Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn

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Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn at age 28.

Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn (August 28, 1612 – October 3, 1653) was a Dutch scholar (his Latinized name was Marcus Zuerius Boxhornius). Born in Bergen op Zoom, he was professor at the University of Leiden. He discovered the similarity among Indo-European languages, and supposed the existence of a primitive common language which he called 'Scythian'. He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. He excluded languages such as Hebrew from his hypothesis. He died in Leiden.

References

• B. van Wayenburg (2004), "Marcus van Boxhorn: uitvinder van de Europese oertaal", in Mare di libri 32 (Dutch)
• Biography on the site Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (Dutch)
• Digitized primary sources and secondary information on the wiki Hortus Linguarum (English)