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THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

Man’s intellectual capability is different from anything else we know of in the universe. It puts a great chasm between us and the rest of the animal kingdom. One scholar has said that it is as if life evolved to a certain point and then in ourselves turned at a right angle and exploded in a different direction. And speech appears to be the best example of that.

Most modern theories of the origin of language are variations around a common theme: the gradual transformation of sounds into words. But at what point does nonlanguage ease across the threshold to become language? In the orthodox scheme, there is no clearly defined or definable threshold for humanness. So what about language? Its origin will never be determined within a framework of Darwinist dogma.

I have argued in my book, MAN AND HIS PLANET – An Unauthorized History, that Homo sapiens was born from another species, Homo erectus, and that this birth was not a gradual, evolutionary process but was a sudden one. At some point in the history of the genus Homo, a given generation of the elder species produced the first generation of the younger. A nonconscious (no self-awareness) being gave rise to a new creature with a conscious mind (that is, with latent consciousness).

That creature’s mind was every bit as developed and capable as the mind of man today. The difference in the beginning was the absence of culture to provide material for “programming” the newly created human. But the mind was there—a mind that would lead to the very first aspect of human culture: language.

When a human child learns the language of its parents, it is not somehow provided with the explicit definitions of words. Rather, through various means of input and feedback, it comes to associate sounds with objects, actions, and concepts. The sounds of speech are completely arbitrary insofar as their meaning is concerned. To be learned as a language, the only requirement is consistency. The sounds need not be recognized by their user as words, but as symbolic representations. They would come to be interpreted and conceptualized as such by a newly-born, learning, intelligent hearer possessing latent consciousness.

Thus, the first speech did not arise from random sounds that gradually developed meaning over the millennia to be finally recognized as words. Rather, consistent sounds were unconsciously transformed into abstract representations (words) by an infantile conscious mind. The young, first-generation H. sapiens heard the same sounds as his H. erectus parents, but for him the basis of meaning was of a totally different nature. The physiology and character of the enunciation would likewise have been different.

An interesting parallel to this conjecture exists. Languages called Creoles are created when established languages are useless.

Early on in the West, many slaves with various languages fled to form their own communities. In these communities they evolved pidgin speech, an improvised language that had a sparse vocabulary and no real grammar. Pidgin made communication possible among people who had no common tongue. Syntax is a natural development, so by spontaneously bringing grammar to their parents’ pidgin, children created a completely new language in one generation, a Creole.

Such must have been the case with the first languages—spoken by the first generation of Homo sapiens.

For more detail, go to www.letthereberight.com.