In ancient times most cultures and civilizations made some reference to the origin of thei

r languages. However, they did not study language by observation or experimentation--at least as far as we can judge from records that have survived to this day. Most comments on the origins of languages come to us in folk-tales or religious writings, but the Greek historian Herodotus tells us one experiment.

An Egyptian king named Psammetichos wished to find out which was the world's oldest language. To gain this information he decided to isolate two newborn babies until they began to speak. Because they were kept from adults, they would have no patterns to imitate. The king made the assumption that the children would speak what was a natural language--which would be the oldest. After some months the children were heard to make a sound which was recorded as "bekos". This was found to be very similar to the Phrygian word for "bread". Therefore Phrygian (a language once spoken in Asia Minor) was considered to be the first language of mankind. At least by King Psammetichos, and, we may assume, by his court.

The two babies were deliberately kept from adults ______ .

A．to see whether they could learn to speak without the help of adults

B．to prove that Phrygian was the first language of mankind

C．to see whether they would speak the Egyptian language

D．to discover which language would come most naturally