“We are the people of the Earth and spoke the same language yesterday. The ancient tongue of the Earth lives within us, but we have forgotten it. Time has come to revive it.”
— Nicolas Bruneteau, A Glossary of 250 Reconstructed Proto-Sapiens Roots (2023)
TL;DR
- The Proto-Sapiens hypothesis posits a single origin for all human languages, a controversial but intriguing field of study.12
- Two reconstructed roots,
*hankwa(“breath, wind, soul”) and*henkwi(“snake, dragon”), appear to be an intertwined pair, suggesting a deep symbolic connection.3 - Evidence from diverse language macrofamilies (Afroasiatic, Indo-European, Trans-New Guinea, etc.) shows potential cognates linking breath/wind to serpent symbolism.
- Modern terms like Latin anima, Greek ánemos, Tagalog hangin, Latin anguis, and English snake may ultimately descend from these ancient roots.
- The global prevalence of myths fusing wind, life-force, and serpents (e.g., Rainbow Serpent, dragons, kundalini) hints at a shared Paleolithic archetype, possibly related to early theories of consciousness.
Introduction#
Human language may preserve echoes of our most ancient symbolic concepts. The Proto-Sapiens (or Proto-World) hypothesis proposes that all human languages descend from a single ancestral tongue spoken tens of thousands of years ago.1 While this idea remains on the fringes of mainstream historical linguistics, which prefers to work within established language families,2 it provides a compelling framework for exploring potential global etymologies—words with similar sound and meaning across the world.4
Among the most intriguing candidates for such deep reconstruction are two roots proposed by long-range comparativist Nicolas Bruneteau in his Glossary of 250 Reconstructed Proto-Sapiens Roots: *hankwa (meaning “to breathe; breath; to live; life; soul; wind; to blow”) and *henkwi (meaning “snake; mythical snake (dragon); to creep like a snake”).3 These roots appear to be semantically intertwined, connecting fundamental life forces (breath, wind, soul) with the powerful archetype of the serpent.
This article explores the evidence for this breath–serpent continuum as laid out in Bruneteau’s reconstructions. We will examine how each root’s semantic field is reflected in various proto-languages, supported by tables of proposed cognates. We will also consider how this linguistic pattern may relate to theories of Paleolithic consciousness, such as Andrew Cutler’s “snake cult of consciousness” theory.
Methodology of Proto-Sapiens Reconstruction#
Reconstructing language to the depth of Proto-Sapiens is a controversial endeavor. Mainstream historical linguistics can confidently reconstruct proto-languages for established families like Indo-European or Austronesian, dating back 6,000 to 10,000 years.2 Beyond that, the signals of linguistic relation—regular sound correspondences and shared grammar—are thought to erode, making it difficult to distinguish true genetic relationships from chance resemblances or ancient borrowings.4
Proponents of “long-range comparison,” like Bruneteau, argue that by comparing words from all extant language families, one can infer features of a much older ancestral language.3 This method relies on several key principles:
- Cross-Family Comparison: Identifying recurring sound-meaning correspondences across multiple, unrelated macro-families.
- Semantic Clustering: Recognizing that ancient roots often had a broad, polysemous range of meanings (e.g., a single root for air, life, soul, wind, and blood).
- Sound Symbolism & Onomatopoeia: Assuming that many primordial words stemmed from imitations of natural sounds (wind blowing, snakes hissing) or basic human actions (breathing).5
For example, Bruneteau analyzes *hankwa as a composite of *ha + *na + *kwa, representing the sound of air (*ha) passing through the nose (*na) and mouth (*kwa).3 While such analyses are speculative, they provide a framework for investigating the deepest layers of linguistic history. It is crucial, however, to distinguish between well-supported reconstructions within established families and these more far-reaching Proto-World conjectures.
