One wonders very much if any amount of researching will get back far enough to pinpoint an architypical form of "word", or "wer", or "verbum". Besides the always-present possibility that all the words related to the "wer" root may be simply an offshoot in the family tree; maybe the parent stock is something that produced the Greek "logos".

Here's a theory of mine:
At least some aspects of the earliest history of the human race are revealed in, of all places, the Bible. Not necessarily as a literal history, but as a general indication, perhaps wrapped in an allegorical form. For instance: Gen. 2:19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man [Heb. Adam ]to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. I think this is an early version of what used to be called (I guess maybe still is) the Ding-Dong Theory of language -- words first arose from the way a thing sounds or looks or appears. Presumably, when the camel was presented to Adam, he said, "Camel!", or whatever the ancient Semitic word was. More historically likely, I suppose some cavemen somewhere came back after a hard day's hunting grunting about "mammoth" or some such and the name stuck. This still goes on. You could list lots of English words which have been fairly recently invented and came about this way.

Connected with this is St. John's famous opening line: In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. which tells me that words (read: communication or the means of communication between persons) has always been; it's something endemic to the cosmos.

Any thoughts on this?