Words. We’re lucky our species ever evolved, considering that our ancestors mostly relied on grunts, gestures and urgent facial expressions to communicate. They had it better than worms, certainly, but this is not saying much. Worms couldn’t point, their gestures were limited to wiggles, and few worm species had faces.
Cavepersons, by comparison, had options.
They could point. They could wave. They could widen their eyes menacingly or meaningfully. They could strike themselves on the forehead and point again, harder — which remains the standard procedure whenever tourists ask for directions here in Florida.
Nevertheless, prehistoric conversation had to be exhausting.
Imagine trying to warn your neighbor that a woolly mammoth is charging from behind. Today, you simply say, “Excuse me, but there’s a woolly mammoth charging from behind.”
In 30,000 B.C., this required a loud grunt, pointing over your neighbor’s shoulder, miming tusks with two crooked fingers, stomping heavily and pretending to be covered in hair — before finally being trampled because your neighbor thought you were performing an interpretive dance.
It was an age when every sentence was a game of charades, and losing could remove you from the gene pool.
This may also explain why cave paintings were invented. Archaeologists call them ritual images, hunting records or expressions of early symbolic consciousness. I call them the world’s first PowerPoint presentations.
Picture a tribe gathered around a cave wall while its chief communications officer points to a badly drawn bison.
“Urg,” he begins.
The audience nods.
“Urg urg.”
A few tribesmen exchange worried glances. Someone in the back has already fallen asleep.
The presenter points to six stick figures, the bison and a red handprint that may represent spiritual transcendence but looks suspiciously like someone ate a bloody animal and wiped his hand on the wall.
“URRRRG.”
Questions are postponed until the end.
Cave art was undoubtedly a breakthrough, but it had limitations. You couldn’t carry it with you. Editing was difficult. If someone painted over your masterpiece, there was no “undo” button —only a club and an awkward meeting with Human Resources, which consisted of the largest person in the cave.
The real miracle was spoken language. At some point, a prehistoric genius realized different noises could mean different things. “Ba” might mean bison. “Ma” might mean mammoth. “Aaargh” could mean “saber-toothed cat” or “I stepped in something unpleasant,” depending on how rapidly the speaker disappeared.
Once words arrived, humanity advanced quickly. We could share hunting plans, pass knowledge to our children and explain whose turn it was to take the bones outside. Civilization became possible because one person could say, “We should store food for winter,” and another could reply, “Good idea.”
This was language’s hidden defect. Grunting may be imprecise, but nobody can spend three days analyzing the tone of a grunt. Words gave us poetry, philosophy and, more recently, the phrase “per my previous email.”
Language also created politicians. Before words, a tribal leader had to demonstrate competence by finding food or fighting predators. After words, he could stand on a rock and announce that mammoth numbers were at a historic high, even though nobody had seen one in months and the tribe was eating bark.
Advertising followed.
“New Improved Rock Hammer: Now With an Edge!”
Stone tablets at least imposed discipline. Nobody chiseled “Just circling back” into granite unless the matter was urgent. A memo required three weeks, two stonemasons and a donkey. “Let’s schedule a quick catch-up” could weigh 180 pounds.
Now words cost nothing. They arrive in emails, texts, posts, captions, disclaimers and terms-of-service agreements long enough to induce sleep. We have travelled from lacking a word for “mammoth” to receiving 47 notifications before breakfast, nine of which say only “Thanks!”
And yet, after all this linguistic progress, we remain devoted to the grunt — especially as we age.
We grunt when sitting down, standing up, opening jars and being asked whether we remembered the milk. We send thumbs-up symbols, angry faces and tiny pictures of vegetables. Our ancestors spent millennia inventing language, and we have used it to return to pictograms.
The modern smartphone is, in essence, an endless supply of portable cave walls. We carry one everywhere, draw symbols on it and become furious when nobody understands what we meant by the eggplant.
Maybe words were never meant to replace grunts and gestures. They merely gave us millions of elaborate ways to misunderstand one another. A caveman could accidentally communicate “Let us hunt the mammoth” when he meant “The mammoth is hunting us.” We can make precisely the same mistake today, but now we can copy the entire department — or several thousand strangers on social media.
Still, we should be grateful. Words let us describe what is absent, imagine what has never existed and tell future generations what happened before they arrived. They allow us to say, “I love you,” “I’m sorry,” and “There is definitely a mammoth behind you.”
Of course, those words may still be interpreted in a thousand different ways.
But if the mammoth is charging, I recommend pointing.
Larry D. Clifton is a native Floridian, a graduate of Eckerd College and the author of the science fiction thriller “Martin’s Secret,” available at Barnes & Noble.