honest question

[Chess]

how did people make the first langue? When they made a word they couldn't explain what it is because they didn't have anyway to communicate if u know the answer please tell me. I'm assuming they drew a picture then spit out a word for it.

[IceVajal]

I read an article just recently that research shows that first there were signs, than grunts which developed into words. Unfortunately I can't find it anymore.

[Chess]

Ill try to look for it then my question will be solved!

[IceVajal]

It was in my Google news feed, an English article. Perhaps I have it saved there...

Edit: ScienceAlert: New Experiments Hint Human Language Likely Didn't Start With Grunts.
https://www.sciencealert.com/experiment ... not-grunts

[Stasia]

[mention]Chess[/mention], this is a great question indeed. Here are some points:

1) Communication is not unique to humans. All species signal clues to be interpreted, and interpret clues signaled by others. That's why birds chirp, dogs howl, bees dance, etc. Animals communicate to cooperate, to show strength or submission, to make babies, to teach their babies how to survive, etc. What makes humans unique, is the range of our vocalizations, and the seemingly infinite ability to put pieces of sounds together to create meanings. While animal communication is narrowly focused on survival, human languages can discuss abstract stuff such as poetry, philosophy, religion, and origin of languages.

2) What differentiates us humans from our closest relatives - the apes - is our hyoid bone (a small bone in our throats) - that little bone allows for the wide range of vocalization that the apes cannot mimic. Among early hominid species, only Neandertals and Homo sapiens (that is us) have this bone. It seems that our earlier ancestors had voicing apparatus more similar to the apes - that is limited to basic grunts.

3) The question how and why languages developed is a tantalizing question that is the focus of many researchers! You can read the links below for some ideas. At this point there is no one right or wrong answer - if I were to bet, I'd bet on some kind of "all of the above" answer to this question.

4) However, my personal favorite is this one: language developed as our ancestors began to make stone tools! While making an using tools is not a uniquely human trait, our ancestors began to make complex stone tools (knives, scrapers, points) that require a lot of planning, skill, and experience. There is some neat research showing that making tools actually "lights up" the language sections of the brain. This suggests that the first languages developed as humans were making more and more complex tools: that this "lighting up" of language section of the brain stimulated more complex vocalizations.

Sources (mostly popular for an easier read, but I can add more academic ones if desired):
https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall ... human.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25078953/
https://www.linguisticsociety.org/conte ... uage-begin
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 102003.htm
https://youtu.be/vmanlBDFfw0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0jqJUF1nOs

EDIT:
[mention]IceVajal[/mention]: non-verbal communication has always been and still is a big part of communication. Animals communicate nonverbally, too - think of how you know whether a dog or cat is relaxed, or happy, or scared, or angry, just by looking at their body posture. Even plants use non-verbal communication, advertising nectar to insects, with bold colors!

[HeyMarlana]

Human migration and etymology is so fascinating to me. It is said that the first humans were in eastern Africa, the Khoe-San (Khoisan) people (in present-day Botswana.)

Just before I get into languages, it's important to know that this is considered the first place where we as humans developed. If you look closely, you can also see the familiar traits of many races, not just black people. When human migration occurred, those traits began to change wherever people settled over a long period of time. For example, how white people became white people in Europe, etc. There is a documentary (and book by the same scientist, Spencer Wells) called The Journey of Man.

I know that people are answering you here about how we as a species began communicating, just as animals also communicate, but I think I sense that you want to know how we, as modern humans began our first language. To know this, that's why I'm pointing you in the direction of where the birthplace of humankind is said to be from.

The Khoisan languages are made up of sounds that we as English speakers don't use at all, such as clicking. The type of click, the number of clicks, coupled with various sounds from the throat and mouth were eventually put together to describe things of importance to the San people. For example, words like mom, dad, baby, walking, and words that they felt were important to them such as spear, hut, hunt were developed. They wouldn't have needed a word for something like snow. It wasn't until people migrated that they needed to develop more words to describe newer surroundings or items used in those surroundings. Eventually when people from the region left, new language groups formed to suit their surroundings.

If you go back in time to the primitive time of the San people, where we are thought to have originated from as modern day humans, it would be interesting to see how the language they used coincided with life. As with everything else as we evolve, adding words happened over time, but the initial language would have mainly consisted of the important things in life, and otherwise, body language and facial expressions were very much a part of trying to convey what they wanted to say too.

[Deleted User 114]

I think the answers you are going to get are all from that person’s perspective.

If you’re an evolutionist, you are going to think the first languages were grunts and hand signals.

If you are a Christian, you believe that the first language came when God created Adam and Eve, in Israel. Now, as google says…

“southern Mesopotamia

Among scholars who consider it to have been real, there have been various suggestions for its location: at the head of the Persian Gulf, in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea; and in Armenia.”

But then….if you believe in the flood and Noah, all the rivers would have gotten mixed up, and when the water receded, you would have had new channels for the water to go into.

