I'm looking for a book that I read about an inventor or professor who creates a time machine and accidentally travels back in time to pre homosapien time and discovers that we are the progeny of aliens. I seem to remember the title being something like Gods & Demons or Gog & Megog.
The inventor is a man and he takes at least one other person with him, a female neighbor I think, there may actually be two "companions." The main characters end up in prehistory with what appear to be the beginnings of human civilization with separate tribes of varying intelligence and with different languages. The main characters come in contact with someone in spacecraft speaking to the tribes in each of there respective languages.
When the aliens of the spacecraft meet the time travelers there is a misconception that the main characters are also aliens from somewhere else instead of some when else. The aliens perform a mind expanding "operation" on the main character allowing him to understand all of the languages around him. They also ask him to show them where he has come from while showing him many star maps.
Skipping ahead in the story, the aliens put the main character into a gladiator style competition against their pets (reminiscent of giant hyenas) The female character saves the now super intelligent inventor by remembering that the word the aliens use to make the pets heel is "Skrutt." The inventor is embarrassed that he didn't remember such a simple command. I don't remember how the story resolves except that the girl and inventor get home and one of the closing lines is that he spends the rest of his days teaching French at the university.
