In the beginning was the word or so says the good book, but that word had first to be spoken. Way back before Noah begot and begat and began, primitive man, bored with sitting, shivering and sheltering in his dark, dank draughty cave, ventured out and looked in wonder upon the sunrise and sunset and lightening storms. New life teemed all around as man took his first steps into this new world. Primitive man has never been particularly lauded as for his intellect but surely some form of sound must have emitted from him, imitating the animal and nature sounds he heard around him.
Mindless diatribe such as Eeh, Arr, Urr could not adequately convey the need to run hysterically from big, hairy brown things and so primitive man discovered an early warning cry all of his own. He also presumably developed some kind of sign language to augment his meagre vocabulary, perhaps used even as much as it does today, when words and emotions can be expressed so eloquently with one gesture of a finger.
The much admired cave paintings and drawings may have been some kind of early blackboard daily special menu planner, where other members of the tribe could point out their preferences for dinner, with each member taking a part: one to draw the menu plan, one to make the costumes, one to be bait or the lure or lunch if they proved unlucky or slow on their feet.
Primitive man would also need to name things, mainly themselves, to distinguish who belongs to which and what of Og, Mog, Gog, Migog to eventually meld into the more recognizable OMG, perhaps with an exclamation mark or three.
Primitive man may have a limited vocabulary, for example Ug, Urg and Eegods, roughly translated as “Big brown hairy thing coming up behind you!” but even he could deduce that two clubs beats all comers, even big hairy things with brown teeth and claws. Relaxing around the campfire after a hard day chipping flint axe heads and fashioning clubs out of old antlers, he told tall tales of how my big hairy brown thing was bigger than your big brown hairy thing and that’s nothing, you should have seen the one that let me get away.
When Primitive man got the bright idea of using animals to warm himself and somebody else got the brighter idea of skinning them first, and an early Martha Stewart type snagged the head for a dandy cave decoration, sewing animal skins together with animal sinews and fishbone needles may have been the catalyst for a few choice swear words to be added to his vocabulary as he slowly evolved from a hunter gatherer to that of a more settled way of life, tired of carrion and fighting off crows and vultures and scaring off other beasts, finally realizing that fresh is best.
He gathered his seed and when his spelt got spilt and saw it sprout, decided that he was onto a good thing but as all gardeners know, nothing goes easy in a new venture and he is sure to have been left scratching the many hairs on his head and declaring that if that big hairy mammoth tramples my seedling again I’ll give him what for!
Early man’s language was probably not unlike our own, constantly evolving, tweeting here and there to make sense of his surroundings and situations. His words may be lost to us today but his etchings carved on mammoth bones, and the cave paintings he left behind, transfer some of his labour to make sense of the world he found himself in. We marvel at these works of art, drawn in the darkness of time; perfectly preserved is his memory to us and we have no need of words.
Mindless diatribe such as Eeh, Arr, Urr could not adequately convey the need to run hysterically from big, hairy brown things and so primitive man discovered an early warning cry all of his own. He also presumably developed some kind of sign language to augment his meagre vocabulary, perhaps used even as much as it does today, when words and emotions can be expressed so eloquently with one gesture of a finger.
The much admired cave paintings and drawings may have been some kind of early blackboard daily special menu planner, where other members of the tribe could point out their preferences for dinner, with each member taking a part: one to draw the menu plan, one to make the costumes, one to be bait or the lure or lunch if they proved unlucky or slow on their feet.
Primitive man would also need to name things, mainly themselves, to distinguish who belongs to which and what of Og, Mog, Gog, Migog to eventually meld into the more recognizable OMG, perhaps with an exclamation mark or three.
Primitive man may have a limited vocabulary, for example Ug, Urg and Eegods, roughly translated as “Big brown hairy thing coming up behind you!” but even he could deduce that two clubs beats all comers, even big hairy things with brown teeth and claws. Relaxing around the campfire after a hard day chipping flint axe heads and fashioning clubs out of old antlers, he told tall tales of how my big hairy brown thing was bigger than your big brown hairy thing and that’s nothing, you should have seen the one that let me get away.
When Primitive man got the bright idea of using animals to warm himself and somebody else got the brighter idea of skinning them first, and an early Martha Stewart type snagged the head for a dandy cave decoration, sewing animal skins together with animal sinews and fishbone needles may have been the catalyst for a few choice swear words to be added to his vocabulary as he slowly evolved from a hunter gatherer to that of a more settled way of life, tired of carrion and fighting off crows and vultures and scaring off other beasts, finally realizing that fresh is best.
He gathered his seed and when his spelt got spilt and saw it sprout, decided that he was onto a good thing but as all gardeners know, nothing goes easy in a new venture and he is sure to have been left scratching the many hairs on his head and declaring that if that big hairy mammoth tramples my seedling again I’ll give him what for!
Early man’s language was probably not unlike our own, constantly evolving, tweeting here and there to make sense of his surroundings and situations. His words may be lost to us today but his etchings carved on mammoth bones, and the cave paintings he left behind, transfer some of his labour to make sense of the world he found himself in. We marvel at these works of art, drawn in the darkness of time; perfectly preserved is his memory to us and we have no need of words.