hankwa – Breath, Life, Soul, and Wind#
The Proto-Sapiens root *hankwa is proposed to encapsulate the rich semantic field: “to breathe, breath; to live, life; soul, blood; wind; to blow.”3 This primeval concept links the physical act of breathing with the notion of a soul or life-force carried by the wind—an archetypal example of animism in language.5 The following table presents some of the most striking proposed cognates across different language families, suggesting a truly ancient and widespread linguistic heritage.
| Language Macrofamily/Family | Reconstructed Proto-form | Notes & Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Proto-Sapiens (Hypothetical) | *hankwa | (Breath, life, soul, wind). The proposed ultimate ancestor root.3 |
| Proto-Trans-New-Guinea | *henkwe | (Wind). TNG represents over 60 language families in New Guinea. Example: Wogamusin həkwit (wind).3 |
| Proto-Nostratic (Hypothetical) | *hankwa | (Breath, life, soul, wind, blood). A proposed macrofamily linking several Eurasian families. |
| ↳ Proto-Afroasiatic | *-xʷanha | (To breathe, inhale; life, soul; wind).6 Example: Ancient Egyptian Ꜥnḫ (ankh), “life.”7 |
| ↳ Proto-Indo-European | *h₂enh₁- | (To breathe).8 A well-established reconstruction. Examples: Latin anima “soul, breath,”9 Greek ánemos “wind.” |
| ↳ Proto-Uralic | *wajŋe | (Soul, breath). Example: Finnish henki “spirit, breath.”3 |
| Macro-Caucasian (Hypothetical) | *hwerkwa | (Wind, to breathe, air). Another proposed macrofamily. |
| ↳ Sumerian | *hwril → líl | (Wind). The Sumerian god of wind and breath, Enlil (𒀭𒂗𒆤), may be a nativized form of a related root.10 |
| Proto-Austric (Hypothetical) | *hankwal | (Wind, to blow, soul). |
| ↳ Proto-Austronesian | *haŋin | (Wind).11 Example: Tagalog hangin “wind.” A separate root, *NiSawa (“to breathe”), yields Malay nyawa “life, soul.”12 |
| Proto-Abya-Yala (Hypothetical) | *hekwal | (Wind, to breathe, air). A proposed family for Native American languages. |
As the table illustrates, *hankwa-like roots are abundantly evidenced across the globe.
In Africa and the Near East, Proto-Afroasiatic *-xʷanha (“to breathe, live”)6 is a strong candidate, with possible reflexes in the famous Egyptian word ankh (𓋹), the symbol of life itself.7 In Khoisan languages, we find forms like *hankwe, with ǃXóõ ǂqhuè meaning “wind; spirit.”3
In Eurasia, the evidence is particularly strong. Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *h₂enh₁- (“to breathe”)8 is a cornerstone of historical linguistics, giving us Latin anima (“breath, soul”), Greek ánemos (“wind”), and Sanskrit ániti (“he breathes”). Proto-Uralic *wajŋe (“soul, breath”) and Proto-Transeurasian *hiu̯ŋgu (“to breathe, smell”) further support an ancient root for this concept complex across Inner Eurasia.3 In the Caucasus, the isolate language Basque has ke (“smoke”), which Bruneteau traces to an earlier *khe related to *hankwa.3
The pattern extends across Asia and Oceania. Proto-Austric is reconstructed with *hankwal (“wind, soul”), reflected in Proto-Austronesian *haŋin (“wind”), which survives in languages like Tagalog and Malay (angin).311 Even in distant Australia, Proto-Pama–Nyungan has a reconstructed word *wanri (“wind”).3
This global breadth of *hankwa’s proposed reflexes—spanning Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania—underscores its antiquity. Early humans everywhere seem to have felt the equation breath = life = spirit, encoding it deep within their languages.