After the flood, Noah’s boat supposedly landed somewhere around Turkey, in the Ararat mountains. And actually, going back to when the flood supposedly was, the time matches perfectly with languages originating from Turkey too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Euro ... nsions.jpg

And looking at that photo, you can see that most languages originated from Turkey and around that area.

If you want to read a story on how so many languages were able to come about in such a short time…here’s a story…(It’s from a biblical standpoint)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tower-of-Babel

[Stasia]

I think the answers you are going to get are all from that person’s perspective.

If you’re an evolutionist, you are going to think the first languages were grunts and hand signals.

If you are a Christian, you believe that the first language came when God created Adam and Eve, in Israel.

This forum is inclusive and inviting to people of all faiths. So, in the name of inclusion, please allow me to list some other options as well.

1. The Buddhist religion says that there were many universes before us, as the cosmos expands and contracts. After the last contraction and before the most recent expansion (which we can compare to the Big Bang), some beautiful beings were born. They did not need to eat anything but light. When the current universe appeared, these first beings that arose were innocent and beautiful. Unfortunately, some developed taste for material foods, eating some tasty things that they could find on the new Earth. Seeking more tasty treats they became greedy, lazy, and lying - yes, the first mention of a language in the Buddhist faith is in context of lying (after stealing another one's belongings)!

2. In the Chinese tradition, the world started as an egg, from which the opposites of yin and yang have emerged: the dualities of female and male, darkness and light, wet and dry, aggression and passiveness. In the middle of these opposites - specifically, in the middle of what was going to become the heaven and the earth - was Pan Gu. He started growing, and the world was growing with him; the more he grew, the more separation between heaven and earth. When he died, his remains become what gives live on earth: the Sun and the Moon, the flowing water... and his fleas and lice are ancestors of us, humans!

3. In the Japanese tradition, two gods - Izanami and Izanagi - are the ones who created the land by stirring the primordial ocean to create islands. After some mishaps, the pair's offspring included the Japanese island as well as a multitude of lesser deities. The ancestors of the Japanese people were created from Izanagi's disregarded clothes, which he took off in state of grief, after a horrible experience of losing his beloved wife, and after his unsuccessful trip to the underworld to get her back.

4. According to the Anishnaabe, the world was created by Kitchi-Manitou, who envisioned the Earth with the Sun and the Moon, and water and wind, life and death, and all the creatures of the world. And so they appeared - just like Kitchi-Manitou envisioned.

All creation stories are beautiful, meaningful, and inspiring.

Sources:
https://www.learnreligions.com/the-agganna-sutta-450123
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ ... tory-china
http://railsback.org/CS/CSJapan.html
https://www.native-art-in-canada.com/creationstory.html

More creation myths:
https://www.worldhistoryedu.com/creatio ... the-world/

[Deleted User 114]

Muslims believe....

In the Quran, the heavens and the earth were joined together as one "unit of creation", after which they were "cloven asunder".[12][13] After the parting of both, they simultaneously came into their present shape after going through a phase when they were smoke-like.[14][13] The Quran states that the process of creation took 6 youm(يوم).[15][13] In the Quran, the word youm (often translated to "era") means day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_m ... _the_world

Hindus believe...

For Hindus the universe was created by Brahma, the creator who made the universe out of himself.

After Brahma created the world, it is the power of Vishnu which preserves the world and human beings.

As part of the cycle of birth, life and death it is Shiva who will ultimately destroy the universe. This is not necessarily as bad as it might sound because it allows Brahma to start the process of creation all over again.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z ... revision/7

[Stasia]

Indeed. All religious beliefs are equally valued and respected in this community.

The beauty of science is that scientific evidence/scientific interpretations are in a separate realm from religious beliefs.

Therefore, scientific evidence and scientific interpretations do not contradict any religious beliefs. Religious beliefs of any religious tradition - be it Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Native American religions, or any other - can be used as a broad framework to provide answers for questions which cannot be answered by science.

[Corinnebelle]

I think the answers you are going to get are all from that person’s perspective.

If you’re an evolutionist, you are going to think the first languages were grunts and hand signals.

If you are a Christian, you believe that the first language came when God created Adam and Eve, in Israel. Now, as google says…

“southern Mesopotamia

Among scholars who consider it to have been real, there have been various suggestions for its location: at the head of the Persian Gulf, in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea; and in Armenia.”

But then….if you believe in the flood and Noah, all the rivers would have gotten mixed up, and when the water receded, you would have had new channels for the water to go into.

After the flood, Noah’s boat supposedly landed somewhere around Turkey, in the Ararat mountains. And actually, going back to when the flood supposedly was, the time matches perfectly with languages originating from Turkey too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Euro ... nsions.jpg

And looking at that photo, you can see that most languages originated from Turkey and around that area.

If you want to read a story on how so many languages were able to come about in such a short time…here’s a story…(It’s from a biblical standpoint)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tower-of-Babel


There is a boat out there.

Something I find interesting is how many people have folklore stories about the flood and eight people.

