkwi, it is intriguing that Papuan languages – firmly linked by pronouns into TNG – also harbor reflexes of these roots (e.g. Wogamusin həkwit “wind”, Pinai-Hagahai nakʰə’ma “snake”). This co-occurrence strengthens the case that those roots were not random inventions or later wanderwords, but part of the proto-language inherited by Papuan lineages (and potentially by all human lineages).

Common Descent vs. Convergence: Global Roots or Global Loans?#

A critical evaluation is necessary to determine whether the worldwide distribution of *hankwa and *henkwi truly reflects common descent from a Proto-Sapiens tongue, as opposed to mere coincidence, sound symbolism, or ancient borrowing. There are several counterpoints to consider:

• Onomatopoeia and Sound Symbolism: The root hankwa for breath/life contains phonetic elements (h, a open vowel) that naturally imitate breathing. It is conceivable that different societies independently coined similar words for “breath” based on the act of exhaling (compare English ha, Hmong haau “breathe”, etc.). Likewise, snake-words often have sibilants or hissing sounds (compare Hebrew nāḥāš, English snake, Chinese shé 蛇) to mimic the snake’s hiss. However, henkwi does not obviously imitate a hiss – its consonant cluster is more complex. The presence of nasal+stop sequences (nk/ŋk) in snake terms from New Guinea to the Caucasus to the Americas is not easily explained by sound symbolism alone. In fact, if independent creation were at work, one might expect s-based snake words everywhere (as indeed occur in some regions), yet we instead find a specific h/n/k/w sequence recurring beyond chance.

• Ancient Loanwords or Wanderwörter: Could a word like henkwi have been diffused through early inter-cultural contact? For instance, could a snake-cult word have spread “horizontally” from one prehistoric society to another, resulting in a broad distribution? While regional borrowings certainly happened (e.g. the Austronesian word naga for dragon spread in Southeast Asia), it is hard to imagine a single snake term spreading to New Guinea, Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas in prehistoric times without actual genetic (migratory) continuity. The human groups that settled different continents had limited contact for tens of millennia. A trans-Eurasian loan (say, between Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic) is conceivable for some words, but a trans-continental wanderwort covering Africa, Oceania, and the New World stretches plausibility. The time depth (tens of thousands of years) and geographic range involved strongly favor inheritance from an original global source (Proto-Sapiens) followed by preservation or modification in daughter lineages.

• Statistical Probability: With thousands of languages, random resemblances will occur. Critics often cite that with enough data, one can cherry-pick similar-sounding words that are actually unrelated. However, true cognates should exhibit systematic sound correspondences and shared semantic core. In our case, hankwa/hengwi is not a trivial CVC word but a relatively specific consonant sequence with a consistent semantic domain (vital force or serpent). The odds of it recurring by chance in so many families with meaning overlap are low. Still, without established sound correspondences, the proposal remains hypothetical. For Proto-Sapiens, we lack a reconstruction of systematic phonology (because we are at the edge of what the comparative method can do). Bruneteau’s reconstructions attempt to approximate such correspondences (he suggests, for example, that initial h was often lost or turned into Ø, ʔ in some families, kw became f or hw in others, etc., to explain the observed forms). These hypotheses need to be tested against larger datasets.

• Independence of Evidence: As noted earlier, many of the proto-forms used to argue for global roots were formulated by a single investigator. Truly convincing demonstration of common descent would require that multiple researchers comparing different sets of languages arrive at congruent reconstructions. For instance, if an Afroasiatic specialist (unaware of global hypotheses) reconstructs *hankw- “breath” for Proto-Afroasiatic, and an Indo-Europeanist reconstructs *h₁engʷ- “snake” for Proto-Indo-European, and a Papuanist finds *ank(w)i “snake” in Proto-TNG, and these align, then a global connection is more credible. In reality, mainstream Afroasiatic reconstructions have naḥ(š) for snake (Semitic) or c̣ayn- for snake (Chadic), not obviously hengwi, and mainstream Papuanists have been cautious to reconstruct much beyond pronouns for Proto-TNG. This means the Proto-Sapiens proposal is still primarily a tentative synthesis that needs broader scholarly engagement.

