>>>>A book (remember those?) I found interesting on this topic, although I'm not sure I understood it 100%, is Terrence Deacon's "The Symbolic Species". The basic thesis is that the ability to think in symbols came first, enabling the brain and language to evolve in a virtuous spiral, each reinforcing and improving the other.

I'm in the process of critiquing the first draft of a book by an old friend of mine, A charming fellow named Arnold Mysior, whose book is called The Triumph of Stupidity.

His take on this is that language evolved only after there was self-awareness. When the first man looked at his reflection in the water and realized that he was that thing in the water, there had to be a language to ask the question, "Who am I? and then and only then there was the birth of language.



TEd