Somehow I’m feeling that I’m losing my base in scientific analysis of human psyche. This is actually bothering me. I’ve always been a propagator of analytic philosophy. Words could be deceptive at times and they have the potential to distort the message at the receiving end. Symbols, on the other side, convey a specific meaning and hence with a good degree of confidence level, I can reject the null hypothesis that words are better mode for transferring the ideas than symbols. However, with the rejection of this null hypothesis, the very shift of civilization from the language of signs to words comes under question. However, when I deep dive and analyze, words are nothing but the innumerable combination of some fixed letter symbols only, however, with associated syllables. So letters are nothing but the graphic representation of syllables. It would be interesting to analyze how language would have evolved over a period of time. A rather more interesting question would be: Whether language a biological evolution or cultural evolution? One school of thought propagated by Friederich Max Müller, professor of linguistics at Oxford University, in a lecture delivered by him in 1861, is that “language is a divine gift of god and is the Rubicon which divides man from beast, and no animal will ever cross it.” However, Charles Darwin challenged this view of Friederich Max Müller in his book “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex” by adapting a multicomponent view of language. This model of language acknowledges that language is an intricate creation of numerous distinctive mechanisms rather than honoring any single significant factor to language in a colossal sense. Fundamentally, this school of thought is the same as the theory of evolution. This complex vocal capability for language is not just limited to Homo sapiens or mammals and is extended to many other species as well like birds.
However, it would be interesting to know when the first time the need for a verbal language was felt. For what I think, the first need for verbal language must have been felt for the purpose of throwing slangs. I’ve a strong argument to back this opinion. Being a “social animal”, collectivism is a psychological trait of Homo sapiens, so the initial Homo erectus society decided to stay together and so they formed a clan. The obvious reason for this was that collectivism made hunting and hence food gathering easy. However, being an “animal”, another psychological trait of Homo Sapiens, which must have developed somewhere around with the next in line evolution stage Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, is of “dominance”, a state of being in power. This very desire of being supreme, later in history, has led to many of the cruel wars. Nevertheless, this lust of power drove some individuals to dominate over others and this way autocracy came into existence in its primitive form. Some, who were able to fight back, fought and regained their status and became the head of clan. This is how the concept of war came into existence. Some, who were not able to fight back but also could not stand dominance over them, parted from the clan and formed their own clan. Since nobody in this new clan could come up as omnipotent, they decided to come up with something like electing the clan head and this way concept of democracy came into existence into its primitive form. It would be interesting to think how the clan identified the winner in the democratic form when there was no language and hence no counting. I think, what they must have done would be to ask the supporters of one candidate to stand in a queue on one side and the supporters of the other candidate in a queue on the other side. Whichever side the queue would be longer, the candidate of that side would get elect as clan head. Another plausible series of events could be that since nobody in this new clan could come up as omnipotent, a few dominant personalities came forward to claim their rule on the clan. To resolve the situation and to determine one clan leader, the clan then decided to conduct a series of events or games and the overall winner in the events got elected as clan head and this way the concept of meritocracy came into existence in its primitive form.
Nevertheless, coming back towards the fundamental question of first need for verbal language for throwing slangs, apart from the above mentioned two categories of Homo sapiens, a third category also existed. Homo sapiens belonging to this category were weak. This category neither had power to throw away the autocratic rule nor did they have the courage to leave the clan and form one of their own. So, they went on tolerating the dominance of one over them. But anger is also an animal trait. They felt the need to vent out their anger, but they were weak and they couldn’t vent out their anger in the physical form and so they invented the safety valve in form of verbal language which was nothing but a collection of slangs. The basic slang could be a single syllable which over a period of time evolved and took complex forms we know now. The basic ideology behind the evolution of slang was very simple, the more the number of syllables in slang, the better it is as more syllables provide a larger window to vent out the anger.
So, primarily, the credit of inventing the language goes to those who were the weakest section of the society and not to the powerful ones. However, powerful ones once again used the language to their advantage and forced weaker ones to compose couplets in their praise and hence a fabricated framing of history started, again in its primitive form, in favor of the power.
Since the right of venting out the anger through slangs was also snatched from the weaker sections, the safety valve got blocked. This led to a burst of anger from the weaker ones in the form of revolt and hence the first revolt, in its primeval form, came into existence.
After carrying out all this analysis, fundamentally, language is nothing but one of the many byproducts (others being autocracy, democracy, meritocracy, war & revolt) of an animal psyche. This is in complete contradiction with the hypothesis proposed by Friederich Max Müller which stated that language is the basic differentiating element between the man and the animal. In fact invention of verbal form of language, a step ahead from the language of symbols, is nothing but an exaggerated and overrated safety vent of animal instincts deep inside Homo sapiens.
But this again raises a question in my mind. Love, for that matter again is an animal instinct, highly prominent in mammals. It is very much possible and in fact more probable that love being the aboriginal reason behind the invention of verbal form of language wherein the phonetic resources were pooled in for primeval speech and luring the opposite sex in the clan. This actually gives rise to the possibility that a “romantic song” rather than “ruthless slang”, the first form of verbal language. Again, more the number of syllables in the song, more the probability of alluring the opposite sex.
Perplexed?