henkwi – Snake and Dragon Across Proto-Languages#
The second root, *henkwi, is glossed as “snake; mythical snake (dragon); to creep like a snake.”3 This term likely denoted the archetypal serpent, a creature of immense mythological importance. Anthropological research suggests that the dragon-slaying myth may date back to the Paleolithic, with the dragon being a composite creature associated with water, storms, and wind.13 The Proto-Sapiens lexicon seems to encode this, as *henkwi intersects semantically with *hankwa (wind), *konha (water), and *henke (fire).3
Given the snake’s cultural importance, it is not surprising that *henkwi is considered one of the most stable and reconstructible words. The following table highlights some of the most compelling proposed cognates.
| Language Macrofamily/Family | Reconstructed Proto-form | Notes & Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Proto-Sapiens (Hypothetical) | *henkwi | (Snake, dragon). The proposed ancestral root for the serpent archetype.3 |
| Proto-Trans-New-Guinea | *hankwi | (Snake). Found across a super-phylum of over 60 language families. Examples: Nend akʷɨ, Mali aulanki.3 |
| Proto-Afroasiatic | *hengwi | (Snake). This root diversified greatly. Example: Arabic ḥanaš (“snake,” possibly from *naḥaš by metathesis, see below).314 |
| Proto-Eurasiatic (Hypothetical) | *henghwe | (Snake). |
| ↳ Proto-Indo-European | *h₂éngʷʰis | (Serpent).15 A solid reconstruction. Examples: Latin anguis “snake,” Sanskrit áhi “serpent,” English snake (from related PIE root *sneg-o- “to crawl”).16 |
| Macro-Caucasian (Hypothetical) | *henkwe | (Snake, mythical snake). |
| Proto-Himalayo-Austric (Hyp.) | *bronke | (Snake, dragon). |
| ↳ Proto-Hmong-Mien | *ʔnaŋ / *kroŋ | (*ʔnaŋ “snake,” *kroŋ “dragon”). The forms suggest a link to other regional reconstructions.3 |
| Proto-Abya-Yala (Hypothetical) | *kankwi | (Snake). A proposed root for the languages of the Americas. |
Just as with *hankwa, we find *henkwi-like forms across the globe.
Africa: A likely cognate appears in Proto-Afroasiatic as
*hengwi(“snake”).3 While Semitic languages have terms like Hebrew nāḥāš,14 Bruneteau also points to Arabic ṯuʿbān (“dragon”) as a possible metathesis of an original*hanku.3 In Niger-Congo, Proto-Bantu*-joka(“snake,” e.g., Swahili joka) is common.Eurasia: Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
*h₂éngʷʰis(“serpent”)15 is a textbook example, yielding Latin anguis and Sanskrit áhi. Another PIE root,*sneg-o-(“to crawl”), gave us English snake.16 In Sino-Tibetan, the word for dragon, Chinese lóng (龍), is traced to Proto-Sino-Tibetan*mbruŋ,17 which Bruneteau links to the wider*bronkefamily.3New Guinea & Beyond: The reconstruction of
*hankwi(“snake”) in Proto-Trans-New-Guinea is striking evidence, as this language super-phylum is incredibly diverse and ancient.3 In Austronesian, we find native words like sulaʀ (yielding Malay ular)18 as well as loanwords like Tagalog ahas (from Sanskrit ahi), showing how snake words can both be inherited and borrowed.19
Despite phonetic variations and local innovations (often due to snake-name taboos), the global pattern is clear: languages in Africa, Eurasia, New Guinea, and the Americas have ancient terms for snake/dragon that may resonate with *henkwi. The fact that *henkwi can be plausibly projected back to Proto-Sapiens suggests our ancestors carried stories of great serpents with them as they peopled the world.
Modern Descendants#
Traces of *hankwa and *henkwi arguably survive in many modern languages.
From
*hankwa(Breath/Life):From
*henkwi(Snake/Dragon):
These connections are not merely linguistic trivia; they point toward a deep and perhaps universal human preoccupation with breath and serpents.
Breath and Serpent: Paleolithic Consciousness and Symbolic Continuity#
The striking semantic continuum between *hankwa (breath, life, soul, wind) and *henkwi (snake, dragon) may reflect a neuro-symbolic substrate of Paleolithic consciousness. In our ancestors’ world, breath was invisible yet vital, and the serpent was mysterious and powerful.
