But I know not the manner of his going--whether he was drowned in the river, or was swallowed by a snake, or went into the stomach of old Saber-Tooth, the tiger, is beyond my knowledge.
For know that I remember only the things I saw myself, with my own eyes, in those prehistoric days.

If my mother knew my father's end, she never told me.

For that matter I doubt if she had a vocabulary adequate to convey such information.

Perhaps, all told, the Folk in that day had a vocabulary of thirty or forty sounds.
I call them SOUNDS, rather than WORDS, because sounds they were primarily.

They had no fixed values, to be altered by adjectives and adverbs.