eli5 How did “words” come to be before any language was developed? Like before words existed how did a group of people just collectively decide a banana is a banana and not a “ksirjrnwpx”

Question

eli5 How did “words” come to be before any language was developed? Like before words existed how did a group of people just collectively decide a banana is a banana and not a “ksirjrnwpx”

In: 11

Answer 1

Words were the original memes. Someone made a noise around something, and everyone thought it was the funniest shit and started making the same noise every time they saw the thing.

Humans’ propensity for [imitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imitation#Animal_behavior) leads it to being passed on in the society, and a language developed from that into one big, complicated [meme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme).

This is just a hypothesis, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?