Many ancient myths fuse these two concepts. The Rainbow Serpent of Indigenous Australians is a creator deity associated with water, rainbows, and life-giving breath.21 In Chinese mythology, the dragon (lóng) controls rain and wind. In Indian yoga, kundalini is a coiled serpent energy awakened through breath control (pranayama). The feathered serpent of Mesoamerica, Quetzalcoatl, was a deity of wind and wisdom.
Modern hypotheses like Andrew Cutler’s “Snake Cult of Consciousness” push these connections into the realm of cognitive evolution. Cutler proposes that snake venom rituals may have triggered altered states of mind that led to the birth of self-awareness.22 In this view, a serpent cult could have used venom as a shamanic tool to “discover the self,” an event later encoded in myths of a serpent granting forbidden knowledge (e.g., Eden’s snake).23
While such theories remain speculative, it is compelling how language, mythology, and neurohistory can dovetail. The reconstructed Proto-Sapiens vocabulary suggests that as Homo sapiens spread across the globe, they carried with them not only practical tools but also symbolic universals—among them, words and myths about the breath of life and the cosmic serpent. In the end, the pairing of *hankwa and *henkwi is a testament to an ancestral understanding that life is a breath winding through time, and wisdom can be found in the serpent’s trail.
The Lifebreath of the Dragon#
Cutler’s Snake Cult of Consciousness argues that the decisive leap from simple sentience to secondary consciousness—the mind aware of itself—was taught, not born. The lesson took place in venom rites: initiates hovered at the edge of death, then resurfaced with a shocking insight that felt like a new wind filling the chest. The serpent gave the lifebreath, and with it the capacity to watch one’s own thoughts.
If that ceremony once sat at the cradle of culture, it left fingerprints. Across the world the breath root (*hankwa) and the serpent root (*henkwi) intertwine in tales where dragons breathe life, rain, or wisdom into humans. The pairing of sound and meaning—*han- for wind, *henk- for snake—looks less like coincidence than a linguistic fossil of an old teaching: consciousness is the breath the dragon bestows.
FAQ#
Q1: What is the Proto-Sapiens hypothesis? A. It’s the theory that all modern human languages descend from a single ancestral tongue spoken tens of thousands of years ago. It is a controversial hypothesis not accepted by most historical linguists but explored by long-range comparativists.12
Q2: What is the significance of *hankwa and *henkwi?
A. They represent one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the Proto-Sapiens hypothesis, suggesting a deep, shared linguistic and symbolic link between the concepts of “breath/life” and “snake/dragon” among the earliest modern humans.3
Q3: Are these reconstructions universally accepted?
A. No. Reconstructions for established families like Proto-Indo-European (e.g., *h₂enh₁-) are widely accepted.8 Proto-Sapiens reconstructions like *hankwa are considered speculative hypotheses by mainstream linguistics, valuable for exploring deep-time language evolution but not yet proven.2
Proto-Human language – Also called Proto-World or Proto-Sapiens, this is the hypothesized common ancestor of all languages. See Proto-Human language – Wikipedia (retrieved 2025-07-28) for an overview, and Merritt Ruhlen’s The Origin of Language (1994) for an argument in favor of monogenesis. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Mainstream linguistic view – Historical linguistics can confidently reconstruct proto-languages back ~6,000–10,000 years (e.g. Proto-Indo-European). Beyond that, the signal gets weaker. See Campbell & Poser (2008), Language Classification: History and Method, for a critique of long-range comparison. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Bruneteau’s Reconstructions – Nicolas Bruneteau (2023), in “A glossary of 250 reconstructed Proto-Sapiens roots,” proposes