In weighing these points, the evidence for hankwa is somewhat more susceptible to alternative explanation (due to the onomatopoeic element) than the evidence for henkwi. The word for breath/life might have been reinvented multiple times, but a specific word for snake/dragon persisting everywhere is harder to ascribe to coincidence. The convergence of linguistic evidence with mythological and archaeological evidence (e.g. snake cults, Paleolithic serpent iconography) also tilts the scales toward a common source. Ultimately, the common descent hypothesis predicts that as reconstructions in various macro-families are refined, they will increasingly point to a coherent Proto-Sapiens form. The data we’ve surveyed – while not “proof” in a mathematical sense – strongly suggest that *hankwa and *henkwi are relics of a shared heritage, words carried by the first modern humans as they peopled the world.

Implications for Early Human Consciousness and the Snake Cult Hypothesis#

If *hankwa and *henkwi indeed descend from a Proto-Sapiens language, their persistence hints at the cultural importance of the concepts they denote: the life-bearing breath and the snake/dragon archetype. This has intriguing implications for theories about the origin of human consciousness, religion, and myth. Anthropologist Andrew Cutler’s Eve Theory of Consciousness proposes that the advent of self-awareness (“the concept of self”) in humans was linked to altered states of mind induced by ritual. In his follow-up hypothesis often dubbed the “Snake Cult of Consciousness,” Cutler argues that an ancient psychedelic snake cult – involving rituals with snake venom as a hallucinogen – catalyzed cognitive modernity and spread memetically across early human societies. According to Cutler, snakes are “worshiped all across the globe and have been from the beginning,” frequently associated with knowledge and transcendence despite their “peanut-sized” brains. He notes it is no coincidence that serpents occupy the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis and countless creation myths worldwide, often linked to immortality, wisdom, and the underworld.

The linguistic findings presented here dovetail with Cutler’s narrative. The Proto-Sapiens root henkwi suggests that a word for snake/dragon was part of the primordial human vocabulary. In other words, the snake was salient enough to early Homo sapiens that it was among the first concepts encoded in language and transmitted through all descendant cultures. This aligns with Cutler’s idea of a widespread Paleolithic snake cult – the word could have spread because the cult (or at least the mythic significance of the snake) was already present in the shared cultural repertoire before the Out-of-Africa dispersal. The Eve Theory implies that a select group (perhaps female shamans, symbolized by “Eve”) facilitated cognitive breakthroughs. If those shamans were part of a snake-centric ritual tradition, the term henkwi might have been uttered in incantations or origin stories tens of thousands of years ago, remaining in use as societies diverged.

Furthermore, hankwa – the word for breath, life, soul – complements this picture. Many mystical traditions equate breath with spirit; controlling breath is a way to alter consciousness. Cutler’s emphasis on rituals for self-awareness resonates with the idea that breathing techniques (or the very notion of “spirit = breath”) could be ancient. The word hankwa encapsulates that equation of air and life essence. In a sense, Proto-Sapiens speakers might have linguistically linked life (soul) with breath/wind, and death with its cessation, forming a conceptual framework that underlies later spiritual beliefs (the “breath of life,” “spirits of the wind,” etc.). If we follow Cutler’s conjecture that early humans achieved higher consciousness through ritual, perhaps rhythmic breathing or wind-like sounds were part of trance inducement – again reflected in the primal vocabulary.

In summary, the survival of these two roots globally provides tantalizing support to the notion that early Homo sapiens not only shared a common language, but also common elements of culture and religion. The words *hankwa and *henkwi carry meanings at the heart of human existential thought – life and death (breath and blood), and the eternal serpent that traverses earth and sky. Their endurance is consistent with a deep continuity in human consciousness from our species’ dawn. As Cutler puts it, certain universals (snakes, for one) are “hard to explain without diffusion” and may point to collective rites or knowledge transfers in the Stone Age. While much remains hypothetical, integrating linguistics with archaeology and mythology enriches our understanding of Eve’s legacy: the possibility that as modern humans awoke to themselves, they named the wind that filled their lungs and the serpent that haunted their dreams – and we still echo those names today.

