When Did Language Begin?
Well, that’s very hard to know, since we didn’t have tape recorders back then. We are reasonably sure, however, that language has been spoken for a very very long time, tens of thousands of years at least, many centuries before agriculture or civilization began anywhere in the world. This is because all people everywhere today, in every corner of the world, speak languages as complex as everyone else’s. By the way, languages did not begin in Egypt or Sumeria (as far as we know, anyway). Those were just the first cultures we know of to write down languages that they already spoke. Languages must have been spoken by all human beings many millennia before that.
At the very beginnings of the genus Homo, perhaps 4 or 5 million years ago? Or with the advent of modern man, Cro-magnon, some 125,000 years ago? Did the neanderthal speak? He had a brain that was larger than ours, but his voice box seems to be higher in his throat, like that of the apes. We don’t know. There are many theories about the origins of language. Many of these have traditional amusing names (invented by Max Müller and George Romanes a century ago), and I will create a couple more where needed. 1. The mama theory. Language began with the easiest syllables attached to the most significant objects. 2. The ta-ta theory. Sir Richard Paget, influenced by Darwin, believed that body movement preceded language. Language began as an unconscious vocal imitation of these movements — like the way a child’s mouth will move when they use scissors, or my tongue sticks out when I try to play the guitar. This evolved into the popular idea that language may have derived from gestures. 3. The
It is believed that human speech developed between the times of the Neanderthal Man (beginning in 100,000 B.C.) and the Cro-Magnon Man (beginning in 35,000 B.C.). The actual process of this development is unknown, but most theories claim that language developed either as an imitation of animal sounds, like grunts and barks, or a
There are many not well known theories about the origins of language and many more that could be created, either here or on other information support media. Please feel free to contribute with anything you can think of and try not to repress yourself at all. Here are some samples taken from other people’s ideas.
