What Language is

What is Language? Abstract thinking and the construction of information.

The first form of gestural communication was invented by an ancestor in the early human times in order to transmit some relevant information to their companions. Communication among members of a group is the result of the imperative needs for survival of all animal species.

Speach language was not the first form of communication of primitive humans, but a modification of their language characteristics, from a simpler voice pattern to a more complex speech (perhaps a genetic mutation that dominated from then on), featured this unique characteristic that is our best method of communication:

The words that depict symbols, concrete objects and also intangible things, a collection of growing oral language, up to the stage of a developed communal culture: that is, a large set of ideas expressed in words that are well understood by the population.

By accumulating and then transmitting their acquired knowledge, humans quickly circulated their new ideas to all individuals.

Each generation inherited their know-how and techniques while learning the language fostered specifically for the purpose of teaching in conversations and practical demonstrations.

Nothing could have been more important for the survival of our species than the spreading of information, originating from one single human to a few others: the sharing of a specialized learned technique. 

The established order in early human society relied on the exchange of information about main relevant facts for the survival of the group: on how to find food and shelter, and by receiving and passing these teachings on.

This is the birth of the human cognition and symbolic reasoning, the evidence of the evolutionary separation of human species from the other animal species (that do not have this capability). Since then, our ancestors have acquired abstract thinking and abstract language skills, that is, the invention of words in the spoken language that describe things that are not here presently, things that have never been seen and even things that do not exist.

(For example, a form of abstract communication with someone who is not present at the moment is to leave a message for that person.)

As a result of the growing exchange of information, the primeval language evolved into a more elaborated one, containing a wider vocabulary and consolidating an intricate syntax.

At the top stage of the evolution of abstract language in the brain, syntaxes have the power to gather our thoughts in a certain mental order by combining generic things to result in a specific meaning, and this marks the "frontier" between the animal language and the human language.

The syntax allows us to dismantle a sentence into units-words and into specific constructions and functions, and afterward recombine them to form sentences that had never been heard before, in order to convey information and its meaning. It is not clear how, or exactly when, syntax first appeared in humans, but without it we certainly would not have the household language we have today. 

The prehistoric human tribes had a savvy, at a time when all available knowledge was collected at the earliest stage, and they also mastered some practical skills before the advent of fine arts and the written word, more advanced abstract symbolic thinking constructions. 

Today we are just the same humans, but we know and talk about a lot more things than before.
And since the invention of the written word, the content of our books is our accrual of ancient and modern knowledge records there deposited: written treasures that are the fruits of our intellectual powers.

chain reaction

In the era of technology, everything in the universe is described, qualified and quantified according to the new mathematical scientific models.

We are a part of the Universe that walks on Earth for the purpose of doing some thinking, seeking to know ourselves and to be aware of the components of the structure of the Universe in a way that the Universe itself could never do, if not from the perceptions of the human mind.

We understand ourselves and the world around us by processing our thoughts in this brain that we have, and we understand our own brain and how it works thanks to this thinking brain we have.