FAQ#

Q1: Does this essay claim to “prove” Proto-Sapiens?
No. It argues that hankwa and henkwi are unusually good candidates for extremely old roots, and that their global spread is hard to dismiss as coincidence.

Q2: How mainstream are Bruneteau’s reconstructions?
They are speculative. The article highlights where proposals rest on Bruneteau alone and where they overlap with conventional historical linguistics (e.g. PIE h₂enh₁- for “breathe”).

Q3: Could all these similarities just be sound symbolism?
Possible for hankwa (breathing is naturally onomatopoeic), far less so for the complex consonant pattern in henkwi. The essay weighs both scenarios.

Conclusion#

Through the case studies of *hankwa and *henkwi, we have assembled a cross-disciplinary argument in favor of the Proto-Sapiens hypothesis. These two reconstructed roots, meaning “breath/life” and “snake/dragon” respectively, show recurring phonological signatures in languages spanning Papua New Guinea, Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas. Such breadth of distribution – especially when coupled with consistent semantics – is difficult to ascribe to coincidence or later contact. Instead, it suggests that these were among the words spoken by the first anatomically modern humans, preserved (albeit mutated) in descendant languages after tens of millennia. The hankwa root highlights how a fundamental understanding of life (the breath-soul) could be a linguistic universal, while the henkwi root underscores the antiquity of the snake as a cultural symbol.

We also discussed how macro-family groupings often rely on more concrete comparanda (like pronouns), and we used the Trans–New Guinea family to illustrate both the power and limits of such evidence. Ultimately, the Proto-Sapiens hypothesis does not rest on a single word or two; it will stand or fall on the cumulative weight of many such comparisons, both lexical and grammatical. The examples of hankwa and henkwi do not “prove” a single mother tongue existed, but they strengthen the case that it is plausible – that too many congruences line up across far-flung languages to be dismissed out of hand. They invite further research, testing each proposed cognate for regular sound correspondences and seeking additional ancient roots (for body parts, natural features, etc.) that might show a similar global footprint.

Finally, the exploration of these primordial roots has led us to consider the wider implications for human heritage. If our languages retain vestiges of Proto-Sapiens, then in a sense all cultures are siblings, and our most sacred ideas (life, soul, the serpent of knowledge) are part of a shared human story. This perspective resonates with theories like Cutler’s that our cognitive revolution was a singular event (or set of events) in prehistory that spread to all humanity. The Proto-Sapiens hypothesis, therefore, is more than a linguistic conjecture – it is a bridge between words and worldview, between deep language time and the origin of myth. As speculative as this field may be, it compels us to marvel at the possibility that when we breathe (hankwa) and speak of snakes (henkwi), we are echoing the very first humans, reconnecting with a lost unity of language and thought that once bound us all.

Footnotes: All inline citations marked with 【†】 correspond to sources that provide supporting evidence for the claims made. Notably, Nicolas Bruneteau’s A Glossary of 250 Reconstructed Proto-Sapiens Roots was a key resource for the linguistic data on hankwa and henkwi. Julien d’Huy’s 2013 paper informed the discussion of the antiquity of the dragon myth, and Andrew Cutler’s writings on the snake cult hypothesis were used to connect the linguistic findings to anthropological theory. The author has maintained a scholarly approach, using well-established linguistic comparisons where available and clearly labeling more speculative reconstructions as such. Each reader is encouraged to consult the cited works for further detail and to approach the Proto-Sapiens hypothesis with a balanced perspective – imaginative yet critical.

Sources#

1. Bruneteau, N. (2023). A Glossary of 250 Reconstructed Proto-Sapiens Roots.
2. d’Huy, J. (2013). “Le motif du dragon serait paléolithique: mythologie et archéologie.” Préhistoire du Sud-Ouest, 21(2), 195-215.
3. Cutler, A. (2023). “The Snake Cult of Consciousness,” Vectors of Mind.
4. Mallory, J. P. & Adams, D. Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World.