A long long time ago, humans went from grunts to some kind of primitive language then to an advance language.
How did a region possibly learn and agree that the sound “tree” for example meant that big thing over there?
Maybe my family would agree and say, but then our neighbours or tribe some 20km away?
Then for every word, tenses, grammar?!
I imagine it took a long time but I can’t even comprehend how you would transition from grunts to even a basic common language for a larger region like ancient China, Egypt, or aztecs.
They obviously did accomplish it, but how?
In: 44
A: Rock
B: Rock ?
A: Rock
B: Rock
If it’s something that really interests you, I listen to the History of English Podcast. It’s about the English language itself. The creator started the series in 2012 and is still ongoing. Easily found on every platform
Starts the story at around 6000BC and he focuses on entomology, linguistics, how it spread across Europe and European history to explain why we have the language structure we do.
It’s super interesting, and has answered many questions I’ve had about the English language. It should answer it for you as well!
OP. If the book recommendations are allowed here, try The Code Book by Simon Singh. The modern scientists pretty much make a guess of what means what, and then treat it as a decryption problem.
Humans are aggressively social. We *want* to communicate with our fellow human. It’s something encoded in our genes because it’s one of our strongest survival tactics. We don’t have sharp teeth or claws and our senses are ok, but not as amazing as the dangerous things out there that would kill early humans. What we did have though, is our remarkable ability to adapt, make tools, and work together (and it turns out, that’s better than sharp claws and teeth).
Our communication is less than 10% actual words, grammar, etc. Most of it is tone and body language. Drop you and someone that speaks a completely different language on a deserted island somewhere and you two will find a way to communicate, instinctively. You’ll do so out of that need to survive by banding together. You’ll use noises, and inflections, and gestures to tell each other where to find water or where there’s danger, or what’s safe to eat. You’ll eventually create a new language between you with new grammar rules. The words and rules of this language will be decided by what most easily allows for communication. If your island partner can’t understand your words for “grizzly bear” and you can’t understand their communication for “in the tree” you both will create a way to convey these separate concepts. Whatever first clicks is usually the winner in language building. So if you say “rawr rawr” and your island friend gets that you mean “grizzly bear”, that’s the new word for grizzly bear. Same with whatever makes you understand their “in the tree”. If they mime putting something inside their closed hand and they say “boop” when doing it, and that’s what makes you understand “in”, then “boop” is the word you two will use for in. If they point to a tree and say “ooahh!” And you follow their meaning, you two will mostly likely use “ooahh!” For tree. Then one day you two go out looking for food and they stop you and whisper “boop ooahh… rawr rawr!” You know what they said even if none of these words mean anything in either of your languages. Doesn’t matter what words meant before. What matters is what conveys concepts and intentions to the only other human on that island. They wanted you to know they saw a bear in a tree before the bear gets out of the tree.
I l’ve worked in a group composed of different scientists and other non science majors. The task we have is to develop a sign for a new species in the event that humans goes extinct. The sign has to describe the following “if you explore this area you will die until this year” . It sounds simple but this is a complex problem because we have no idea how a new species will develop. This is relates to your post how can we communicate to this new species. What has helped me contribute to the team is to look at ourselfs since birth, a baby communicates through sounds, if you are a parent you will know when a baby is crying from pain. You can also think of the first baby that was born and I am going to get in a controversy by assuming the first humans just appeared(male and female), we have to think how did they communicated, how did the first baby survive or did the first human couple appeared as grown-ups. All of this questions don’t have an exact answer but we were able to start the sign by doing some assumptions.
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