Was there a word first?

So it happened

Language is a phenomenon lying halfway between biological and social. On the one hand, a person is innate to speak (this can be seen from how quickly the child masters speech), and on the other hand, the language is absorbed like any other public skill. Outside of the Mowgli society, it loses its linguistic potential. Language can only live “on man”, but a person at his own whim cannot do anything with the language. In principle, this is so with all the most important social institutions, but the example with the language is especially bright: it belongs to everything and at the same time absolutely in itself. Language is the most ordinary of the great miracles, to which a person is involved.

All living creatures communicate with each other, and sometimes with the help of very intricate codes, however, even the highest monkeys cannot be trained in the simplest basics of speech. At what stage of evolution the language arose is exactly unknown. Others believe that already 750 thousand years ago, Australopithecus in the left hemisphere of the brain began to develop zones of Brock and Wernik, responsible for gestures, and since the gesture is still inseparable from the word, we need to lead to daily time. Others, on the contrary, argue that even Neanderthals did not really have a language that this ability is no more than 60 thousand years. But if so, then how were the mythological performances contained in the first rock drawings were transmitted? It is important to understand that if for a particular person a thought precedes the word, then for humanity as a whole - on the contrary, thinking could not develop outside the language.

What areas of activity belonged to the very first words, we, of course, do not know. Were these names of objects? Designations of actions? It is unlikely that the most hunting calls can be considered the oldest (all close relatives of primates hunt in silence) and onomatopoeia (they, oddly enough, develop quite late). Most likely the first to arise orders. The chuck of the birth of the language is at the same time attempts that brought society into the light.

It is even more difficult to find out how many centers of the origin of the tongue were on the ground. Popular genetics recently proved that almost all the descendants of one “mitochondrial Eve” living are the descendants of one - however, this in itself does not prove that the “theory of the Babylonian tower” is fair, according to which there was once a single grade of Homo sapiens. For forty years, this theory has been developing a nostratic linguistics - the area of ​​linguistics, which has received maximum recognition in our country, in the rest of the world perceived very wary. The reasons for this should apparently look for in the features of the intellectual climate in the USSR: firstly, the “biologization” of the language, its transformation into a natural phenomenon freed linguists from ideological custody, and in secondary, Soviet humanities did not go through global disappointment in the ideas of evolutionism.

Be that as it may, following the classic Indo-European linguistics, which from the 19th century reconstructed the language as of 6-7 thousand years ago, “nostratics” began to recreate the stage that preceded the Indo-European and began to decay in the XIII-XII millennia BC. In that era, according to the calculations of Russian comparativists, there were seven language “supra -family” on Earth, and when they will be sufficiently studied, it will be possible to begin to recreate the same prime language of mankind. The “Babylonian” theory looks very tempting, but only the trouble is: the deeper the past, the more languages, and not less. Apparently, along with the mechanism of evolution and the disintegration of the prisons in history, the mechanism of the “language union” also acted, when the inactive languages ​​were not just borrowed from each other not just the words what is happening constantly, but grammatical features (as, for example, this took place in the recent past with the languages ​​of the Balkans, “related” from prolonged neighborhood). In addition, do not forget that in the pre -state and pre -script era, the concept of his native language was much more vague: then no one has reproached anyone for the emphasis and everyone owned many languages, without even realizing this in this. But here is a linguistic complexity, if she underwent a change with centuries, then exclusively towards simplification. The languages ​​of the most ancient peoples, as well as the most “back” of the tribes preserved on Earth, are fantastically difficult to learn a stranger, and this alone proves with undoubtedness: no average Cro -Magnon and already obviously no modern “native” is stupid than today's average European. It’s just that the mind can be arranged very differently.