I have two reasons for writing this paper. The first is that, while I have occasionally heard the word Nostratic, I have never had a clear idea what it meant, and I suspect that most readers of this Journal are in a similar position. The second is that I have recently received from a colleague in Moscow a book just published there entitled “An attempt to compare the Nostratic languages” (Opyt sravneniya nostraticheskikh yazykov) which defines the term, gives a history of the origin and development of the Nostratic theory, and marshals a great deal of evidence in support of it. The author, V. M. Illich-Svitych, died in 1964, and the first part of his book, which was perhaps never finished, has now been published, with an introduction, notes, and some supplementary matter, by his friend and colleague, V. A. Dybo. This was Illich-Svitych's only major work, but the bibliography (p. 74; this and similar references are to pages in the book) lists also six articles by him in various learned journals. The first feeling of any reader of the book must be utter astonishment at the amount of sheer hard detailed work which he packed into a short life of no more than 32 years.