The origin and transformation of Language and Art
The origin and transformation of Language and Art

Author(s): Konstantinos Maritsas
Contributor(s): Katya Melamed (Editor)
Subject(s): History, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Social Philosophy, Communication studies, Sociology, Ancient World, Sociology of Art
Published by: КМ Издателство ООД
Keywords: evolution; natural selection; civilization; language; art; cooking; truth; lie; grammar; syntax; poetry; prose; counting; arithmetic
Summary/Abstract: How did language begin? The question, then, is how the properties of human language got their start. Obviously, it couldn’t have been a bunch of cavemen sitting around and deciding to make up a language, since in order to do so, they would have had to have a language to start with! Intuitively, one might speculate that hominids (human ancestors) started by grunting or hooting or crying out, and “gradually” this “somehow” developed into the sort of language we have today. (Such speculations were so rampant 150 years ago that in 1866 the French Academy banned papers on the origins of language!) The problem is in the “gradually”' and the “somehow”. Chimps grunt and hoot and cry out, too. What happened to humans in the 6 million years or so since the hominid and chimpanzee lines diverged, and when and how did hominid communication begin to have the properties of modern language?

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