By then, discovery of the New World and exploration of the Far East had brought knowledge of numbers of new languages far beyond the 72 calculated by St. Augustine. Citing the Native American languages, Browne suggests the "confusion of tongues at first fell only upon those present in Sinaar at the work of Babel ..." For those "about the foot of the hills, whereabout the ark rested ... their primitive language might in time branch out into several parts of Europe and This is an inkling of a tree. In Browne's view, simplification from a larger aboriginal language than Hebrew could account for the differences in language. He suggests ancient Chinese, from which the others descended by "confusion, admixtion and corruption". Later he invokes "commixture and alteration."