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Originally Posted by atari 2600
It's the standard historical belief that the Sumerians in ancient Babylonia developed a symbolic language first. One that, albeit primitive, incorporated characters and is alike in that respect to what we know today as language. The Egyptians similarly developed language around the same time period around three thousand years before the common era. And around fifteen hundred years B.C.E., the Sumerians were also the first to take this symbolic language and utilize it to incorporarate rules for early civilization in the codification of laws; i.e., Hammurabi's Code.
SuchFriendsAreDangerous may be absolutely correct though because simple language that facilitated the communication of ideas between early humans occurred much, much earlier and up to a hundred thousand years before the common era. So, the "standard historical belief" arising from ancient Babylon I wrote of earlier is thought of as the first perversion of communication according to Rastafarians.
And then there's William S. Burroughs who flippantly declared that, "language is a virus from outer space."
Well, life itself may have came from outer space in the form of amino acids present in meteorite debris that interacted chemically with elements on Earth. But at any rate, on the lighter side, here's Laurie Anderson's "Language is a Virus" from her Home of the Brave concert film from 1986.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FeyGTmw0I0 |
Fair points all. There's a superlative argument from Derrida's Writing and Difference that I haven't the time to do justice to here, but those interested in the epistemological bases of language, and the alleged 'opposition' between the written and the spoken (and all that falls between) would do well to read that book.