re: #124 freetoken

Well, “language”, as we use that word commonly, certainly originated way back in the paleolithic. Large groups of hunter-gatherers would need language for cooperation.

We know that the oldest writing we have started off as accounting (of food.) The old Sumerians were bean counters! So, economics is the father of written language?

There are all sorts of artistic marks on very old objects, but were they a language with a grammar, or just brands? This is a question for those looking at the origin of writing in the far East, as Chinese glyphs predate the actual writing of a language, as far as we know.

Humans along the Indus used symbols, but know one knows if that was a real language.

The Mayans had a type of a language, but do the older scribbles from Incan ancestors count as writing too?

Anyway, the eastern Med was a hotspot of trading, as coastal hugging small ships would have been quite common for a long time, and modern humans had inhabited the area since leaving Africa, and older humans had been around there for a million years.

Agreed. I want Sherman’s wayback machine! And a Bic lighter (Clarke’s law).