“The poor have it. The rich lack it. It is bigger than God, meaner than the devil and if you eat it you die” (riddle)
Let’s start our tour of human history with the Neanderthals. Roughly 100.000 years ago these primitive men lived in Europe and the Middle East. Many remnants have been found like graves, tools, huts, spears etc. These findings suggest their life style was something like: hunting and gathering daily food supplies. They may well have been humming together, creating a sense of belonging. They hinted with gestures and certainly with sound signals as well, but not like animals. Animals communicate with ‘action-language’ (‘I want this’; ‘You do that’) focussing on the here and now – the 4 f’s; fighting, fleeing, feeding and f……… Neanderthals communicate with a ‘message-language’, much more complex than the cleverest apes, but not yet reflective language like modern men. They thought in concrete ways, less about what happens elsewhere, what occurred in the past or will come in the future, less with abstract concepts or contemplation.
For a long time it was like that, until modern man arrived some 80.000 years ago. This human being has different vocal chords and could produce many more sounds. And perhaps this has been the beginning of a very special development. Humming and music continue to be associated with emotions, but spoken language is gradually extending from pure message-language to one of words and observations! Instead of complete action-signals, man is beginning to use signal bits or words and this creates enormous opportunities. Because words can be combined in many ways to sentences with endless many meanings. Once ‘takecarelion’ is split into ‘take care’ and ‘lion’, ‘take care’ can also be used to warn for a pit and ‘lion’ for an animal far away, not presenting an immediate danger.
In this way many different messages can be composed with words (just like later many words can be written with a limited number of letters of the alphabet). Men are distinguishing and labelling more and more aspects of their environment and by virtue of their observation-language they can transfer ever more knowledge to the next generation. In the long run men learned to speak about things not here but elswhere, or about what does not happen now, but has yet to come or has happened already. And eventually they learn to even speak about things that do not exist. But it must have been very difficult indeed, to conceive of something as abstract as ‘nothing’! Even for us the riddle above is not so easy.
To articulate is to distinguish and create at the same time. Genesis reads – God spoke and it was so. He separated day and night, water and land. And Adam gave names to the animals in the field. This reflects how human language and spirit developed over time. “This we call light. And that we call water.” With today’s knowledge, we better read Genesis 1 in a novel way: as a description of a mental- rather than a material creation. It deals with word language and awakening of consciousness and understanding, rather than with cosmological or biological processes. In the beginning was the word. Reflective language is what makes us human. This language is supernatural.