While engaged in helping rebuild a post-Napoleonic Prussia and Europe after his Roman years, Humboldt pursued several linguistic projects: a linguistic cartography of Europe applicable to other continents; initial analyses of Nahuatl; grammatical sketches of seven other Mexican languages; a programmatic comparative-contrastive statement of linguistics in “Essai sur les langues du nouveau Continent;” an in-depth analysis of Quechua of the Andes plus grammatical sketches for Araucano (Mapuche), Guaraní, and Muisca of South America; comparative studies of Aztecan, Mayan, or Tupian language families and linguistic areas; introduction to Massachusett, Mahican, and Onondaga grammars of eastern North America; noun incorporation versus polysynthesis; growing understanding of verbal morphology, including the zero morpheme; “inner forms” of American languages; attention to language contact and also to extralinguistic, sociocultural scenes and wider contexts as part of comprehensive descriptions and explanations of differences and changes in languages without literary traditions in substitution of historical records.