I am convinced that all of our instinctive human gestures and sounds are the remnants of our most primal language before words were fully developed. What do you think of this hypothosis and its proponents?
2006-11-10 05:05:07 · 5 answers · asked by Isis 7 in Social Science ➔ Anthropology
we humans use a lot of body language while we speak because it helps us express ourselves, and i think you're definitely right, i think body language came way before vocal language had been developed. animals communicate in whatever way their bodies are better accustomed to; birds chirp, whales and dolphins make weird noises, cats meow and hiss. over time, sounds and gestures turn into basic dialects, and those turn into more structured languages.
when early humans were out in the jungle and they had to hunt together, they had to come up with ways to describe their plans to one another, like "you go this way and i go this way", and since they couldn't say it, they'd do anything they could to make it happen. crucial situations like finding and gathering food in groups forced early humans to communicate together in more advanced ways, and by improvising and doing whatever they could to make it happen, their attempts turned into a fully functional way of communicating that would stick to our species to this very day. have you ever tried talking without any body language at all? it's hard, it feels somehow unnatural. at least to me it does. xD
2006-11-10 09:08:46 · answer #1 · answered by Om 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
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2006-11-10 07:10:42 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Read "Before The Dawn" by Nicholas Wade. He discusses Noam Chompsky's idea of a Universal Grammar. Also, by tracing genetics, and finding the people who are likely the most closely related to our ancestral population, he found that they are tribes in Africa who speak "Click" languages. So perhaps our primordial language included clicks.
2006-11-10 06:42:50 · answer #3 · answered by Rico Toasterman JPA 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They say that most communication is non-verbal, so your hypothesis sounds okay to me.
That being said, a lot of body language are arbitrary expressions set by society. Ex. In Bulgaria, noddnig one's head to say "yes" is from left to right.....
2006-11-10 05:13:58 · answer #4 · answered by econdrone 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Ughh (grunt) eewwe (cooing) like that?
When I hear a foreigner speak it sounds like primordial speech....Like english does to them. So I suppose your hypothosis may have merit.
2006-11-10 05:17:28 · answer #5 · answered by battle-ax 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