[Stasia]

Something I find interesting is how many people have folklore stories about the flood and eight people.

If you just keep the first part (about the flood) and disregard the second part (number of people), the answer is: plenty.

Possibly the oldest written account of the flood is from the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (link to the whole text; link to the part which contains the story of the flood; the text is a bit hard to read, so here is the link to simplified Wikipedia version). Depending on whom you ask, it dates to 2000 BC or 1000 BC (that's the most conservative date, based on the most complete text of the Epic) - so written three or four thousand years ago.

Basically, Sumerian hero Gilgamesh is being told the story of the flood by Utnapishtim (the Sumerian equivalent of Noe, who in the Sumerian myth got granted immortality for his role in saving humanity). Utnapishtim was notified by the god Ea that the other gods were planning to flood the earth. To save life on earth, Ea instructed Utnapishtim to build a big boat. Utnapishtim built the boat and packed it with his family, craftsmen, all kinds of animals, and different goods. The flood lasted for a week. The boat got lodged on a tall mountain. After it stopped raining, Utnapishtim released three birds: dove, swallow, and raven. Dove and swallow came back (not finding land to, well, land on). Raven did not (signaling that the waters are receding).

Analogies between the Sumerian and Biblical accounts of the flood are not surprising, as there is a direct direct link between Mesopotamian and Hebrew cultures: after all, according to the Bible, Abraham was from the Mesopotamian city of Ur (Genesis 11:28-31). Ur was a very important Sumerian city (link).

However, there are also stories of the flood found in other religions, far away from Mesopotamia, including Native American religions. These versions, however, need to be approached with a bit of caution. Native myths were usually recorded by European missionaries: that is, the same people whose job was to replace native religions with Christianity. I can't remember the source now, but I remember reading some critiques pointing out that at least some of these stories of the flood might have been "planted" by the missionaries themselves.

On the other hand... I am a great believer in the power of oral history: the ability of humans to retell a story of something that really happened in the past. Geological evidence tells us of a climate change of seismic proportions that happened about 10,000 years ago: the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Age). (Frantically trying to find a source that is not filled with unreadable scientific jargon... Wikipedia will have to do).

What happens every spring when the snow melts - the rivers rise and often flood, right? The more snow has fallen in the winter, the higher the rivers in the spring. Now imagine this happening on a much greater scale: gigantic glaciers (which covered big chunks of North America, Europe, and Asia) melting and floodwaters sweeping the land - all that water went through the continents and elevated the sea levels by some 100 meters.

I cannot prove it, but I want to believe that religious texts about the flood are talking about a real event at a global scale - and it doesn't get more global than the floods at the end of the Pleistocene.

[b05aplmun.ca]

I think the answers you are going to get are all from that person’s perspective.

If you’re an evolutionist, you are going to think the first languages were grunts and hand signals.

If you are a Christian, you believe that the first language came when God created Adam and Eve, in Israel. Now, as google says…

“southern Mesopotamia

Among scholars who consider it to have been real, there have been various suggestions for its location: at the head of the Persian Gulf, in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea; and in Armenia.”

But then….if you believe in the flood and Noah, all the rivers would have gotten mixed up, and when the water receded, you would have had new channels for the water to go into.

After the flood, Noah’s boat supposedly landed somewhere around Turkey, in the Ararat mountains. And actually, going back to when the flood supposedly was, the time matches perfectly with languages originating from Turkey too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Euro ... nsions.jpg

And looking at that photo, you can see that most languages originated from Turkey and around that area.

If you want to read a story on how so many languages were able to come about in such a short time…here’s a story…(It’s from a biblical standpoint)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tower-of-Babel

While we are discussing various religions and the fact that this forum includes people of many religions, which should all be respected, I think it´s worth pointing out that many Christians and some Christian churches do not take every word of the Bible literally, especially in regards to the creation of the world and other very early events. Those people´s rights should also be respected.

[Kelikaku]

According to the Torah, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet existed before creation, and they all have a fundamental meaning that provide a bedrock to the universe. So, it follows that the universe would not exist without the Hebrew alphabet. According to Jewish philosophy, the universe is "only" 5,782 years old. The Hebrew alphabet existed before the creation of time itself. The "word" existed first, and was needed in order for the universe to come into existence.

According to linguistic anthropologists, the Indo-European languages originated somewhere in the Middle East, and Sanskrit is the survivor of the most rudimentary of that language tree. Sanskrit is still used in parts of modern India.

That said, according to anthropology, humanity has existed for many hundreds of millennia, while the Indo-European language tree is only a tiny fraction of that, in age. So, how do they suppose that humanity communicated before that tiny pocket of time? There must have been other languages and other language trees that existed before that, which are certainly extinct. Anthropolgy says that humanity is several 100k years old, and that "known" recorded language is only at most, around 5-10k years old. So, by that logic, there must have been many other languages that must logically, have necessarily, died out.

Interesting topic in any case.