The Origin of Language
In the context of our modern lives and the emphasis we place on competition, it is easy to forget that our highest achievements to date came from our ability to work together.
Communication with language is one of such achievements. Expressions such as “Predator here” and “fresh fruit over there” and “get ouf of my personal space” are easily enough communicated with primal intonations, grunts and non-verbal sounds, as we can observe from our animal relatives.
The desire to tell a story however is rooted in a capacity for abstraction. The reason to do so is beyond the measures of what threats of joys are present, but to call to mind things which are not physically present: the past, future, distance places, and abstract ideas.
The First Muse
The predictable yet dramatic cycles of the sun, moon and stars likely served as humanity’s first great narrative muse. Providing the core structure of our most enduring myths and demanding a language capable of expressing them.
The daily journey of the sun is an observable three-act story. Born each day at dawn, peaking at midday, and descending to the underworld for the night before being reborn once again the next morning.
Similarly we can witness the moon as it waxes and wanes from fullness into nothingness. In witnessing these cycles we are witnessing a drama, one that in many ways rhymes with the drama which unfolds around us in our experience of life.
The World Remade by Words
Armed with language capable of telling stories, the myths we shared not only described the phenomena we witness on earth and in the skies, but began to define and construct our internal experience. Shared values, ideas, and identity became the blueprint of transforming the physical world.
Communication became the process in which collective identity came into being. In a blanket of ideas wove together as myths, histories and believes, we became tribes, peoples, nations and cities.
Concepts like virtue, beauty, honour and justice were born and given power through language and story. We expressed ourselves with collective action in the construction of large monuments like Stonehenge or the Pyramids. These structures, in their alignment to the cycles of the stars above us, established a link between human creativity and the creative potential of the cosmos.
Ultimately, language evolved not only to describe our world, but to fill it with meaning. From the initial silent drama of the stars, through to our own struggles and triumphs through the annals of history. We are, and have always been, the descendants of storytellers who gave voice to the stars