*hankwaand*henkwibased on cross-family comparisons. These connections are his proposals and are not generally accepted by mainstream linguists. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎Global etymologies – A set of 27 proposed worldwide cognates was presented by Bengtson & Ruhlen (1994). Examples included tik “finger” and akwa “water.” These have been widely criticized as cherry-picked. ↩︎ ↩︎
Breath, spirit, and soul – The linking of breath with life/spirit recurs in many cultures. E.g., Latin spīritus, Greek pneuma, Sanskrit prāṇa, Hebrew neshama. These reflect a common conceptual metaphor (life = breath). See J. Leahy (2020), “The Vital Breath: Conceptualizations of Spirit and Air in World Cultures.” ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Proto-Afroasiatic
*-xʷan-– A root meaning “to breathe, live” (Ehret 1995, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic). ↩︎ ↩︎Egyptian
Ꜥnḫ(ankh) – The hieroglyph ☥ stands for the word meaning “life, to live.” Its etymology may connect to the Afroasiatic*-xʷan-root. ↩︎ ↩︎PIE
*h₂enh₁-– This is the Proto-Indo-European root for “to breathe,” solidly reconstructed from cognates like Latin animus, anima and Greek ánemos (Pokorny’s Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1959, p. 38). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎Latin anima – Derived from PIE
*h₂enh₁-. See the Wiktionary entry “anima.” Words like animal and animate descend from it. ↩︎ ↩︎The Sumerian deity Enlil, whose name means “Lord Wind,” was the god of breath, wind, and air. Bruneteau suggests the word for wind,
líl, may derive from*hwril, a form related to the*hwerkwabranch of*hankwa. ↩︎Proto-Austronesian
*NiSawa&*haŋin–*NiSawa(“breath”) is reconstructed by R. Blust (ACD).*haŋin(“wind”) is another well-attested PAN root. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎Malay nyawa – Malay nyawa (“life, soul”) is a direct descendant of Proto-Austronesian
*NiSawa(“breath”). ↩︎ ↩︎d’Huy, Julien. “Le motif du dragon serait paléolithique: mythologie et archéologie.” Préhistoire du Sud-Ouest 21(2): 195–215, 2013. ↩︎
Proto-Semitic
*naḥaš– Root for “snake” in Northwest Semitic (e.g., Hebrew nāḥāš). In Akkadian it meant “lion,” suggesting a broader original meaning of “predator.” (Militarev & Kogan, Semitic Etymological Dictionary II, 2005). ↩︎ ↩︎PIE
*h₂engʷʰis– Means “serpent/snake.” It underlies Sanskrit áhi, Latin anguis, etc. (Mallory & Adams (2006), The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European, p.129). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎English “snake” – From PIE
*sneg-o-(“to crawl, creep”), a different root from*h₂engʷʰisbut part of the same broad semantic field. (Watkins, American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎Proto-Sino-Tibetan
*mbruŋ– Reconstructed from Old Chinese 龍 (lóng) “dragon” and Tibetan ’brug “dragon; thunder.” (Baxter & Sagart (2014), Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction). ↩︎ ↩︎Proto-Austronesian
*sulaʀ– Reconstructed word for “snake,” yielding Malay/Indonesian ular. (Blust & Trussel (2020), Austronesian Comparative Dictionary). ↩︎Indic loanwords – The word ahas (for snake in Tagalog) is a loan from Sanskrit ahi, showing that snake words can travel through cultural contact. ↩︎
Proto-World for “snake”? – There is no agreed-upon root. Suggestions like
*(s)nag-are speculative, as similarities between Sanskrit nāga, Hebrew nāḥāš, and English snake could be coincidence or ancient loans. ↩︎Anthropological research has traced the “Cosmic Hunt” and “Dragon” myths back to the Paleolithic era, suggesting they were part of the symbolic toolkit of early Homo sapiens. ↩︎
Cutler, Andrew. “The Snake Cult of Consciousness” (Vectors of Mind, 2023). ↩︎
This theory reinterprets myths like the serpent in the Garden of Eden not as a story of a fall, but as an allegorical memory of a shamanic practice that catalyzed human self-awareness. ↩︎